The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was on a tour of Europe with Johnny Cash a couple of years ago when Cash`s wife, June Carter, asked them a question they had heard before:
”Are you guys ever going to do another `Circle` album?”
Carter was alluding, of course, to the famous 1971 triple-disk LP ”Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” which the Dirt Band recorded along with various traditional country singers and musicians.
A daring project in which a group of California hippies invited short-haired comparative oldsters-including Carter`s late, great Mother Maybelle-to record with them during the polarized Vietnam era, the resultant LP attained platinum sales and became recognized as one of the finest and most important country LPs of all time.
So maybe the best answer to Carter`s question was another question: How could the Dirt Band follow a triumph like that?
”To try to re-create that first album I think would be impossible,”
says Dirt Band guitarist and founding member Jeff Hanna. ”It stands on its own and will always be what it is, which I think is a remarkable achievement in itself.”
Instead of trying to ”re-create” it, therefore, the Dirt Band has created a Circle II album, due in record stores Monday, retaining all the acoustic flavor and even some of the personnel of the first effort, but adding contemporary sizzle with some of the hottest young acoustic musicians in the business as well as some glittery mainstream names.
The result is a Circle II that may not-in fact, given the changed tenor of the times, could not-pack the sociological impact of Circle I, but sports even more musical muscle. And its core is a Dirt Band that is 17 years better than it was in 1971.
”Gosh, let`s hope we`re a better band than we were in 1971,” Hanna muses with a laugh. ”We have practiced a little between now and then.”
They had been reluctant to do Circle II for many years, Hanna says, because doing one sounded like the kind of thing many acts reflexively use to try to revive flagging careers. If the Dirt Band members-Hanna, Jimmie Fadden, Bob Carpenter and Jim Ibbotson-tackled the daunting prospect of making Circle II at all, they wanted to do it in a tasteful way at an appropriate time.
Such a time began coming around four or five years ago. After a long career as a primarily pop-folk act, the Dirt Band successfully ”went country” to exploit the main outlet left to their music by `80s radio. Two Dirtmen, Hanna and Fadden, even became full-time Nashvillians.
Then, in Europe, June Carter asked them that question, and they got to thinking.
”We told her, `We`d love to do a Circle II someday-and if we do, we`d sure love to have the Carter Family and Mr. Cash be involved in it,` ” Hanna recalls.
”So, in a way, I think Johnny Cash was the first artist we talked to about it. Then we mentioned it to Emmylou Harris and Levon Helm, and the excitement of everybody we talked to kept reinforcing our interest in doing the album. Emmylou said, `If anybody should do something like that (a sequel to a previous album), it should be you guys.` ”
Finally, they started assembling the musical equivalent of a cast of thousands. Back came a few guests from the first one-the Grand Ole Opry`s venerable Roy Acuff, traditional bluegrass singer Jimmy Martin, ace fiddler Vassar Clements, banjo virtuoso Earl Scruggs and guitarist (now also producer) Randy Scruggs. About the only performer still alive who was on Circle I and isn`t on Circle II is folk guitarist-singer Doc Watson, who declined by saying he thought he had made his contribution the first time.
Singers participating with the Dirt Band for the first time on Volume II- in addition to the Carters, Cash, Harris and Helm-include Highway 101`s Paulette Carlson, contemporary-country star Rosanne Cash, folkish pop stars John Denver and John Hiatt, Desert Rose Band leader and ex-member of the Byrds Chris Hillman, pop star Bruce Hornsby, ex-Byrd Roger McGuinn, contemporary-country singer Michael Martin Murphey, the contemporary country group New Grass Revival, folksinger John Prine and country star Ricky Skaggs.
New guest musicians include guitarist Chet Atkins, New Grass Revival`s mandolinist Sam Bush and banjoist Bela Fleck, dobro guitarist Jerry Douglas, standup bassist Roy Huskey Jr., ex-Eagle and Dirtman guitarist Bernie Leadon, ex-Dirt banjoman John McEuen and pianist Buck White of The Whites.
In Randy Scruggs` recording studio, bringing together these highly diverse elements produced sparks that often turned into musical
conflagrations. It also produced a lot of moments that were chilling or humorous. Whereas the 1971 Dirt Band sessions were noticeably taut with tension between two ideologies, the December, 1988-January, 1989, ones seemed relaxed and ecstatic.
