Bluegrass Icons Unite to Celebrate 50th Anniversary of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's 'Circle' Album

Former Nitty Gritty Dirt Band member John McEuen considers NGDB's 1972 double album Will the Circle Be Unbroken to be the bluegrass genre's version of Dark Side of the Moon, in terms of its staying power and influence. And on Saturday, April 2, McEuen will swing through Colorado with the Circle Band, composed of NGDB members Les Thompson and John Cable, as well as Matt Cartonis. The quartet will play at Swallow Hill Music  to showcase songs from the album as well as other tracks by the band and some of McEuen’s later solo output. At least one song, McEuen says, hasn’t been recorded anywhere, as far as he knows. The band also takes one or two requests from the audience.

“On the Amazon charts, [Will the Circle Be Unbroken is] in the top twenty on three different charts to this day," McEuen says. "Since the Ken Burns country music documentary aired, it jumped on the charts about two, two and a half years ago. It’s still reaching people. It’s an important album. It's in the Library of Congress and the Grammy Hall of Fame.”

McEuen, a founding member of NGDB, also believes the platinum-selling record was an impetus for events such as the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and North Carolina’s annual MerleFest.

“I’ve been told for years that bluegrass groups get together...and play songs from the album,” he says. “It’s parking lot music. At a festival, you’ll hear pickers gathered around crowds, and they’ll play songs from the Circle album.

“It’s bluegrass,” he continues. “It’s radio songs [and] it’s songs you never hear on the radio. And some funny things that make people laugh.”

The Circle record, as McEuen calls it, showcases a deep roster of lauded country and bluegrass artists, including Roy Acuff, "Mother" Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Randy Scruggs, Merle Travis, Pete "Oswald" Kirby, Norman Blake and Jimmy Martin. It was recorded in Nashville but has origins in Colorado, where the NGDB had been playing former Boulder club Tulagi for several nights in 1971. McEuen was able to recruit both the elder Scruggs and Watson to record with the band, though he recalls being timid about asking the two men, both legends in their genre. At least at first.

“I didn’t have to convince [Scruggs],” McEuen recalls. “I just said ‘Earl, would you record with the Dirt Band on a few songs?’ He said he’d be proud to, and that started the ball rolling to where I’d asked Doc the next week. Eight weeks later, we started recording.”
The band recorded the 36 tracks of the Circle album in six days, many of them in one take. It took several months to cut them together, and the double album was released in late 1972. McEuen's brother William produced the record, and the band followed up with two more volumes in subsequent years.

McEuen has also put together a video that takes the audience through the early history of the band that he will play during the upcoming show. The Circle Band quartet will play songs that are referenced in the film, chaining them up set to set.

“The video is only about half the show,” he says. “We do some of my favorite Nitty Gritty Dirt Band songs and our favorite ones, and some from my Made in Brooklyn album I put out a few years ago. That goes over equally well, I’m proud to say.”

He intends to change up the set list show to show on the Circle Band's tour. Variety has been important to him in recent years.

“Sometimes there’s often a song we haven't played before or one we haven’t played in a long time,” he says. “With the video, we're playing songs referenced in the film, but those change every now and then. Instead of song A, we'll go to song B." He adds that the show will be fun even for people who aren’t necessarily big bluegrass music fans.

McEuen says his favorite track on the Circle album has usually been the bluegrass standard “Keep on the Sunny Side,” because of the really great message Maybelle Carter delivered on the recording.

“We do that on stage,” he says. “But different times of different days, different songs will find a way to reach a person. ‘Grand Ole Opry Song’ is a really fun one. It’s got more words than the Nashville phonebook. … I bring my guitar, mandolin, banjo and fiddle and take them through all this music.”

He’s been blessed with enthusiastic audiences and a committed group of collaborators in recent years.

“The audience always gets into it,” he says. “Everybody loves to perform. It’s not easy to go out there and do this, to come from different parts of the country and play for an hour and a half or more. You spend twenty hours of your day getting ready for the show and getting there and setting up and doing a sound check. It’s an exciting thing.”

In recent years, McEuen has hosted the Acoustic Traveler show on Sirius/XM radio; released his autobiography, The Life I’ve Picked; appeared on the Ken Burns documentary Country Music; and composed a coffee table book about the making of Will the Circle be Unbroken, due out later this year, with contributions from many of the people who collaborated on it.

He played with the NGDB until 2017, and left, in part, because the band was playing the same setlist of songs every night for about eleven years and hadn’t made an album in eight or nine years.

“It was frustrating,” he says. “Now there is no frustration, because we are doing what we want.”

John McEuen plays Swallow Hill, 71 East Yale Avenue, at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 2. Tickets are $35-$37 and available at eventbrite.com. He plays eTown Hall, 1535 Spruce Street, Boulder, at 7 p.m. Sunday, April 3. Tickets are $35 and also available at eventbrite.com. For more information, visit johnmceuen.com.