Jeff Hanna

We thought, you know, we know, we talked about doing a single source songwriter sort of you know, one source, Bob Dylan in this case, and he was the name that kept coming up. It just seemed a real natural, uh spot, because he has a zillion songs and you can go anywhere musically with his material. Um, so there you go. That was kind of it. And we've we've recorded some of us. We recorded you Ain't Going Nowhere several years ago, which is one of our favorite Darling tunes.

Yeah that listen from the opening track on Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Not enough people knew that back then, but one of the great tracks. When are the great tracks? Absolutely? Okay, So when you go to make a record today because you've been in the business and excess of fifty years. The old days, pre internet, you had to get a label. They gave you the money. How did you do with this time? This time? Actually, when we went into the studio,

we did not have the label. We just went and took out a loan, you know, basically, and started recording. We started recording this album. Wait wait, wait, what what one sect? Did you literally take out a loan? No? But okay, you'd ever know with people's finances, well, you know, Uh, no, you don't. And we were lucky enough to have a few bucks saved up from twenty nineteen. We actually started recording this album uh in early March of and recorded

eight tracks. Jumped down the bus on marchall on March eleven and played uh story. We jumped on the bus on March tenth and played our first and last shows of March eleventh. In March twelfth, that was it. Curtain came down, end of story. We got guys that live all over the country. There four of us live in Nashville, but uh two of the two of the longtime guys, Jimmy Fadden and Bob Carpenter. Bob lives in Los Angeles and Jimmy lives in Sarasota, Florida. So then lockdown came

and that was it. We just sat for a while. Ray Ray Kennedy, who's our producer, um and I'm sitting in his studio right now. Uh he uh basically locked the studio up as well. There was no activity. You know, everybody kind of hunkered down, as they say, Okay, when things started to loosen up, very specifically, when did you

get back in the studio. You know, I think I think the first time I even came by the studio was probably in you know, early summer of uh, you know, we were all getting out and about, but it was, you know, we were I don't know, we were pretty

careful about where we went. And Ray Ray had been doing some work with Lucinda Williams he produces Lucinda and and Steve Earle as well, and uh as as as the summer started coming to a close, we started talking about, you know, let's get back in there and listen to these let's listen to him and we had the rough mixes that we had done in early March, but we we weren't sure if this album was ever again. We man,

we didn't know what was going on at all. Nobody knew if they're ever gonna tour again, Nobody ever knew if they were going to finish records that were you know, in the process and the progress, and uh, we finally got back in in I think guess it was fall of and we started talking about The Times They Are Changing, which we which was the last track we recorded in the first batch of sessions, and it was like, well,

you know, let's finish that. It's all it's always timely, it's it's one of Dylan's you know, best known, but also just it's on point, always that tune, you know. And that's when we started calling up our friends and see if they wanted to come in and sang on the song. So specifically who sang on I mean, I know, but from my audience, who's sang on The Times They Are Changing? Jason isbel Uh, the War Entreaty, Michael Trotter, Jor and Tania Trotter, Um, Roseanne Cash, Steve Earle Uh

and my wife Matresa actually came in. Matraca Burd came in and sang harmony with the track that we do with Roseanne Okay, do you have ongoing relationships with all those people or was that through Ray? How did those people ultimately get on the record. It was it was mostly just because I've known these folks. You know, I've known Steve since the eighties when we got we both we both kind of got to Nashville the same time hit music Row in the early eighties. Steve roll Uh,

Roseanne I've known for a very long time. We've done recording in the past. Um Uh, we're entreaty. Actually met them um at Tell your RDE Bluegrass festival back in Emmy Lou Harris introduced us and we hit it off and we've been friends ever since. Jason Isabel I've known for I guess I've known Jason for on ten years, I think. So it was, you know, I I figured that the appeal of the song would be enough, I think to get them in the door. And they're they're

really generous, wonderful folks. Everybody that took part in the recording, Well, that begs a question. But living in Nashville a long time, you started in southern California. What's different about Nashville than all these other music places. You make it sound like everybody's living, you know, in the same little village and they all come over. What's it really like, you know before before COVID let's let's give that coffee up. Now

that's a good point. Um, well, i'll tell you. You know, you and I have talked about this in the past. But we started in southern California. We can go into the sort of history of that later if you want. But um, when we came up in the folk clubs in the late sixties, there was a real community going on.

You know, all the folks that hung out at the Ash Grove and the Troubuta or we would go to each other's houses or apartments or back porches or whatever, get out the guitars and start singing, you know, and and you know, my my songwriter friends, we swapped songs as as time went on and as people started becoming famous. You know, uh, they've hit the road. We never see each other. And Los Angeles says, you know, is a much more you know, geographically spread out kind of scene.

So the little pockets of living up in the Hollywood Hills, you know, Laurel Canyon, great example, gets used a lot better, was a real deal. Um, that kind of change and people started moving out to the valley or to the beach or whatever, or they're just on a Jettera tour bus somewhere. When I moved to Nashville in immediately it was like, holy cow, this community thing really reminds me of what it was like in l A in the

late sixties and early seventies. Um so, and I love that and I still I still believe that that exists to a large degree. You know, Okay, let's go back to the record. So he decided to do Dylan, you had certain trucks cut, you were finishing times. They are a change, and did you have to do more recording? And how did you ultimately choose is what songs to do? The sonctuous is an interesting one. You know, his catalog

has hundreds of songs in it, and they're all great. Uh. The the sort of acid test for us was if we sounded good singing and playing them, you know, we started. You know, there's so many of Dylan. So many of Dylan's tunes to me sound great with an individual singing them in terms of like cover land, um. And then there are others that you know have maybe bigger, wider

chorus is more anthemic. Uh so we we know, we just started breaking it down and we weren't you know, we ended up with a period that really kind of starts in the sixties and ends in like the mid late seventies in his catalog. That wasn't by design. Those were just the tunes that landed the best with us. So we got in with you know, we got we started with about eighties songs and by the time we got to the studio, we whittled it down to about

thirty or forty. Then we started playing them and the stuff again that that really you know, stuck to the wall were the ones we stayed with. And so what are some of your favorites on the album? Oh? Man, my favorites. I mean it's really I love the times they're changing. I gotta start with that. I mean that that came out so great, and I love I love the generational and and just you know that the just you know, different voices coming from different different rooms and

it was just, I don't know, kill me. I'm very fond of that. Uh. I shall be released with our friends Larkin Poe, Rebecca and Megan Level. Those sisters are just they're incredible and they came in and sang and make and Megan also played lap steel guitar. Beautiful Job Girl from the North Country, which features actually my son Jamie, who's been in the band for you know, we got the last year, but he started playing with us in Uh. He sang lead on that, so you know, the father

son thing is deep. You know, we got the blood harmony going. And I love that track. Ross Holmes, our field player and Bob Carpenter, uh, who played accordion on that track, just created this kind of Celtic cinematic landscape. Uh. And I just I just love it for that reason. And plus it's a great song. I love the tune Country Pie, which is when I was surprised you did that, because you know, nothing's really obscure, but that's not something that comes to mind of the average person. No, it

does not. And but actually Bob Carpenter brought that up. You know, I remembered it in passing from Nashville Skyline. But it was one of those tunes like Randy Day Women twelve and thirty five where they're just having a blast. And he said, well, you know, if what if we cut it, I don't know try to harken back to the jug band days, which totally landed well with me and Jimmy because we were the jug Me and Fat and we were the drug band guys. And we ended

up recording it live in the studio. We sat around one microphone and kind of moved in for our solos, and it just was so much fun. It was. It was really cool and I love it because it does it sounds like jug band music with a little gypsy jazz thrown in on the fiddle, the violin um, and it's just it's a Dylan rob you know. He has a great sense of humor, clearly, that's for sure. So the album is done, how do you get a label involved? That was? This is beyond, This is behind the scenes.

This is where guys like our manager, Brian Panics, and our other manager. We've got three of them, Jason Hanky, who's great, and Ken Levitan, who is that you know, the head honcho over there at Victor Management. They put their heads together and they sent around, They sent some tunes around. We had a little amount a handful of stuff that we had finished up, and uh, we ended up with these folks up in New York called m

R I, which is interesting. We all went m A right, that's perfect for a bunch of old Now is that the m R I that's part of Megaphors? It is yep. Well, Megaphord has got a long history of show of hard rock stuff. I know, they did put out Sammy Kershaw Records, etcetera. So so you make a deal with the m R I. Needless to say, the landscape is completely different. There are so many people playing. What are your expectations. Well, first off, it's a partnership with our little imprint which is m

g dB Records. Um, we just you know, the fact that they love the record really helped, you know, and they want they pointed up Pony depth with some you know promotion money and publicity money that really helped you know. Uh, and they have a great distribution, uh team, So we're really happy to be over there. It's funny my son Jamie, who's like, you know, he and Ross Holmes are the

kids in our band. Um relative to all of us especially they're uh, you know, Jamie is like m R. I love that, you know, because they did the early Metallica records, if I believe think you know, and it's like this is so cool Dad, So yeah, I love that. But they you know, they've they've done a bunch of stuff. They I think they got there. You know, they got their toes in the jam band world as well, and all of it made sense. That's like, as you know,

anything goes in the world we live in. As far as records, now, we've done it up and down every which away, you know. So but it's it's just fun to be putting out a record. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. So you're born in Detroit, you end up in Long Beach filling those details, Well, my dad when I was eight years old, my dad was in he started in the building car he was you know that dad was several generations of Detroit guys. So he

was in a car business building them. Actually he was an engineer and he was also an aeronautical engineer, so he was like, you know, knew how to build an airplane basically. So he got into the aircraft business. And we moved to Phoenix in nineteen fifty when I was eight years old and fifty five, and that was a

great place to grow up. I mean it was you know, we were all like, you know, all the cowboys in the movies and TV, and like there's all this desert and sawaro cacti and cactuses and it was it was really fun and you know, but it was kind of like that period of my life was kind of like being an army brat because but then my dad got a job offer about six years later in uh In, Colorado, So we moved to Littleton, Colorado, and uh he worked for Martin Marietta back then, and then a couple of

years later he got offered a job with North American Aircraft in uh. I believe they were based out of Downy, Um, California, so home of the carpenters. And that's right exactly. And I got some carpenter stories, but you don't need him. Uh great folks, Uh, but he uh yes, So we moved up. We picked up and left Colorado and moved to kind of inland because I love the beach. But we you know, the first morning I woke up in Downy it was like, oh man, look at that fog,

look at that concrete. Where's the beach, where's the trees? Because I just left Colorado, by the way, so I was a little bummed out. Then we moved across town. We were renting a house when we moved across town to North Long Beach, and uh, I went to Jordan High School, North Long Beach, California. Okay, filling in some details. How many kids in the family. I had three brothers. Yeah, well I had two more brothers. Sorry, And where were you in the hierarchy? I was a middle kid, Okay.