For instance, when ex-Byrds Hillman and McGuinn got together for a first run-through of their duet on the album`s first single, the Bob Dylan song
”You Ain`t Goin` Nowhere,” Dirtman Jim Ibbotson listened to them sing it through and then responded in mock naivete:
”Hey, you guys are good!”
During these sessions, in marked contrast to 1971, Ibbotson was so self-assured that he kept crossword puzzles on his mikestand throughout and worked them at slack moments.
During final playbacks of ”You Ain`t Goin` Nowhere” (as superfiddler Mark O`Connor was exulting, ”Am I a shuffling devil or what?”), Ibbotson was overheard asking fellow Dirtman and crossword freak Bob Carpenter, ”Was Mel Ott a Giant?”
Jeff Hanna says many moments from the 1988-89 sessions stand out in his mind.
”The second day of recording specific performers was (devoted to) Johnny Cash,” he recalls. ”It was a couple of days after Roy Orbison passed away, and the Cash family and the Orbisons were close, so he (Cash) was pretty down. ”But I think he appreciated having something to distract him from that, so he got right into it. His attitude was very `up` once we got in there and started playing.
”And the Carter ladies (Helen, June and Anita) were great. One of them was sick, and they were apologizing all through it for their voices. I couldn`t believe it. I said, `You`re singing like angels.` ”
Hanna adds that one of the eerier moments involved June Carter.
She didn`t know one of her sisters had brought their mother`s guitar to the session in case it could be of use. After the Carters, Cash and the Dirt Band had recorded a couple of takes of ”Life`s Railway To Heaven,” with Randy Scruggs playing Mother Maybelle`s instrument, June came into the control room and said she had been chilled by the instrumental break in the song.
”I heard mother`s guitar,” she said. She was then told that the instrument Scruggs had been playing was, indeed, her mother`s.
Other dramatic moments that come to Hanna`s mind include:
– Listening to Emmylou Harris perform a striking new song titled ”Mary Danced With Soldiers” and then sing a duet with Bob Carpenter on one titled
”Riding Alone.” ”There was enough playing going on, so I just sat and watched and got goosebumps. Right to my left was Chet Atkins playing the guitar.”
– All but being blown out of his seat by Jimmy Martin`s rendition of
”Sitting On Top Of The World.” ”It was 10:30 in the morning, which is not the easiest time for most musicians to play music, but that woke everybody up. It was the first cut (on Circle II) that Vassar Clements played on, and having Vassar and Jimmy back in the studio again was like tabasco sauce. Things heated up in a hurry.”
– Finally getting to record with Ricky Skaggs, with whom the Dirt Band has done a lot of shows over the years. ”First off, it was a real lesson in harmony-singing. The guy can really do some stuff. He`s a genius.”
– Seeing 85-year-old Roy Acuff singing a verse of ”Will The Circle Be Unbroken.” ”That was moving.”
Despite the appearance of more mainstream-oriented artists, such as Hornsby, Rosanne Cash, Hiatt, Paulette Carlson, Denver, Hillman and McGuinn and New Grass Revival, Hanna notes that the entire two-disk LP is acoustic.
”We started off with sort of that intention,” he says, ”but I figured at some point we`d probably pull out the old Telecaster as well as some electric bass.
”But I think after we heard the results of the first bunch of sessions, we thought it was really great. I hadn`t played much acoustic guitar in about 10 years, and it really was fun. I`m sort of recommitted to that instrument.” The only one of the 20 cuts that was overdubbed was the title song, which featured the entire cast of singers and players and had to be assembled piece by piece because, Hanna says, it was ”logistically impossible” to get them all together at one time.
Hanna has come out of the Circle II experience committed to the idea of spontaneous recording wherever possible.
”It showed us the potential for this way of making records,” he says.
”I think the main thing is to put as much of the music as possible down
(on tape) while you`re actually playing it (rather than overdubbing track by track). Leave a few of the warts in there. Some of that stuff makes music interesting, I think.”
This point was glibly underscored by one of the brief studio conversations included to add to the special nature of both this album and its famous predecessor.
Just before John Denver and the Dirt Band begin what turned out to be the final take of ”And So It Goes (With Everything But Love),” musician Jerry Douglas says, ”This is practice, right?”
”It`s all practice,” Denver replies.
