Join us on Thursday, May 12th at 7 pm. This week we will be playing It’s Nitty Gritty Dirt Band & Friends – Circlin’ Back: Celebrating 50 Years.
Track Listing
You Ain’t Going Nowhere
Bob Dylan- Grandpa Was a Carpenter
John Prine - Paradise
John Prine - My Walkin’ Shoes
Jimmy Martin / Paul Williams - Tennessee Stud
Jimmie Driftwood - Nine Pound Hammer
Merle Travis - Buy for Me the Rain
Greg Copeland / Steve Noonan - These Days
Jackson Browne - Truthful Parson Brown
Willard Robison - Keep on the Sunny Side
June Carter - Catfish John
Bob McDill / Allen Reynolds - An American Dream
Rodney Crowell - Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream)
Rodney Crowell - Mr. Bojangles
Jerry Jeff Walker - Fishin’ in the Dark
Jim Photoglo / Wendy Waldman - Bayou Jubilee/Sally Was a Goodun
Jimmie Fadden / Jeff Hanna / Jimmy Ibbotson / John McEuen - Jambalaya
Hank Williams - Will the Circle Be Unbroken
June Carter
AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Friends always meant something special to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band — their 1972 breakthrough, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, was filled with them — so it only makes sense that the group rounded up a bunch of pals for a 50th anniversary concert held at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on September 14, 2015. Released a year later, Circlin’ Back: Celebrating 50 Years does indeed play like a celebration. Revisiting an equal portion of hits and traditional tunes, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band sound as deep and wise as the Nashville veterans did when they guested on Will the Circle Be Unbroken, but the nice thing about the Circlin’ Back concert is that it takes into account the smoother hits the band had in the ’80s: Rodney Crowell and Alison Krauss sit in on “An American Dream” and Jimmy Ibbotson plays on “Fishin’ in the Dark.” Here, they’re presented in stripped-down arrangements that nevertheless echo the soft rock gloss of the hit singles, and when combined with rollicking bluegrass, rustic folk, and straight-ahead country, it results in a full portrait of what the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is all about. Better still, Circlin’ Back is just a good time: as John Prine, Vince Gill, Sam Bush, Jackson Browne, and Jerry Jeff Walker take the stage, the entire thing feels like a party — which, of course, is what it was.
