Sometime in 1991, John McEuen`s brother asked him when he was going to record his album.
What album? countered an irritated McEuen, the longtime, but no longer, banjo virtuoso of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
The album he ”should have done a year earlier,” his brother replied.
”I said, `What am I going to do, go into a recording studio without a record contract?` ” McEuen recalls now. ”Bill said, `You know as well as I do that, with or without a record contract, the process is the same: you record music and then get people to listen to it.`
”I thought about it and said, `OK, I think I can record now.` What I meant was, after I left the Dirt Band I didn`t feel qualified to record. I was depressed, which isn`t a good way to play the banjo.”
McEuen`s current Vanguard album, ”String Wizards,” more than demonstrates his impressive qualifications for making records. Betraying no hint of depression, it is an unqualified masterpiece, one of those rare experiences that glues a listener to the earphones for an entire set.
The collection is all the more striking for the fact that it exemplifies that riskiest of all kinds of packages, the ”instrumental album,” a form most major Nashville record companies tend to avoid like unknown songwriters. McEuen sent some ideas to Vanguard, the respected California folk label, after he saw difficulties in the Nashville music scene.
”Walking around town going, `Hey, anybody want any instrumentals?` I kept getting `Well, those aren`t being played,` ” he recalls. ”I said, `I know. That`s why there`s a perfect opportunity for them.`
”The prevailing Nashville attitude about instrumentals, you know, makes about as much sense as saying that if female singers are down to 18 percent of country radio airplay, we should just get all women off country radio. I mean, if they`re only 18 percent of what people want to listen to, they`re not very popular, right?
”My feeling is that, with so many country artists around today, radio stations need to broaden some of the music they`re playing. Instrumental music is real good for videos, you know. Film music traditionally has tended to be instrumental, so the audience is conditioned to that.”
His graying beard notwithstanding, the holder of these opinions is no out-of-touch hermit. To the contrary, the California-born and Colorado-based McEuen has been a significant player on the national and Nashville scenes for a quarter-century.
In on the making of big hits both pop and country, he-along with brother Bill, the Dirt Band`s first manager-was a major force in the conception of
”Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Vol. I,” a landmark 1972 Dirt Band project that became one of country music history`s landmark albums.
The question of what prompted his exit from the group five years ago gives McEuen pause. Plainly wishing to be gracious about a situation that became unpleasant, he finally indicates that the separation had something to do with his passion for instrumental music.
”My role in the band had been diminished by the group,” he says. ”I didn`t feel as valuable in the studio. They wouldn`t let me play any instrumentals on the albums anymore. And there was a recording that they used another banjo player on, which was devastating.
”The producers at the time had the power to do that. Here I was, president of a 20-year corporation, being told that this other (banjo)
player`s work would be `fine.` I said, `Maybe it`s fine with you, but I can`t stand going on the road for the next year having people come up to me and say, `Boy, I sure liked that banjo part.`
”That`s exactly what happened, too, and it was horrible.”
So McEuen, who for years had made lots of solo appearances as well as those with the Dirt Band, pulled his own plug and made the decision to leave. He says that in any group of people ”working together 25 hours a day,” there are going to be differences of opinion.
As a full-time solo act, he has concentrated on scoring films-including a National Geographic special on Alaska-and performing in ”different situations” that encourage spontaneity instead of the pat set of hits the Dirt Band`s shows usually entailed.
”I wanted to go out on the edge more,” McEuen puts it.
He is certainly out there on ”String Wizards,” which assembles some of Nashville`s finest musicians past and present.
They include ”special guest star on banjo” Earl Scruggs, other guest appearances by fiddlers Vassar Clements, Bobby Hicks, Byron Berline and Al Garth, Dobroist Josh Graves, dulcimer player David Schnaufer, flutist Bryan Savage, David Hoffner on synthesizer and percussionists Kenny Malone, Steve Duncan and Merel Bregante.
The bulk of the work, however, is handled by banjoist-guitarist McEuen and what he dubs The Wizard Band-mandolinist Sam Bush, Dobroist Jerry Douglas, fiddler Stuart Duncan, flat-pick guitarist David Grier and bassist Roy Huskey. ”I don`t mind references to the Dirt Band at all-that was a very proud part of my life, a lot of great times and records and all that stuff-but I would like to be known as a country entertainer/perform er who plays all these strings,” McEuen says.
” `String wizard` is the phrase I came up with, although it`s very hard for me to point myself out as that. But I had to find something to attach to my name so that it wasn`t `John McEuen, Dirt Band.` ”
The term he coined is dead-on accurate.
On the album, he leads his gifted cohorts through a diverse fare ranging from such old songs as Bill Monroe`s ”Tall Timber,” Roy Acuff`s ”Fireball Mail” and Flatt & Scruggs` ”Shuckin` The Corn” to such unlikely McEuen originals as ”Friday Night At Maybelle`s” and ”John`s WSM Radio Blues.”
Opening distinctively with McEuen`s ”Return To Dismal Swamp,” the package closes the same way 13 cuts later with none other than ”Stars And Stripes Forever,” and the whole constitutes some of the most deft and impeccably tasteful music to come out of Nashville.
Varied by skillful pacing and such inspired tricks as the incorporation of snatches of a staticky radio broadcast into ”John`s WSM Radio Blues,” it tellingly drives home the point that in the hands of masters instrumental music is anything but snooze background.
”I believe if you`re going to play an instrumental, there should be something to remember when it`s over,” McEuen says.
There`s something here to remember for a long time.