With all that traveling, you know, either you end up isolated as a kid, or you feel that you you get the skill to fit in. And did you get that skill? Did that help you ultimately in the music world? Well, you know, first day of any new school for any kid anywhere, I don't, you know, regardless of their social

skill set, it's tough, you know. Uh, But I think I think the first day that I went to Jordan's I met this kid named Bruce Kunkle, who ended up being one of the founding members of the Dirt Band, and we hit it off. In North Jordan High was kind of sounds like a movie. I mean, it's it's like Rebel without a cause. I think I think of the I can't remember what was this lad? Was a Jim Stark? Was that the name of the James Dean character.

I think it was. I want to say, I don't remember, yeah, you know, and sorry, i'd look it up, but you know, anyways, but I remember James Dean's character just come into that new school, you know, and he's the outsider, and you got kind of the you know, we'd call him the socias. You know that the absolutely remember that you got. Okay, now we're speaking the same language, Bob, the socials and the greasers. And also throw in the surfers also, so

even though I'd never surfed, I became one. I became a surfer, you know U And Bruce was one of those kids. So we bonded. We started talking. It's like, hey, man, you got a guitar, and yeah, I got a guitar. I don't really know how to play it. This is me talking to Bruce and he said, well I do. So we were like also folkies. We love acoustic music. So he showed me some chords and he showed me where the chords went to, what part of a song, and it was like the clouds parted. Man, it was

such a it was a huge moment for me. It was an epiphany. And we you know, we became great pals. Right then give us a year. This is nineteen sixty. I think it started in the fall of sixty one, Okay, and this is when the folk boom is really starting to rage. Oh yeah, ultimately hooting Nanny on TV, etcetera. Okay, so you start playing guitars with Bruce tell us the next step in your musical evolution. We were like and we were in the musical evolution. It was it was

kind of sample. I can't remember. Also, I had an older brother, my brother Mike, and he would bring he brought home at Kingston Trio Record and he brought home he might have done that while we're still living in Littleton, Colorado, kingson Tira Trio record, Uh, Peter, Paul and Mary. I loved both of those groups. I mean they were then.

Joan Bayaz and Joan Bayez was like my gateway drug because she was on Vanguard Records, and Vanguard Records always advertised their other artists and their other releases on the inner sleeve of the vinyl. So number one is I love Jones voice, still love her voice. But she recorded with a band called the Green Bar Boys, a great bluegrass band. UH appeared on several several tracks on her records, and that was like, man, I liked that music. That's

kind of cool. I've never really heard blue grass, so she got me into that. But then I started looking at these pictures and there's this guy Doc Watson on the back of the record. Yeah, and there's Mississippi John Hurt on the back of the record. And I'm like, oh, both this is interesting, Claire, I think Clarence. Actually, I'm trying to remember. There was another label called folk Ways, which was another huge deal for us as folk puppies, you know. Uh. That created kind of a deeper dive.

And then also Bruce and I weren't afraid to like hit we neither of us had a driver's license at this point, like fifteen. We weren't afraid like hitchhike down to the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach was which was a huge club in the sort of fledgling folk rock and uh folk music, uh circuit, so we could see folks, you know, or go all the way up to l A and go to the Ash Grove, which was really

our hang as well. This is you can see people like I got to sit ten ft away from Mississippi John Hurt, you know, and watch that guy play when I was sixteen, uh, and that was life changing for me. Same deal with Doc Watson, same deal with Bill Monroe, the New Law City Ramblers, you know down in long A lot of those folks, oh Man, Sunny Terry and

Brownie McGhee two of my absolute favorites. A lot of those folks would you know, play the ash Grove and getting the car and drive down to Huntington's Beach and play the Golden Bear as well. So you can see him twice in the course of two or three weeks.

Lightning Hopkins, Merle Travis, it was it was man kid in the candy store, and the irony was I mean, I shouldn't say the irony, but that the interesting thing for me as a kid, how fortunate we were, as these surfer kids from l A getting to hear, getting to have this experience that we didn't grow up in Kentucky or in the Mississippi Delta or in the you know, the hills in North Carolina and have those back porch experiences. And yet there we were getting to see our heroes

up close. It was really great. Okay, so you're immersed in the Sceme tell me more about your particular playing and the Mason element of your career. Well, you know, we at the tail end of my high school. Uh, when I was a senior in high school, me and my buddy Bruce in another couple of pals of mine start had a jug band called the Illegitimate Jug Band because we thought that was a cute name. Plus we

didn't have a joke. So okay. But for those of us who were around back then, jug bands were a thing. Of course on the East Coast you had the gym Queskin jug Band and School Loving School Queskin was like the Beatles. Okay, So explain for people who missed that scene what a jug band was. Well, you know, musically, you take a lot of the mountaineer roots, country blues I'm talking about acoustic blues and ragtime music, and you throw them all into a cattle kettle, you know, and

you at this gumbo. Uh. That's what jug band music list us. And it was again the question jug band were like they were so their imaginations were broad and wide,

and their talent was deep. I mean questing himself, great guitar player, singer, Uh, Jeffrey Mulder, his future wife Maria Dematto I believe her name was when she before they got married yet Maria Mulder, Oh my gosh, Fritz Frisch, Richmond, the guy that played upright, I mean sorry Washtub Base and jugg Gregor jug player, uh mel Lyman on harmonica. I mean, they were they were so good, just killed us. So we learned a bunch of their tunes right away.

And then the Love and Spoonful came along, you know, and there here here, these guys were writing their own music and kind of you know, I mean, to me, the two bands that I love the best in the mid sixties American bands were the Birds on the West Coast in the Spoonful on the East coast. They brought it off from me and again me and Kunkle, you know, we stuck out our thumbs and hitchhicked up to Hollywood to see both the Birds and the Spoonful play at

this club called The Trip. That was an amazing experience as well. You know, here's these kids, you know. A year later, the Dirt Band were opening at the Golden Bear for the Love of Spoonful, which is pretty cool, okay, but you u you get together with two friends and you form a band under what the impossible drug being, if I remember correctly, and take it up from there

as the old legitimate jug band. But then, you know, and a couple of months later, I'm going to college, which was really brief Long Beach Community Community College, which we call a long was Long Beach City College. We all call it Long Beach Shitty College because you know it made sense. Uh. And first semester, you know, I spent more time sitting on the common with my acoustic guitar, hanging out with these folks that are really just meeting there.

You know. Uh, it was so you know, it was like a snapshot of of young folkies sitting on the lawn ditching school. And I met this guy named Ralph Barr And I met a kid named Les Thompson. I met a kid named Jimmy Fadden Bruce Kunkle. By the way, it was going to another school because he got better grades than me. He went to Long Beach State College. Um, and uh, so here's Bruce Bruce across town. But Ralph and Les and Jimmy and I'm leaving somebody out jeus h,

it'll come to me. Uh anyway, so we're sitting around and we're talking about where do you guys hang out. Well, there's this guitar store in Lung Beach called McCabe's, and there were two of them, the famous one that you're you know, which is of the San Monica But yeah, and there were there were two. At one point there were three of them. There was one that was in the Ash Grove and I think they lived they lived in the True Bodover for a little while, and the

one that's been in Santa Monica forever. And there's Long Beach McCabe. So we started hanging out after school or ditching school and hanging out at McCabe's. And you know, they were the guys. The proprietors were really kind to us and let us drink their coffee and sit around and pull guitars off the wall, and we all learned a few skills as guitar repairman as well. So we're sitting around and we're going, well, we got a bunch of guys, why don't we have a band? Why not

start a band? Was like, well, none of us really wanted to dive into like allectric guitars based and drums. We love the Beatles like everybody, but you know, we we were that was we were really acoustic snobs. So well, and I said, hey, how about a joke band? You guys ever played jug band music? And then yeah, we like question. I said, Ah, so fun, it's really great.

I'll call my buddy Bruce up. So me and Bruce and Less and Jimmy and rap uh got together and you know, oh and eventually this guy, Jackson Brown joined the band. I should point out that was the sixth guy. Uh we uh so we just went to my mom's garage and started, uh you know, practicing for nothing. By

the way, because we weren't playing any gigs. There's a little club in southern California called the Paradox, which if you know the song the Barricades of Heaven Jackson song he name checks it, and a bunch of us you know kids hung out in that club. Is a really tiny place, but they had a talent contest going on. So the jug Our jug Band, which we a long story about the name, but if you want to hear it,

I'll tell you in a minute. We jumped up there and kind of made up a name and jumped up and started playing these talent contests, and when they kept carrying us over a week, one week two, you know, Uh, there was no one number, by the way, it was it was yeah, anyways, it wasn't the voice. Um, well what just because I can't remember where was the paradox. The paradox was in the city of Orange, California, right

next to Tustin, California. So uh, as we jokingly said, it was behind the Orange Curtain, right of course, you know. So we were hanging out there and and uh there was a guy that met named Steve Noonan that hung out there who was among the first guys I knew that actually wrote his own songs, Uh Jackson who I

met Jackson when he was fifteen years old. I was sixteen. Um. And uh, the guy Greg Copeland, who was a great poet and it was a fine lyricist, and he, you know, has shown up on a lot of Steve's Steve Steve uh sorry Noonan's records. Uh and I Jack Jackson and he wrote them together as well. And Tim Buckley, the great Tim Buckley. Those guys are hanging out and there's you know, Mary McCaslin and Jennifer Warrens and uh a lot of cool acts came and played there. It was.

It was a good comedy room too. You see, people like Pat Paulson, this kid named Steve Martin showed up there once in a while. But uh uh so we kind of, you know, that's kind of where we honed our skills. Was was the paradox. It is also the first place that they actually paid us to play, which which was May nineteen sixty six. Okay, at this point, is it the nitty Gwitty Dirt Band? Yeah, it is,

it is, So tell us the story of the name. Well, you know, we're sitting around trying to come up with a name that didn't sound like everybody else's, you know, I mean, you know, the Grateful Dead, We're Mother Something's mother and Warlocks whatnot. But before the Warlocks there there was a jug band name too. There there's something yeah I can't either, but it's there on the Google or the wiki. Yeah, you know, and the jug band thing was it was a deal. Um, so we didn't want

to call ourselves a jug band. That maybe that carried over from illegitimate, but it was like one of the guys the thing was Ralph Barr said, how about the dirt band, because dirt really made sense to us. You know. We all had these dusty cowboy boots and uh, it just kind of, I don't know, it's like depression era tunes. You're seeing these the sort of Woody Guthrie era black and white photos in your head, and a lot of that music came up from that era, the thirties. So

that was great. So we're the dirt band for about a week once again in my mom's garage. Um, and I was going the tail end of my college career. I was in a political science class and my professor said something about let's just get right down to the real nitty gritty, and I'm like, I don't. I didn't hear another word he said. And I came into the next rehearsal I went, I got it, you know, because the nitty gritty just sounded like the sound of a

washboard to me. Plus they had this great sort of getting right down to it, you know, and in terms of nitty gritty, dirt band kind of worked. I can't say it real fast or after midnight, you know, but it's, uh, it's stuck. So there you go, Naty goody dirt band. Love it or hate it there it is okay, so you're getting paid at the paradox. What's the next step. Well, um, we had a couple of different guys that were this started sniffing around to be managers. There was a guy

named Billy James that was Jackson Brown's friend. Who was you know Billy's I think he probably have heard of Billy. Billy was in an our man at Columbia Records, and he he has some ends in the record biz and he was starting to manage folks. I think he was kind of managing Jackson on the side. And then, uh, Jackson was out to leave the band and this mutual friend of all of ours, John McEwen, uh, started playing with us. And John's brother was a fleet Bill McEwen

was a fledgling manager at that point. He had a couple of acts, a couple of folk acts he was working with. You know, he hadn't really busted into the big time, but he he was enthusiastic, a really hard working guy. So we went with Bill um and he uh, you know, we made a little demo at gold Star Studios up in Hollywood, I know, right, and uh, we started going around. We would actually remember we went to Capitol Records in I think the guy's name was al

Do Lory, who's an a and our guy. Uh, we did a little demo for them, a little kind of audition in the studio. The Dirt Band were really popular at this point, I mean in southern California, lines around the block. We're doing three sets to night Fridays and Saturdays at the Paradox. Then we started playing down at the Golden Bear song. We had not yet made it up to Hollywood. But and what what was the material? Originals were covers, Oh, it is all covers we wrote.

We wrote a couple of kind of jug bandison. Well, this guy, the former member of our band, Jackson Brown, has some great He wrote a song called Melissa that was a great jug band tune. He had another one called It's been Reigning here in Long Beach, great jug band tune. So we started cutting Jackson stuff, but not cutting, but learning because at this point we're not really recording.

So the repertoire a lot of Jim Quest and stuff, a lot of you know, we got into some of the like original stuff like the Memphis Jug Band, and you know, we found a way to sort of uh, you know, assimilate some sort of you know, skiffle band songs and string band songs from the twenties and thirties and incorporate them into our style now with John McEwan on the five string banjo. We even did a couple of bluegrass members but with a wash board in the

Washington base as a rhythm section. So these kids, again, the kids are really god man. We got when Jackson was still in the band, our friend and Moses who was the editor at Tiger Beat magazine, which was Tiger Beat was there was no Rolling Stone. So I remember, right, my mom cut out this couple of pages from Tiger Beat because there's a picture of us with Jackson and the band, and they're writing about the doors as well, and they're writing about the Buffalo sprankfields, just to give

you context. All there were we're team magazines and sing Out magazine for the folkies of course, you know. But h so we're getting this, there's this like buzz about our band. So finally, after being courted by not a half a dozen record companies, we uh, we ended up at Liberty Records. Now Liberty was already part of them. My Capital are still independent with Simon Waronker. I think that they were I think it was Liberty Imperial. We're going,

of course we are Imperial records. Fats Domino were like, I mean, we all had Liberty and Imperial Records in our collections as kids, so we're pretty impressed, you know. So they signed us. The first thing they did welcome to the music business, was you guys are great, Let's change everything. So the one one of the things that that we got with a producer named Dallas Smith more on Dallas in a minute. But they wanted us. They didn't like they didn't think no anybody would buy the

jug band music. And we're going, wait a minute, have you heard the Love and Spoonful? And they're yeah, but they're they're electric. So how about some folk rock? You know, folk rock was a big deal. You had the Birds, and you had you know, and you had the Springfield and you had the Turtles at the Association doing a little of that as well. There's this this thing, right and we're like, okay, we can sing those songs, but we're a jug band. Can we do both? There? Like sure?

So we went in the studio. First day we walked in. There's about a half a dozen session guys there. We're all freaking out going what you know, what what if we do? We're all still cocky teenagers, I might add. And and some of these session guys were amazing and we became friends over the years. These are guys like the Wrecking Crew. Those guys are there. It's amazing. And we met Leon Russell through that, we met our buddy what's his name, sorry, from Bred David Gates. David Gates.

David Gates arranged this, arranged His first string arranging job was on Buy for Me the Rain, So we'll get to that in a in a second. So our first album totally schizophrenic half of his jug band, the other half is folk rock songs. Steve Noonan our buddy from the Paradox, Jackson Brown. Both of them attributed songs um and well. I think we actually did a couple of uh Bruce kunkle Uh. There was a song called song to Utah, who was his girlfriend who would become his

first wife as well. We did that and it was it was fun. I mean, none of the music. I'm not embarrassed by any of the music, although we sound so like like we're ten when I hear it. I was saying, we are singing. So did they let you play on the album? Or we played on every track? We played on every track, but it would be like the six of us and a bass player and a drummer, and you know, we're wailing away and all of a sudden, it's like here play an electric twelve string Ralph or

Buddy Ralph bar Um John played banjo. You know, we kind of process that he put a mute on it. That made it some a little different kind of I don't a little more psychedelic. So also there was that everything was psychedelic. So the Dirt Band, all of a sudden, that didn't hurt our popularity at all. The is that loved us for our jug band music loved by From Me the Rain as well. So our record was a top ten single up and down the West Coast and

up and down the East Coast. I remember because he cousin Brucey Morraw, Bruce Morrow, you know, uh played our records. You know a lot of my friends that grew up on the East coast, like you heard by From Me the Rain on the radio or the West coast. There's another story. The record actually got banned, so that killed it at another if you want to hear the story, yeah, yeah, well uh. The B side of the song was a song called candy Man, which was written by the late

great Reverend Gary Davis. In the In the song it said I'd do anything in this god almighty world to have my candy Man home. So set that aside for a second. Had nothing to do with Buy from Me the Rain. The A side, Uh, there's a guy that There was a program director somewhere in the either the southern US or the Midwest, the work for a station that was part of a big chain of stations owned by a guy, Mr McClendon. I believe his name was

Gordon McClendon. Let's get this. Program director comes home one night and his daughters in her bedroom with her little, you know, miniature fort rpm record player, and through the door he sings these long haired British guys singing, let's spend the night together. You know, flings opened the door. What the you know? What? How? What who is this? You know? He comes into the station the next day, gets on the horn and it's like there's this terrible

disease going through our you know, coming at us. From the airways. You know, these this horrible you know, breaking down the Moray's of America. The Rolling Stones were at the front of it. So he calls his boss, Mr. McClinton and says, we gotta do something about this. So they they banned Let's Spend the Night Together. They banned

Strawberry Fields slash Penny Lane. They banned Devil with a Blue Dress by Mitch Rider in the Detroit Wheels, and they banned by from Me the Rain slash Candy Man by the Dirt Band because we were blaspheming saying we got almighty World, which you know, okay, and just well, Newsweek magazine and Time both wrote about it, and we thought pretty cool company Beatles Stones, Mitch Rider and us,

you know. But unfortunately, in terms of the business side of things, the A side of the record didn't do it there, you know, it was an innocent victim here. So our record at that point, I think is around forty it's in the mid forties. With a bullet, we'll get ads were climbing the charts. Like I said, the popularity is growing from the coast inward. The next you know, forty five with a bullet one week with a parachute.

The next week dropped like a rock, done Gone. So that was kind of depressing, but again, welcome to the music business. And as we know, here we go. This is how radio can work. And censorship. Okay, before we continue the story of the band, what did your parents say about you dropping out of community college and pursuing this career. They really they were incredibly supportive. And I should point out my dad was the fourth and four

generations of West Point graduates, so whoa, whoa whoa. Okay, yeah, yeah, and also a peace nick I might add. My dad was you know, he went to World War two and came home with shell shock PTSD and A and A and a shirt full of metals, including a purple heart. But you know, when we got into Vietnam, he was like, I started talking about it right away. I was like, I don't want to go, you know, blah blah blah. So none of us did. How did you get out?

I got because I flunked my physical uh you know, and like the rest of the guys in the band, we were lucky enough to to be able to get around it, you know, hooker Crook. We didn't want to go. I had friends that were two years older than me in high school that never came home, and I was like this, and then of course it wasn't World War two, it wasn't signed up here as like what is this war about? And that was just you know, unbelievable, you know,

and that's a that's a you know, you're conflicted. We're all conflicted being from that generation about our buddies who went off there and fought in Vietnam and why we were so lucky to not have to go. Okay, So the first record is all of a sudden installed. What happens after that? Uh? First record installed? Then we did it that, We did a second record. The first river was eponymous, you know, dirt band on a sitting on

a steam shovel, get it, dirt band um. The second record was called Ricochet, kind of using the same formula again. We put out a single called Truly Right that was written by uh, this group called Maston and Brewer, and the brewer was Mike Brewer who came to fame later as part of Brewer and Shipley. Really cool song. They had the same vibe as they would later. You know, we're just barely denting the charts. I think we gotta pass because we'd have some popularity. Bruce Kunkle left at

the in the middle of that record. He wanted to go electric. He he become a a real fan and devote of the mothers of invention. He want. He was a really imaginative cat still is really great guy, but uh, he moved on and Chris Darrow at the after that album came out, Chris Darrow joined up. This is late sixties, um, And if you want to talk about Christophers I got I'm happy to but well, yeah, you know, he's sort of the unsungen here. We're sort of zel Us in

a million acts. How did you know Chris just from hanging out? So we were fans of the Mad Mountain Ramblers and the Dry City Scat Band, which is another band that Chris was in, and then he and Dave and and uh Solomon Feldhouse started a band, a guy named Max Buddha started this great band called the Kaleidoscope, who are legendary early world music. Played all kinds of stuff.

They are electric and acoustic, and you used like East Indian instruments like the d and the size and but also like you know, altric guitars and banjo and electric fiddle and crazy god, what a great band. So Chris had just left the Kaleidoscope and we bumped into him somewhere and he said, man, you guys looking for another guy. We're like yeah, and he said, I'd love to play with you guys. He was kind of into jumping back into the acoustic world again. As soon as he got

in the band. You know, he started playing fiddle and that's kind of where the Cajun thing that influence in

our band came up. He has some really good original tunes and I remember and we did we did an album called Rare Junk, uh that you know about this time, I should point out, you know, we're still having no luck in the studio, although on on Rare Junk they finally let us record our jug band songs by ourselves, you know, with the caveat that we had to do like three songs that had a room full of musicians,

sometimes a horn section or a string section. So we said, okay, we'll do that, but just kind of leave us alone, please, and they were like, we don't care. You're not selling records. So we you know, we made a little foray into what we might call a country rock. We recorded a cover of Reason to Believe, the great Tim Harden song. Our buddy Bernie Leaden came in and played acoustic guitar on that. That's how that was our association with Bernie started.

You know, I'm glad that we sort of you know, I look at those records now as our kind of farm team training earn while you learn experience with our band. Um, okay, let's stay with the earn. Will you learn? Needless to say, in that era, having a record deal put you in a completely different class from everybody else. So how did you feel about yourself? How was the band surviving monetarily? How often were you playing live? What kind of money? What was going on? I couldn't even tell you about

the kind of money. I really don't have a concept now, I can't. I just remember, Uh. At one point we were this is by from and the Reins a hit, right, So we had a really uh we had a booking agent that had a really great imagination and they decided I think it was a p A at the time. Gosh, I can't even remember. I believe it was. We've been with all of them at some point in another, some settled letters um and they sent us up to San Francisco. We played the film More by the Way a couple

of times. The first time was with a band called Clear Light and also Blue Cheer, who were built as the world's loudest rock and roll and they were, I mean they were, they were amazing, So I understand we had probably the quietest band they had ever played the film More Us jug Band, Nobody's Plugged In and Blue Cheer, you know which was It was fun. Man. We went to San Francisco. I still got a film More poster.

We headlined that gig and it was really cool. And then a few weeks later are Are The aforementioned agent said want you guys to play at the Basin Street West, which is a jazz club in San Francisco and opening for the great legendary organist, Mr Jimmy Smith. Okay, that made no sense at all, but they were doing they had. They also represented Jefferson Airplane and and I think the Airplane played on a bill with Gosh, I can't remember, you know, maybe it was Miles Davis. It was also

just kind of wacky. The one thing that came out of the Basin Street West gig that I really dug. There was a band called the Blues Project that was playing the film War that week, and that included a guy named Steve Katz. Uh, Danny was what was Danny's name the guitar player, sorry, uh, Jenny Calb and Al Cooper. So Alan, Danny and Steve came in probably to see Jimmy Smith play, but being ex Folky's all of them as well, they dug the jug band music and Al

we really we became fast friends with Al. That still remains to this day. So you know, that would that would be that just became an ongoing thing and it was great. That was the coolest thing about it, getting to meet Al big fans of everything he ever did, and uh, you know, and then we live and learn. So we're by the way, we couldn't afford to stay in San Francisco while we're playing the Basin Street. We lived across the bridge in Mill Valley at this in

this little fucking motel called the Fireside In. It's the first place I ever heard gunfire, actual real gun fire outside motel room. One night. We were so I mean, at this point, we really were like down to season stamps, literally and we had no money because it was I can't remember why. I just remember Jimmy Fadden, Jimmy Fadden's little brother, Terry, God bless him. Jimmy calls Terry and we said, you gotta get Terry up here. We need

a roadie. So Terry came up and the first thing we said to him was do you have any cash? And Terry he was this, he's still around. He's just the best guy, really great kid. So yes, he loaned us the twenty bucks that he had and we bought some groceries, you know, a lot of peanut butter sandwiches. We actually got into fried cheerios, which were pretty good. You know. It was, you know, anything, we're scrambling. But cool thing about hanging out in in Mill Valley was

right next to Saucelito. There was a club. I believe the club was called the Arc. It wasn't like a river boat or a house, and it was the art. It was like a I think they bought one of those old you know what do you call those wheels, paddle wheel steamships, and it was docked so you walked onto this, you across the little plank and that you're

in this club. Well, we saw a Moby Gray play there a bunch because we were you know, we were only playing weeks, so we'd have like Moby Grapes playing for three nights and we're like, that's the best band we've ever heard, and this electric thing is pretty cool by the way, you know. So they were they were a perfect example of like taking a bunch of guys most of them started in folk music and really took I don't know, maybe the song sense. There was something

about it that was just different. And they what a great band, you know, mysterious, legendary, cool, cool group. You know. At the same time we're we're doing these festivals, were playing with the Jefferson Airplane again and playing with the Doors a bunch uh the Buffalo Springfield. I remember playing with an early version of Stepping Wolf. Um. It was

really cool, you know. In our jug band day, I might add, when we were playing places like the Ash Grove, we opened for Lightning Hopkins, Memphis, Slim Good, Lord uh Man's lipscumb Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee again. So we're learning a lot. This is like school for us. A lot of the great bluegrass acts again, New Lost City Ramblers, whom I loved, and they were an old timey group that included uh what what was his name? John Cohen?

I love John Cohen and uh Pece Seeger's brother Mike Seegar. Ridiculous. I mean that the as sponges. We were so lucky. You know, we're absorbing all this stuff. But also, you know, we're hearing these kids are these guys that used to hang around and play folk music in the back room became this band called the Rising Suns, which was Ray Cooter and Taj Mahal. So we're like, oh yeah again, they're taking this influence in this gift um and turn it into their electrifying So we started. You know, we

bought a bass and and a half. I bought a drum kit. I should point out real quickly that we made this movie. We were in this film for three minutes, but it took us three months to do it in the woods and the wilds of Oregon. The film was called Painter Wagon Major motion picture, actually the most expensive film up to that point that had ever been made

by Hollywood. Saw it. Oh yeah, you know what, it's a lot of fun to watch now, But it was Lee Marvin, this guy that had been making these spaghetti westerns named Clint Eastwood, and this great actress, uh, the great late grade Jeane Sieberg. There was this crazy part for her because she'd done all these amazing sort of artie films, you know. Uh, she was a serious, serious actor. So there we are. We're playing a drug band. Basically we were, you know, it was all these mining was

the gold rushing California. That was the premise. So it's all these uh you know, these miners up you know, and we're slogging through these mining gold mining, you know, trying to pan for gold or dig these tunnels. And it's a comedy, a musical. And we did this song called hand Me Down that Cannabians. And we were up there for three months. There's a bunch of guys from southern California. Three months in a town the population was about I think, I don't know me, I'm exaggerating just

because I can. And we had nothing to do. We were so bored, and we started kind of getting at each other and you know, picking on each other things that we didn't care about. We started caring about that we didn't like, and there was this tug and pull

about musical direction. Well, I remember Chris and I that summer, and I might you a little off on my timeline, but Sweetheart of the Rodeo was out and music from Big Pink was out, and I heard music from Big Pink and I didn't want to play guitar ever again. I wanted to play drums. I wanted to play drums like Leo on Hell you know, and and Ringo was really getting into that Tom Phil thing that he did,

so well, uh you know. I I've learned how to play drums from one of the guys that played in the Mothers of Invention, a guy named Denny Bruce, who was kind enough to show me how to play along to first record Ruby Tuesday. Um, good Bye Ruby Tuesday by Da Dad Da dadda Dada, that Snare Phil and that was it. Man. I wanted to learn drums, and Chris is going, hey, man, we need to take the band in a country rock direction. This thing is so happening, you know, he says, my buddies, like Chris HILLMTT was

one of Chris Chris Darrow's buddies. So these guys are

doing this thing. It's so cool. And the birds and like they hire Clarence White now, who's playing this great b bender guitar, telecaster and everything shifting the place are shift in here musically, and it made sense because we all love country music, we love blue grass, and we were just getting a little tired of making records for a company that didn't really care about Joe band music anyways, and we were kind of ready to move on in general.

So we got back to l a after after three months in Oregon, which was lovely, by the way, except for the part that we were so just bored stiff, and we got our record companies like, you know, you guys, have one more record on your deal, Let's do a live album. We're like whatever, Sure, So we played the

Tributor for a week. Well, our opening act was this band called Pogo, and Poco was Poco before you know, Walt Kelly the Cartoonists, decided that he's going to sue them if they didn't change their name Poco original lineup. For me, honestly, I never saw the Beatles play, but I felt like I was in the Cavern Club watching the Beatles play. They were so damn good. I mean, the harmonies were ridiculous and I was a fan already

of Richie Furres from the Buffalo Springfields. You got Ritchie, you got Jim Messina on guitar, you had the great Randy Meisner on bass and high high harmony, and George Grantham singing drummer. I'm like, yep, George Grantham singing drummer, Levin Helm singing drummer. That's the thing I filed that away. So we're opening for Poco Dirt Band. Honestly at this point we're on our last legs and the opening act

is the Beatles. So they would come off stage every night and they're high five in each other and they're just whoop, whoop, whoop, and the nicest guys I might add, you know, and we're just like, we're struggling to try to play some kind of sort of country rock, folk rock stuff. The one thing that worked was working really well was a Cajun song called Alligator Man. I played drums, Chris Darrow played uh fiddle on it, and it was really a Cajun rock tune. That thing would end up

mattering a few months later. So at the end of that run, super depressed, we're like, what are we going to do with the band. The band's tugging and pulling in different directions. Uh, you know, some of the guys

wanted to sort of do the country rock thing. You know, Chris and I are talking to each other going, we can't really pull this off, you know, we it's not And then our buddy Ralph bar and his wife Holly wanted to do like a folk duo thing, and their friend Dwayne Almand was going to produce a record on him. So they're drifting over here. There was some you know, business arguments about whether or not we're with the right manager or not, as it just got toxic, and Chris

and I are gone, man, let's just start. Let's just let's walk away from this thing. So we did, you know, not a lot of arguments somebody had. Everybody was just tired and burned out, as burnout as you can be at twenty one. Um, So Chris and I started this band and it was me and him and uh, this great drummer named John Ware who would go on to be the drummer for the first National Band and Emmy Lou Harris's Hot band. Johnny Ware terrific drummer, great guy.

Another art student from Claremont where Chris lived, uh and John London on base and John London whose real name was John Keeney. He grew up his best friend was Michael Nesmith. So John had been working on the set of The Monkeys as as Michael stand in, and he'd been playing in a band called the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which was Michael one of Michael Murphy's Martin Murphy's first bands. So these guys are cool, man. We we started working up tunes and it's fun, and Chris and I are

writing a bunch of songs. Johnny Ware wrote a couple and it was like we're often running. It was like country rock cool, and I'm trying to come up with a country rock band I name, and it's like, how about buck Wheat buckwheats a cool, cool sound meaning buck Wheat not the Little Rascal's character, uh or wheat straw, or like, how about I don't know, Southern Pacific. That's a pretty good name. Nobody liked that, so uh So Chris and John, being way hipper than I were, said,

how about the Corvettes? Totally ironic? That does not sound nothing can sound further from a country rock band name, and I'm like, okay, these guys are a couple of years a couple of years older, far far hipper than I was. I went cool, what are the corvettes? And then John London he brought Chris Derrek. I sorry. John London brought Michael Nasmith into one of our rehearsals, and Michael has been hired as a producer. He got a production deal with Dot Records. He says, I want to

sign you guys to a deal, a singles deal. So we cut some sides with Michael, which was really fun. Got to know him really well, really great cat, one of my favorite people ever. We're starving. They put out a single I think, and it didn't really stick, and they put they started to put out another one, and out of the blue, our dear friend Linda ron Stat calls us up. She's you know, the Stone Ponies are broken up. She's now a solo act. She said, I

need a band. Would you guys be my band? She loved the way Chris, she loved the way John and John the rhythm section was great. We were friends. She was kind to me. Bee. I'm like, I wasn't bringing a whole lot, but I was a good harmony singer. And then Chris's fiddle. She loved that Cajun fiddle thing. And Chris Blay lead guitar really well. So it's Linda

Ronstat and the Corvetts. We hit the road and man, wow, it was amazing for a thousand reasons, one being we all had giant crushes on Linda, of course because he's Lenda Ron's that and one of the greatest singers that ever lived. And so I'm learning to sing harmony with Linda and this is really cool. And we're doing songs like silver Threads and gold Needles and oh, different drum every night. She had a song called some of Shelley's Blues that Michael wrote that I just loved. We're saying

a long long time. You know, she's god. She took the only Daddy that Will walk the line great whale and Jennings song turned it into only Mama that will walk the line, and she mean it was just killer. We The only time I ever played with the whiskey was in Linda's band, So this is really fun. And uh, several months go by, I think, you know, I think

it's around six months. We're doing the corvettes, and Linda and I ran into John McEwen at a Poco show ironically at the Golden Bear, and we looked at each other and said we could do this. Let's give it another shot. So we called up Les Thompson who was in immediately he just as long as I get to play electric bass, yes, less you can play electric bass. Turned into a really good bass player, great bass player by then, and Jimmy Fadden who was also picking up

the drums. So Jimmy and I are both playing drums, and Jimmy was becoming a really great allectric guitar player along as his legendary harp skills as well great harmonica player. But we're like, we need to singing drummer. We all agree we need to leve on or we needed George Grantham and uh a friend of ours and Mitral friend of ours knew this guy Jimmy Ibson who had just moved out to California. He was from Philadelphia, went to school in Newcastle, Indiana, and moved out to l A

to become a star. And he was having the kind of experience that the rest of us were. You know, so if he's been playing you know, these pick up gigs. His his roommate was this guy named Kevin Kelly, one of his roommates who was playing with that version of the Birds. And then he had another roommate later on named Danny Danny Lotomoser, who was a folk rock kind of guy. So mutual friends. We got introduced to Ibby. We called him maybe because we had two Jimmy's at

this point. Uh, and he comes over, we play drums with us. Were like, this is really great, and he's like, well, let's stick around after class. We're already impressed by his drumming. Everybody splits. Me and Jimmy are sitting there with a couple of acoustic guitars and he's a really good guitar player,

I come to find out. And we already knew he could sing, but we started singing Everly Brothers songs and it's like, oh man, we got It's like I gotta fill, I gotta don However, you know, we would switched back and forth and I was in heaven. Man, this is like become my favorite singer, well next to Linda that I'd ever sung with. And we had this thing. We had this bland that was like like brothers singing together.

Turned out if he could play the bass, he could play a lectric guitar, he could play a little bit of clarinet, a little bit of pianos like man, and he writes songs. So he'sa Meanwhile, what's happened to Chris Daryl Chris darrells? He Chris stayed with Linda the Corvettes. Bernie Letton came in and took my place in the Corvettes. So this is the first time Bernie who eventually you know the deal. Bernie stays in the band, played with the Corvette for a while, then he went off and

played with the Burrito Brothers for a while. Chris continued playing in that group, and then he got us. He got signed I believe again either to you A or Liberty EO By Perhaps I'm sorry I have a little brain fire here. But he had a solo deal and made some really really great records, among them artist Proof, which is my favorite. I think he became friends. He and Peter Asher became friends. Chris ended up and fiddle on Sweet Baby. James uh Our buddy John London from

the Corvets played bass on Shoot. He played bass on on the song Sweet Baby James on that record. Meanwhile, John Lennon and John Ware started a Bama John with Michael Nesmuth. So so you got the two Johnnies and Mike Nesmuth. They got the first national band going, which it was another one of the great underrated country rock bands of all time. I think, uh so, yeah, so the Dirt band re kind of re uh imagined as this country rock band. And then how do you wind?

You rehearse? Now your deal is done with Liberty? So what happens? Well, my deal I was done with Liberty because I had to get out of my record deal. They still had me under contract, and I pulled a trick on them and got out of that. I called up the president of Liberty Records and I kept calling him and call him. There's no email back then. I couldn't slide a note under his door because security wouldn't

let me through. And I'm like, because I wanted to sign this deal with Dot Records with Mike Nesmuth and his I believe it was Bud Dane, and I kept calling and They're like, Nat, who who's this calling? He'll call you back. Never called. So finally I got on there and they said who's calling and I said, um, Tommy Boys. Tommy Boys and Bobby Hart wrote Last Train to Clarksville. They were huge hit singers, his huge his songwriters in l A. At the point, but gets on

the phone Tommy, how are you, babe? And I'm like, I'm great, And then I listened for a couple of more minutes of small talk. I said, actually, this is Jeff Hannah and he goes, oh, Jeff, how are you doing? What are you up to? Long time no speak. He says, I'm actually kind of trying to get out of my record deal, and he goes, no problem, come by tomorrow. You know, he signed a paper let let me go. Yeah, I was was worth anything to him, but it was

a sweet thing to do. I appreciated that. So Bill McEwen again, we go play the Troubadour and uh, people like this, they liked this band. We Meanwhile, we rehearsed for like three months. Les Thompson's dad had was at Sea Bring jukebox distributor, and we rehearsed in his in his warehouse in Long Beach. So we were a wood shed and it was like I think it was the first time since my mom's garage that we really would

shed it and it was fun. Man Jimmy Everson's bringing in songs by this kid that he met at a party named Kenny Loggins. We recorded four Kenny songs and nobody had ever heard by the way or heard of at that point. Did a couple of you know, originals. I there was a song that I used to sing with the Corvettes called The Cure that ended up on the record. But a lot of covers Randy Newman living Without You, Um, shoot, who else do we cover? Michael

Nesmuth So Michelle's Blues. That's one of the first songs I learned to sing with Linda and I worked it up with Jimmy Ibbotson and him singing lead, me singing harmony, and that fit really well. Um, you know, and I whatever we did, Buddy, how we did, we were huge Buddy Holly fans. We did Ray Van on that record, an old blues tune called travel and Mood some bluegrass. We did the Great Earl Scrugs instrumental called Randy Lynn

Rag Clinch Mountain Backstep, Ralph Stanley tune. You know, it was a it was a a mash up you know, the dirt band was always instill our eclectic. Okay, So how did you end up pack on Liberty and how did Bill mceuwan end up being the producer? Well, that was one of the deals. When Bill came back into the picture. He had matured as a manager and as

a producer and he just kind us. He went to these guys that said, look, come see these guys at Drew Badur and we you know, they still hired us because they liked us when we were a drug band. He came in and love the band, and Bill said, here's the deal. I want to produce him and they were like, well, okay, fine, cut a couple of sides. We cut a couple of sides. They loved it. So he stayed on and Bill remained our producer through I

don't know four albums I think uh. And he was a great managed, superman and incredibly and a visionary musically, you know, and he knew his stuff. He knew to use good mix. He got a great engineer, engineer Mr Dino Lapis, who was a staff engineer at World Pacific and Liberty and a couple of these studios where we started out. But he knew how he wanted the band to sound. He wanted to record this stuff. Well, he wanted the drums and bass and the alleged guitar and

you know, the acoustic instruments. Great vintage gear wasn't vantaged back then, but really great analog gear. And that record signed awesome, I thought, you know, so we were proud of what we were doing. And at the tail end of the sessions, you know, we found this other song, Mr bo Jangles. Okay, but how did you how did he make a deal with Liberty which you've just gotten off. Uh, he just said we're gonna start from scratch. It started because Bud Dane loved the band. He loved this new

incarnation of the band. So they wanted to sign us. Because just as folk rock and and sort of whatever jug band music were popular in sixty seven, now it's nineteen seventy and like country rocks, the thing, baby, you know, the Palomino Club is jumping in North Hollywood. The Trouger is now home to you know this band, Long Branch,

Penny Whistle, uh and Poke Poco. Now the Burrito Brothers would come by now and again play and it was it was a thing uh, you know, even even the singer songwriter stuff, Lynda's stuff, Jackson Brown had just gotten signed, uh Dan Fogelberg. This new vibe was very much in line with the country rock stuff. So they wanted to jump on that bat that bandwagon, and they we played him a couple of tracks, played them Ravan and Shelley's Blues,

I think, and they loved them both. So so you find Mr. Bo Jangles, Yeah, uh, never heard the song in my life. Didn't know who Jerry Jeff was. We were.

I was coming home from rehearsal one night and I heard I'm driving I lived, and I think I lived in Seal Beach, driving a few miles from Long Beach to Seal Beach, got my radio on his FM radio, old school, no back, announcing they'd play fifteen songs without telling you who it was, and I heard, probably flipping the dial, I heard probably the last two verses in

the last chorus of Mr. Bo Jangles. But as soon as I heard it, I pulled the car off the road and you know, shut shut the engine off so I could really hear it great, And I was really got this lump in my throat hearing this story about this old guy and his dog, and the melody was beautiful and a great I mean, a compelling story. So next day I came running into the warehouse and I'm like, guys, you know, basically, I'm like, I got the final piece to the puzzle here, Guys. I heard this great song.

And we have started using an accordion and mandolin as well together on our records. And we started talking about we were big fans of the band, and the band had done that on the song Old Rocking Chair on the on their uh, their second album, the Brown album, and I like, we started talking about that would really

be the way to do this acoustic guitars. We brought in this kid named Russ Kunkle to to sort of set about the drums, and uh, Jimmy Fadden had a really great drum arrangement, but you know he was he was mad enough to like hand the sticks to Russ for that one. We all did that, you know, we did. We We occasionally have session guys come in because they

played better in the studio. So we cut the song. Uh, Jimmy Everson, I didn't finish my story, so Jimmy Everson immediately went that's Mr Bo Jangles When I said, what's this song called? He had a forty five rpm in the trunk of his car under the spare tire, scratched all the hell, and so we we stacked We stacked pennies on the needle of the record player to get

it to track better. Actually misheard a couple of the lyrics, which we recorded it that way, you know, later on became a huge hit with the wrong words in a couple of places. But Jerry Jeff, whom we met later forgave us because the sold a million copies. He was a happy camper, you know. So um yeah, So we we put the whole album together. Bill McEwen had this cool idea where he left a lot of the in studio chatter and count offs and laughter and just the

fun stuff. He left a lot of that on the record, which we really dug you know. It was like, uh, the curtain being pulled back a little bit. And later

on our fans really dug it as well. And he actually had this recording of this old guy, this guy who was his wife's uncle, Charlie, that he had recorded on a portable two track recorder years before in in Up in northern California, Uncle Charlie talking and playing the guitar, and he brought us to his house and he said, I want to play you guys something, and we little joint pass it around, lowered the lights, and Bill had

this amazing you know. He had a great stereo and I know you're a lover of this stuff, the ack Apps voice of the theater speakers, and we're just like leaning back in the chair like the old jbl ad, you know. And he played he played Uncle Charlie into Mr. Bo Jangles, this guy talking and then a dog starts singing and then he cuts right to that boom ba dabba dabba guitar figure and we're like in tears. This is like I don't know how he came up with it,

but it was a genius move. So we love it, and we're like thinking, we're thinking, but yeah, that's not the hit. It's gonna be some in Jelly's Blues, or it's gonna be house A Through Corner, or it's gonna be Ray Van. So we put our single out. We put out Shelley's Blues. I think it was the first single, and it's going up the charts. That's doing pretty pretty good. And now we started touring. We're touring on We're playing college campuses. Man, I just watched that Carlin documented I

hadn't know if you saw it or not. Oh man, huge fan of George's, but in that moment that came, you know, when he's like, I don't want us saying to a bunch of disinterested people eat eating their dinners and drinking cocktails in these buttoned up, you know kind of casinos or dinner theaters. I want to play two kids going. I want to play the kids that are like us, you know, they were the same sensibility. So we started playing college campuses and these folks are loving us,

and we're like, we found this audience. The record starts selling, but the single starting to lose its legs a little bit. All of a sudden, the station in Shreveport, Louisiana, late night Chuck starts playing Mr. Bo Jangles and the phones light up. These people want to hear this song. They're just like, you're regardless of the fact that's a four minute waltz, can't dance to it about an old guy and a dog. It's it's landing, it's resonating with people.

Super compelling, and we get this call. Then it starts spreading in these other FM stations again late night where it's free form radio, they start playing it. Record Comany calls us, we're gonna pull Shelley's Blues and you're We're like what, and yeah, we're gonna put out Mr. Bo Jangles and we're going, oh geez, we're screwed. They're never gonna and we will love the song, make no mistake about that. Well, we'll figure our careers over their planning.

They're they're gonna go with this, you know, this slow song and story song. People have to pay attention. We were so wrong, you know, as my wife likes to say, we had our elbows on the pulse of America. Totally missed it. So they put it out. Things stayed on the charts for several months, had slow burned, but a good in the best kind of way, you know, slowly going up the charts. Got up to number nine, stayed

there for a couple of weeks. Really actually, I mean really the biggest single ever, had sold a million copies. Finally got to talk to Jerry Jeff on the telephone one night. You know, we're all drunk and you know, backslapping on the phone. He decided to move to Austin, Texas. I think he felt like this kind of this gave him another It really turned up his self confidence and it was happening, you know. I think he was on his way to l A. And he made a left

turn and went to Austin. And the rest is Austin history for sure. And we became buddies. We played a bunch over the years. Love playing with Jerry Jeff. But yeah, there, it was there. It was that album and you know, and that led to other stuff down the road for us. Um So how do you ultimately put together? Will the

circle be unbroken? Direct link to Mr bo Jangles. We're playing these tours and uh, we start playing in the South and we're all kind of kids, you know, long haired kids from l A. We're going are They're gonna beat the ship out of us? Down there is like easy Rider. I was like, no, there was some of that going on, and make no mistake, but uh, we're playing these college campuses and it was so cool. So we're playing Vanderbilt University and there's this kid named Gary Scruggs.

Gary Scruggs was Earl Scruggs as oldest son. He and his his brother Stephen Randy, they're hearing Mr. Bo Jangles on the radio and there they become fans of the band. Sees the Uncle Charlie album, pulls it out of the bend and he's looking at the back of the record and he goes, WHOA, there's Randy Lynn Rag that my dad wrote about my little brother Randy. This instrumental takes it home. They love the album. So to get his dad interested, he plays Randy Lynn Ragg for for Earl.

Earl hears it and it's like that boy can play that five string and that band's sounds pretty good. Never heard a washboard on it, Glad Scruggs record. So with that as the hook, Gary, who knew the dean at Vanderbilt, set up a meet and greet for us and the Scruggs family and John McEwen, especially as just shaken in his boots so stoked that he's gonna meet Earl Scruggs, but also his hero is gonna be watching, so we knew they were there. We played our set. We actually

killed it. It was a really good set, went backstage, toweled off a little bit and in comes to Scruggs family and we're hanging out and immediately this is like long lost family these folks. The bond the friendships became lifelong friendships. From that moment, we you know, finally talked to Earl into playing a song on the five string.

And it was a great night, you know, and Louise Louise Scruggs, one of the great figures in the music business, went the pioneering women in the music business, and who was Earl's manager as well. You know, we just had a great time. And when we bonded on music and Earl had just started the Earl Scruggs review had left Lester Flat Flat Scruggs had broken up, and Earls wants to play country rock kind of you know, with the

blue gass sensibility as well. So he's on his way out the door after a couple hours of hanging out and he says, well, if you boys would ever like to do some recording, I'd love to get in the studio with you. He closes the door and we're what just happened. Earl Scruggs invited us to record. You know.

It turned out that he was friends with the birds already, and you know, the music community in Nashville was not his conservative and if you're painting in broad strokes, sure, it seemed like everything was Roy Acuff and the grand old opry, you know, and it was kind of the country polity and thing. As far as country music mainstream was going on, it was pretty commercial, not a lot of acoustic based stuff. A few months later, um Bill McKuen called each of us and he said, I got

an idea. He said, what if we take Earl's idea of you guys recording with him and expand the concept to where it's you guys and your influences get in the studio, we're the band, and we're playing with guys like Girl. We started talking about the wet if Stock, Watson, Merle, Travis, who we already knew because of our jug band days. We opened from Merle at the Ash Grove in l A.

And uh, you know, these different ideas. We wanted to get Bill Monroe he did not want to play on the record, and Bill McEwen and John, both of them were fans of the great Lucrass singer Jimmy Martin. So he said, well, let's let's try to get Jimmy Martin. So me and John were we read our bands moved from l A to Colorado. Now this is early seventy one, Spring of seventy one. The Earl Scruggs review is playing a club called to Lagi in uh In Bowlder, Colorado.

And I was gonna say, your buddy Chuck Moore as your friend, and I love Chucky, one of my one of my favorite people in the world. First time we met Chuck, he's running in the place Earl Scruggs reviews playing there. We'd already played there some so we were pals. We could walk in for free. In the back door. Earl's playing there. We watched the said it was great. John offers to drive Earl back to the hotel. I'm in the back seat of the car. John turns to

Earl and said, says haltingly because he's so nervous. He's like, would you would you consider actually playing on our record? And Earle took a second and said I'd be proud to. And we're like dumb struck. Go back to the hotel, hang out with Earl and the kids against some more picked till the wee hours I went home, John stuck around for a while longer. I think over the course, now, this is what Gary told me, and this is what

Earle actually wrote in his book. He said, over the course of the evening, Earl mentioned why not can get some of the other old timers. This is before Bill had called us, by the way, so I don't know who had the idea. It doesn't really matter at this point, does it. But what does matter is that Earl agreed to do it. And he was so cool and so gracious and so forward thinking in terms of music. So with Earl Scruggs, we had Earl in our pocket. Now. Next week John went to see Doc and Merle Watson

at the same club in Boulder, Too Loggy. John asked Doc if he'd be interested. He said, hey, Doc, we're doing a record with Earl Scruggs, which how would you feel? And Doc was like, yeah, anything if Earl's on and I'm in. And to his credit, Murrell Watson, the late Great Murrell Watson, doc son great guitarist, said you know, he said, you know, Daddy, I played some of their stuff and you really like their singing as well. So again the second generation the same as it was with

Earl and his family. His kids loved the band, brought him in. Doc's kid loved the band, so you got already it's we're setting kind of a tone for the record, which is this multi generational thing. After that, we got on the horn with Louise Scruggs and she and Earl authored to you know, um opened some doors for us when we came to Nashville. Meanwhile, Bill mcwhen with John and Toe went and had a meeting with our president of Liberty Records, who was a guy at that point

named Mike Stewart. We got this top tanks top ten single Mr. Bo Jangles on the chart. Bill and John came in there and said, we want to cut a bluegrass record, and my set, uh okay, let me get this right. You got you don't want to follow up Uncle Charlie with a another country rock record. We do, but first we want to do this bluegrass record. And he said, well, I think the budget was like seventeen

grands something and it was under twenty tho dollars. I'll give you, you you know, seventeen thousand to make the record. Odd figure and Bill and John are like done, great, So we go to Nashville. He said, I think you guys are crazy, but I trust your instincts because boj Angles is a big hit, you know, and Shelley's Blues did pretty good, and how Supo Corner did pretty good. We saw some albums and we kind of got you know, we have our foot in the door at radio now.

So we went to Nashville. We we hung out with the Scruggs family. We're meeting all these great folks. Jody Mafis, who was the drummer from the Scruggs Review, his dad. His parents were Joe and Rosalie Mathis, who were legendary pickers from the Grand Old Opry and the UH and the Louisiana Hayride as well. And it was like, man, this is so cool. We're meeting all these folks who are not what we're thinking. By the way, next generation

folks that pretty much invented the genre. Got to point out, this is like fifties and sixties, and they like us and they want to hang out with us. We're spending all day at the Scrugs family's house, just picking and hanging out. Meanwhile, Earls brought in the great Vassar clements on fiddle and the great Junior Husky on electric bass. Remember John Sanda too early says, who's this fiddle player? Vassar kind of name is well and he goes. Earl said, well,

that's his name is Vassar Clemens. And John said was he any good? And Earl said he'll do great story and that was classic us, by the way, never lost that teenage cockiness about like so and and uh. We wanted to get the great Flatt and scrugs doboro player Josh Graves, but he was playing with Lester Flatt and Lester wouldn't let him play on the record. Unfortunately, later on we finally got to record song with Josh and

went amazing. But we got uh, legendary country picker Mr Norman Blake agreed to come in and play do bro. So we got this band that includes you know, Junior

on upright basse uh and Vasser on fiddle. And by the way, these guys were like again, instant pals, the coolest cats, and they they didn't you know, they thought nothing to hang in a bunch with a bunch of hippies from l A or the mountains of Colorado, and we just bonded with the music, and they were also like wise cracking guys, and most of the session guys I've ever met in life have been the funniest people I've ever met, you know. Uh, So we rehearsed for

about a week. I think, you know, maybe it's I don't know, maybe it's a little shorter. We went to Jimmy Martin's house. Louis Louise Scruggs helped us get Jimmy on board, and uh we went to his house and learned how to sink some proper bluegrass harmony for the sessions that we were going to do with him. And here comes Monday, and we got in the studio and we recorded. I guess I think for five days. I

believe it was all you know for audio files. We recorded quarter inch thirty ips live analog tape and it sounded like a million it was so good. But you burned through tape quickly that way, and tape wasn't cheap even back then. We're at Woodland Sounds Studios, one of the great studios, legendary, still there today, thank goodness, because Gillian Welsh and David Rawlings saved the place. They bought it when it looked like it was going to get hit by the wreck and ball. God bless them and

I love them so much. Um So we walked into Woodlands set up and man, we set up set us up in a circle so there weren't a bunch of baffles separating the musicians. You know, typically you don't want that bleed. You don't want to hear the banjo in the bass players Mike, or the washboard and the guitar players Mike. But we would just go, okay, Jeff face the wall when you play the washboard. You know. We

figured it all out and it sounded so good. The little the cross talk between instruments actually added to the the musical integrity of the record. Plus we could see each other, so this is like backporch stuff and it

was so much fun and visual accues. We're mixing the record as as musicians, not as you know, the mixed down later and Bill McEwen ran a separate tape machine that caught all captured all those conversations, all those you know, starts and stops, and you know, we we recorded all this music and jump back on the bus a few days later and left it to build all those tapes Okay, it ends up coming out as a triple records set. Trying to think would even have that many records? All

all things must pass? How did the record company agree to have three records? And then the record started to do this slow burn? What was the perspective from the inside. From the inside, they were still you know, they and we did manage I might add to get Roy a coff on board, by the way, after he heard some of the music he was in, so like, yeah, we got the king of country music and mother Mabel Carter

who came in with Earl scrugs that that connection. So the record companies like, yeah, okay, it's a bluegrass album. They asked, got three five songs as pretty long, live out of talking, a lot of blue grass, a lot of where's the hit, no hits? Well, so Bill did.

They allowed him the latitude to go get a ah, to go do some mock that you get to show them some of the artwork that he was doing with Dean, our friend Dean Torrance, who know Dean from Dana Jeane Beach Boys, all that great guy, amazing graphic artists as well. So Dean and Bill got in there and started designing this stuff, and it was like, I think he showed them kind of a rough. He played him the record, but showed him a rough of the visuals for the record.

And they said, okay again because we're burning it up. We're selling tickets in concert. You know, our our rep is still pretty good. And they said, fine, as long as you deliver another studio record within the next six months. And we did. But this, you know, meantime several months

go by. This is like we've gone from summer into the summer of seventy one to the spring of seventy two, and Bill after months of you know, putting together the package and do all that editing, of conversations that went like beautifully you know, gosh, I mean seamlessly into the

tracks on the record. Uh, it finally comes out and like you said, slow Burn, that's a record literally that I think we took out an adder two and billboard or you know what a cash box Back then, I don't think radio and Records was even up and running yet. Who's cash cash box and Billboard? And the f M DJ's college stations especially who had nobody's telling him what to play? They started playing Doc Watson doing Tennessee stud.

You know, that's my favorite you know what, I knew that and it's one of my favorite songs of the record. And if you can imagine, I mean, I gotta just say I told you earlier. You know. I'm I'm fifteen, sixteen years old listening to Doc Watson play the guitar and sing lifetime hero of Mine and I'm leaning visual literally we didn't have a separate Mike. I'm leaning over Doc's shoulder singing harmony on Tennessee stud. He's like, where's that harmony? Man? You know now, I'm like over here, ah,

you know, and that's I got that. Such a great track. Jimmy Fadden invassor Clemence at fiddle. That's amazing what they played on that. So college picks up on it. Yeah, they pick up on that, and they're playing you know, Lost Highway that was feature Jimmy it Wasson and and and Honky talking with Fadden and they're playing all these great scrub stuff Nashville Blues, you know, of course, the

title track Will the Circle Be Unbroken? I saw the Light with Roy Acuff and people are listen, man, if I had a any for every and people from the rock and roll side years later. I didn't like country music, you know, the southern kids, that was their parents music. So they just, you know, they just didn't want to know. You a little rebellion, rock and roll, that's ours. Country music, bluegrass that's yours. Right here come these long Hairs all

of a sudden. The music looks like the Buffalo Springfield, but it sounds like this other stuff. And here's these young guys singing and playing along. Somehow, whatever influence we might have had to help sort of expose those artists. Look, I'm not stupider. Yeah, I'm humbled enough to know that mother maybe ill Carter kids, it's Earl scruggskis is roy Aka. But you know they a lot of the younger generation weren't into that music. Doc Watson's folk boom career had

had cooled off a little it. But man, I'm so proud after the fact that that that might have had a hand in that and also expanded the world of bluegrass. Those festivals changed, and we can talk about that later if you want, But back then bluegrass festivals were strictly traditional. Then acts like the Earl Scruggs Review, the Dirt Band, John Hartford New Grass Revival. They start showing up. It's like the dope smokers showed up, you know, or at

least started smoking dope in front of people. There's some blue grass bands that okay, let's jump forward. You ultimately do two more of those, uh will the circle be unbroken? Records? You then start to have soft rock success at the end of the seventies. My favorite of your recorded songs, you have Harmony, which I really love your a co writer on. Then how do you decide to have go to Nashville, cracked the country market, have a string of

hit and then ultimately go to Russia. That's a lot, that's unpacking a lot, but quickly I should I should give a shout out to Bob Carpenter. But yeah, my co writer on Harmony, and I think it's that's the first time you ever wrote about us. My buddy George Massenberg came into the studio and said, do you read the Leftist Letter? And I said, what's that? And he showed it to me and I subscribed, And you know, and you were so kind. That wasn't even a single

lot I don't think should have been. And I wrote that, Yeah, very proud of that song Nicolette Larson bless her Heart. She sang on that as well. But yeah, so that was on the Make a Little Magic album. We did that, and Nikki sang on that, and we we'd had that hit American Dream with Linda. Well, both those songs. This matters, this part of it. They became pop is both of them. It was like our first big hits since bo j Angles.

They also charted on the country charts without any real effort on our part, but they I guess, you know, the country radio was now opening up a bit. There were bands like Alabama. They were making a big splasher radio. And I remember somebody playing me an Alabama record and I'm like, yeah, I get that. It's got sort of an Eagles vibe or a dirt band vibe or Burrito's vibe. It's the California. It's the California country rock that we were playing in the seventies. Only now they're making these

records on music Row. So we went, we went to Nashville. We made a record with a great producer, Mr Norbert Putnam, who had done you know who was a legendary session guy here for years. He was part of that you know the Nashville Cats, the early six one five guys, you know. And he had produced our buddy Jimmy Buffett and and our friend Dan Vogelberg as well, made great records with them. So we cut that. We cut the song Dance Little Gene that was written by my buddy

Jimmy Ivison. Then we went in the studio also with Richard Landis to cut some more tracks. Three more tracks cut in l A. So we got in the studio cut some stuff and he had just had this big hit of what was the song, Oh Angel of the Morning, Oh yeah, God, And that's a great record, by the way, I love Juice Newton Killer made a brilliant record on it, and he kind of using that formula with us. And we did the song called Shot full of Love that

you said recorded. We did Andrew Gold song called Heartaches and Heartaches. We did a again. This is where we're getting at least have an opinion about the cover songs. Um Marshall Crenshaw song called Mary Anne. We cut those three songs, went back to Nashville. And this is, by the way, this is now we're still on Liberty Records, so we're not we're getting we got the guys in l A that are kind of calling the shots for

their country music career. So they want to put out the Richard Landis stuff, you know, sort of in partnership with the the that which is now Liberty Nashville. Uh. And we didn't really know those folks. Great folks, Jim Fogel song, great record guy. So they put out Shot full of Love. Then it becomes the top fifteen hit for the band, and we're like, this is pretty cool. But then same thing happened, like Mr. Bo Jangles Station starts spinning Dance Little Jeane, which was a song that

was kind of like buried in the record. So they started playing Dance Little Gene. But they thought, well, maybe we need to remix it and put a steel guitar on it, which we loved. And our friend Larry Sasser, who was a great session guy, came in and put and put steel on it, and we did a remix with these two young producers, Paul Whorley and Marshall Morgan.

They put they took that version of Dance Little Gene, went to radio with it and became the Dirt Band's first top ten country single, and at that point Chuck Morris, uh had become our manager, and he's he become buddies with Jim Ed Norman who was running Warner Brothers. And we're like, oh my gosh, finally because we were the

bunny was the we idolized the bunny. You know all those you know, all those acts on Warner Brothers that we were crazy about, including Ray Cooter and your Bonny Rate and Jah in the early days, uh, you know, in the offshoots everything, everything that was on Electra and you know later on uh Asylum. So and here's Jim Ed Doorman, who I met through my new friend Don

Handily years ago. And so Jim Ed been you know, he'd been arranging strings with those guys and he came from Texas when they were called Shiloh, that band California. So Jim as the record company prisoner, Like how cool? What could be cooler? And then our new buddies, Caul Warley and Marshall Morgan, we're going to produce us. We got in the studio and had a man an awesome string of top ten singles with those guys. It was

like one after the other, you know. Unfortunately, Warner Brothers never wanted to go deeper than three singles, which was I think kind of stupid. You know. Joe Glani changed that later with our c A and they went five deep, because you make an album and they want you to record five singles and then the rest is yours. So the other two songs that didn't get recorded, we're typically stuff that those are radio songs, you know, again the

record bills. But I love those albums that we made with with Marshall and Paul and there, you know, we're recording our own stuff and having you know, we're rolling in it. We'd never had this consistency at radio ever because rock and roll that's a that's a fish, that's a fickle mistress there. You know, like Chris Rock said, here today, gone today. You're having all the success in Nashville, how do you end up going to Rush show? Well, Russia happened just before Nashville. We were a man, this

is so strange. We were we were in the middle of that sort of you'll call it yacht rock now if you choose to period where we had to make a little magic and American dream and you know, we all had sun tans and Hawaiian shirts on our records and we were pretty swave trying to emulate Don Johnson, I think more than you know anybody else as far as the visuals went. We uh, so we're making these records and but we're still playing the same circuit. You know.

People were fans of the Dirt Band from you know, not only American Dream and make a Little Magic, but also from uh uh, the country rock stuff. So we're playing. We were playing in Washington, d c h. And we get it. We play there and a couple of days later we got this. Our manager Bill got a phone call from somebody said they were from the State Department and he just laughed and hung up on him because we're right, you got a wrong number or you're pranking us.

So they keep doing it. He keeps hanging out. Finally accept the phone and said what do you want? And they said, we represent the State Department and we are part of a cultural cultural exchange program and we're interested in the Dirt Band doing a tour of the Soviet Union. This is sevent and we kind of said why us because they looked at a bunch of acts that Beach Boys wanted to go there, and they were like that we could think of a lot of examples that might

have made more sense. But what they liked about our band was we covered a lot of music. There was rock and roll, but there was also some country music, you know, multi culturists. We had an African American in our band, the great Jackie Clark Uh, which is you know, I'm trying to figure this out from the Soviet game. Doesn't matter, great musician, great cat at. They said, do you have a female singer in your baby? So we

do not. But so we asked a friend of ours from mass and Jan Garrett to come take part, you know, so she tore over us as well, and we didn't. We went and did this tour of the Soviet Union um and we got there first of May. May day. Literally look out the window overlooking Red Square and there's all this, you know WHOA We're seeing missiles going through Red Square and a lot of marching going on, and a lot of guys in overcoats, you know who are

following us. This is the KGB followed us everywhere we went. It was kind of crazy because there was no communication. We had no there's no internet, so the only way we could make calls back home was by ordering literally ordering a phone call at x one hours like three days ahead, and we're having to send a telegram man old school say, I mean a carrier pigeon back home so our friends, your family could get the message that

we're gonna be make sure you pick up the phone. Also, no answering machines, so we can talk for like three minutes meantime. Though this is pretty fascinating to us, you know, we're like, this is myself and Jimmy Fadden and John McEwen and our buddy Jackie Clark, who, by the way, came from the icon Tina Tina the Icon Tina Turner review, great musician and Jackie played his ass off gud. He was a great guitar player, singer, bass player, played piano

as well. Came from a church gospel background amazing, loved wearing a cowboy hat and dressing in nudis suits and like Manuel cluing, which I got a giant kick out of, we all did. We all bought a bunch of suits from Manuel's our buddy John Cable, who was a friend of ours from Colorado. They were on board for I

don't know about a year and a half. Jackie and John so we started this tour and we went to Soviet Georgia, drank moonshine with the kind of this guy's like kind of a godfather figure in and he was the mayor of this time. What was the name of it, shoot Deblisi, I think anyway, Uh, if I got that wrong, sorry, folks, I'm not looking at my history book. So drank moonshine with him, which was fun. We've got Yeah. So we

had a couple of days off, played in Georgia. That was really great, just getting hot, by the way, hot and muggy nowhere conditioning in the Soviet Union. So we're like, yeah, we're torn in the south again. Here's Georgia. Here's Georgia. Next thing we play in uh yet a van. I believe it was in uh in Armenia soccer stadium. Five thousand people inside, ten thousand people outside trying to get in. There was a riot. I don't there was a riot.

I don't think anybody got hurt. But we're gone. And by the way, we had heard from the jump that these folks aren't gonna respond to your music if they don't clap loudly. Understand, these people are rushing the stage, standing on their seats, going nuts. Crazy bunch of folks in our media. We were loving it because it felt like rock and roll us. We're playing as loud as that our little p a that we brought with us

it could stand. Uh. We played Latvia, which was great, and that was the one place that was kind of the least Soviet of the Soviet Union. I mean everywhere so far Georgia and you're and Armenia is pretty shut down. You know. The the authorities did not want us talking to fans. They didn't want folks hearing about America, honestly know, and they would detain them. They'd throw them in jail, you know, if you know, for a couple of days. If they were lucky. Some of them were beaten. We

find out later, which awful. We go to Latvia all of a sudden, you know, people are dressing hipper, the women are wearing makeup, and it was like it looked like Europe to us. It didn't because the Soviet Union was really great. That that country was in black and white literally, um, and Armenia was kind of crazy, but again still you know, feeling that kind of Eastern European oppression at that point. But Latvia, we come to find out, fought back hard. You know, they were like Ukraine during

World War two, is right now. And then they pull us aside and we toast. We'd you know say, basically screw bres Well. We drank a little laka. Uh. We had a great time with them, they were wonderful. Then we went to the Soviet Union and again you know, our our our guides are emissaries who really sweet interpreters, really really fine folks because you know, they were used to dealing with with creatives, with artsy FARTSI people because they had they were doing ballet and different you know,

different tours with a cultural exchange. There again pulling us aside. They're not gonna really you know, they're not going to be that excited. You know, don't be offended if they do the golf clap, you know. So they're rushing the stage, you know, they're coming up and throwing bouquets of flowers on the stage, and we're smirking because we were used to entertaining people and you know, kind of getting a rise out of them. So we love that. So we played in uh, I guess it was Leningrad went back

to my we closed it out of Moscow. We did it. We did it. Uh a TV broadcast to hundreds of millions of people, one station, one TV, one channel. So that was pretty great. That was fun. Um. And then we got back on a plane and went back home. And this is after a month there. And I remember we had a layover in in Belgium and Brussels and just remember walking off that plane just like, oh my gosh,

everything's in technicolor. Again. I felt like latvia, you know, it's like you want to coke with ice, Yeah, because again we're sweating to the hits. It was a long tour. We were all really homesick, and uh, it was. It was pretty remarkable. It had a huge impact on us, you know, as people. Okay, looking back at this amazing career, how have you done financially? You know, we kinda I mean honestly through the early years, ay, I should say part of it, we didn't give a crap but make

and money. So if we had, if we had, if we had enough dough to buy some groovy clothes, you know, maybe a jacket from North Beach leather in l a or a cool pair of cowboy boothe you know, everybody got their favorite jeans and they didn't cost thirty bucks back then much less. Um, keep us in some cool shirts long as the families were fed, you know, and and stuff didn't cost very much. I didn't. I didn't buy my first new car until I was almost thirty. I think, so we're poking along. As long as we

get to play, we're cool. We didn't start. I didn't notice till Bob Carpenter and I and our friend Richard Hathaway, who was playing in our band in nineteen eight as well. We co wrote Make a Little Magic, and those checks were big, and this is pop music, and I was like, man, we all loved writing songs. But I didn't realize like our friends, you know, from the Drubadour, who are seeing some substantial coin from you know, Jackson's records and the

Eagles records. JD. Souther. Uh oh, yeah, that's kind of kind of cool. So we got lucky and we wrote this hit song and we got signed to Ask Gap and they actually had signing bonuses unrecoupable, So yeah, it was kind of kind of up. The Anny a little bit, had a little money in the bank, has so much money that I didn't know anything about you know, it's ten ninety nine cash, so I didn't put anything aside for taxes to pay my taxes. I'm like, what what taxes?

Got a huge bill. Actually had to take a loan out with my folks at the end of that year. That never happened again, God bless them. But I was like, yeah, you make you can make money writing songs, because again, we're making why don't we were? I think we're paying ourselves a salary. I guess enough to enough to live on.

But it wasn't a huge amount of money. And uh, you know when we got um, the records were all cross collateralized, so we have a hit record that would go into the next record that might be a stiff So all the money kind of evened out, and like the average was, you know, hey, here's a here's a couple hundred, here's a couple of grand maybe. So we did honestly, man, you know, we got paid for doing this.

That was our attitude. How lucky are we? But as we got you know, as we started raising families, um, we you know, and then started making some of this right songwriting income, it became a little different game. We did not live in palaces. Uh. I mean, I'd like to say that the peaks and the valleys were less extreme in our band, and I think I'm grateful for that, because we didn't fall off of Everest, you know, and

land way down into f Valley. It was always it was always a little hill and then the car cruises down the backside. So I think we were you know, we were pretty seasoned by the time we were in our mid thirties and came to Nashville. And then again we're right in half the hits, two thirds of the hits it country your radio, so they're starting to pass that mailbox money again. It's pretty cool, and we got

and we got this. The career made sense now. And you know, Bob, you came up in a time where nothing was genre specific, you know, and I those those those FM stations. I love the bit that you wrote about the Raspberries. The other day. Hearing your songs on AM was like, that's pretty cool. FM was where the fun was. Flatt and Scruggs. Literally I heard Earl Scruggs and Lester Flat segueing into Foxy Lady by Jimmie Hendricks

on FM radio, especially college radios so cool. But now country music sign FM and rock and roll and you got the A O R charts and we found this home and country music. They were so welcoming, and I tell you they liked They liked us because twelve years earlier we had done Will the Circle Be Unbroken? So

they thought these guys are legit. They don't have to prove to us that they love country music, because we know they did because they made a record with Roy Acuff and Mother Maybell Carter and Roy I'm Sorry and and Earl Scruggs. So uh, we had our foot in the door. And they and again they had placed some of the popists, you know, Magic and American Dream. So

we're lucky we got he had great producers. We always had an ear towards outside material because as much as we loved writing songs and we were all good at it, I'm proud of the songwriters in our band. Um, if we heard a song like stand a Little Rain that was written by our buddies Don Schlitz and Donney Lowry,

we weren't going to not cut that great song. Rodney Krawll, who had written American Dream, he comes with in with a song called Long Hard Road the share Propper's dream, great tune, and you could hear that song on Americana Radio now very easily. Rodney's skills are profound. So that was the first number one our band ever had. We never had a number one record until we put out A Long Hard Road Country Radio. But we had this run and we got you know, like all of us,

we got a little spoiled with it. It's like we're gonna put out a single, it's gonna go to number one or top ten or top five. That started falling off a little bit towards the end of the country career, the radio career, i should say. But man, country music fans are loyal. And when you combine the country music fans from the eighties into the nineties with um our, you know, the country rock fans and the bluegrass fans from the seventies, that makes for a really, really great

fan fan base and a really loyal one. And we love those folks. They've stuck with us. Okay, So you're one of the few bands who sustained in excess of fifty years and had hits and success in different genres at different times. There are bands on the road that you know, had huge hits at the end of the sixties and seven. He's never had any other action and they're touring on that. Whereas you've had these multi successes in as I say, in different areas. Do you feel

that the Nati Guitty Dirt Band gets enough respect? Would you like a victory lap to impress people on success or you're just chugging along, little engine that could. As long as you can play and the fans come, you're happy. Honestly, We're so grateful to be the little engine that could and keep making records and have fans that allow us to do anything. And listen, man, we made some we've recorded some tunes or tracks, and I'm not going to mention that. I was just like, what were we thinking

back way back when? Some of them during the jug band era, some of them during the yacht rock era. But I'm really proud of everything, especially that we've done since you know, the early eighties till now um and the and the seventies records kind of leap frog and backwards. I I you know, our fans allow us the latitude to try anything, and I'm so grateful for that. Well, Jeff,

this has been amazing. You know, as I say, we really could have gone on for a couple more hours, going into detail about the second and third will the Circle be unbroken, records, the yacht rock era, and of course the temporary change of the name and the changing cast of characters. But I think we've come to the end of the feeling we've known for today. All right, man, thank you, Thank you so much. I want to thank you so much. And you really illuminated stuff, even for me.

You really made the southern California scene come alive. And I wasn't here until the seventies, and I've read about this stuff, but to talk to someone who was actually there and go to the paradox, etcetera. You really, you know these stories I've heard and haven't heard, you really illuminated. So in any event, I want to thank you so much. Thank you. Bob Gays talking about until next time. This is Bob left Sins