ANNOUNCER: This program is brought to you in part by the City of Danville's Office of Economic Development and Tourism.

And by Santa Cruz Guitars... and Santa Cruz Guitar Strings.

Additional support provided by these sponsors.

Hello, and welcome to The Life Of A Musician , recorded live in the beautiful city of Danville, Virginia.

Tonight's episode is recorded from the Gerst Haus.

Let's step inside and listen.

-Hello, and welcome to The Life Of A Musician.

I'm your host, Brandon Lee Adams, and today, we're extremely excited and very honored to have with us a country and folk music legend, one of the founding members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt band, Mr. John McEuen.

And folks, honestly, we were having so much fun visiting and talking that we couldn't think of any other thing to do than just to start right in the middle of the music and hope you like it.

[lively music] -♪ I am a pilgrim ♪ ♪ And a stranger ♪ ♪ Traveling through This wearisome land ♪ ♪ I've got a home ♪ ♪ In that yonder city Good Lord ♪ ♪ And it's not Not made by hand ♪ ♪ I got a father And a sister ♪ ♪ Who have gone to that sweet home ♪ ♪ I will pray that I ♪ ♪ Can go and see them Good Lord ♪ ♪ Over on that other shore Pilgrim ♪ [lively country music] ♪ And when I go down To that river of Jordan ♪ ♪ Just to bathe my weary soul ♪ ♪ If I could touch but ♪ ♪ Just the hem of His garment Good Lord ♪ ♪ I believe He can make me whole ♪ ♪ Now when I'm dead laying in my coffin ♪ ♪ All of my friends-- ♪ ♪ Both of my friends all gather round ♪ ♪ They will say that he's ♪ ♪ He's laying there sleeping Good Lord ♪ ♪ Sweet peace His soul is found ♪ ♪ I'm a pilgrim And a stranger ♪ ♪ Traveling through This wearisome land ♪ You know, it's not such a wearisome land.

But there was a time it was.

It wasn't here.

You know, the Nitty Gritty Dirt band was the first American group to go to Russia, 1977.

We played 28 sold-out shows, and it was crazy.

It was really a lot of fun.

We went over so well that they didn't let another American group in for seven years.

And I wanted to hear a Brezhnev joke while I was over there, but it was illegal to tell a joke about the Soviet leader.

You know, three-year jail sentence if you make a joke about Brezhnev.

And well, I got one guy to tell me a joke.

He had to do it in the middle of traffic standing on the median between the two road lanes.

And he said: Brezhnev was a leader of the Soviet Union and he goes out on the lake with a beautiful girl in a canoe and he falls out of canoe.

He goes down once, twice, three times.

The third time, the girl grabs his arm and pulls him into safety.

And he says to her, "My darling, you saved the leader of the Soviet Union, the greatest country on Earth.

I grant you any one wish you want."

And she said, "Open the Soviet borders to free travel for 24 hours", and he said, "So, you want to be alone with me".

[♪♪♪] Here we go.

♪ I am a pilgrim and a stranger ♪ ♪ Traveling through This wearisome land ♪ Damn.

[♪♪♪] Did you get the last chord?

-Ah, look, I got the last chord at the last minute.

-Yeah.

-I got to play it low enough so you can't hear I made a mistake.

-Well, Brandon, when the Nitty Gritty Dirt band started-- This is The Life Of A Musician .

I guess it's my life.

-Yeah, exactly.

-You've been doing the show a while.

We weren't doing pop music or anything.

It was a jug band, you know, we were playing playing the well-played places like the Ashgrove, which is now called The Improv in LA.

We were doing songs like: ♪ Washington at Valley Forge ♪ ♪ Bitter cold But up spoke George ♪ ♪ Vo-doe-de-o vo-doe-de-o doe ♪ ♪ Crazy words crazy tune ♪ ♪ All that George Could croon and swoon was ♪ ♪ Vo-doe-de-o vo-doe-de-o doe ♪ ♪ On his ukulele daily ♪ ♪ He would strum Beedle um bum ♪ ♪ Dancing and prancing ♪ ♪ And then he'd holler "Red Hot Mama" ♪ ♪ Crazy words crazy tune ♪ ♪ All that George Could croon and swoon was ♪ ♪ Vo-doe-de-o vo-doe-de-o doe ♪ And it didn't seem like it was going to be the path to stardom.

That got us in the movie Paint Your Wagon though.

Then, after the fourth album-- in 1968, we did the film, Paint Your Wagon.

And then we did the fifth album.

We broke up after Paint Your Wagon.

This is part of the life of a musician.

You start a band, it's gonna break up.

-You painted too many wagons.

-And, but six months later, me and one of the other guys were watching a band in Huntington Beach and said-- that group was Poco, and they were just starting, and they were hot.

Randy Meisner, Jim Messina.

And it was really good.

We said, "Let's get the Dirt Band back together."

And we did; and we made Uncle Charlie and his Dog Teddy, which had the ability for me to fulfill my dream as a musician, which was to get traditional instruments: banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, open tunings on the guitars and things, to get those on the records that were gonna be on pop radio.

-Right.

Well, it was a big thing.

It was a huge influence to so many musicians, and you kind of made it mainstream.

So, now all this stuff everybody was doing in small little speakeasies or on back porches or at Sunday picnics, now this is on Billboard, you know, charting radio.

-Yeah.

What we were competing against was like: [♪♪♪] You know, people knew, "Oh, that's the Doors.

Yeah, that's good."

Or sometimes this would come on the radio like: [♪♪♪] And people knew John Fogerty was going to start singing.

-Yeah, exactly.

-And here we are coming along with: ♪ Washington at Valley Forge ♪ And it wasn't-- we weren't trying to-- we wanted to be liked.

But we weren't trying to figure out what it is they're going to like.

We tried to do something new.

And that's how Some of Shelly's Blues, and House at Pooh Corner, and Mr. Bojangles came along.

And they were on that fifth album.

-It was a pretty magical project.

-Yeah, it was a really good album; it had some bluegrass on it.

And that led to that, Will the Circle Be Unbroken album?

We'll get to that later.

-Well, it's-- there's a million-and-one things.

Absolutely, a million-and-one things that I can think about when you're not sitting next to me.

And then when you're right here next to me, the only thing I can think of is: What was that inspiration?

What was that thing that said, I'm going to do this, and I don't care what it takes.

So what was that for you?

-I was playing the banjo and the mandolin, it was one of the only things I could do.

I wasn't really good as a guitar player compared to all our guitar players out there.

-You seem to be doing all right to me now.

-Well, yeah, but I know what I know.

And you can play songs you don't know like you wrote them and that's really impressive to me.

And-- but I needed to find a way to get the banjo and the mandolin on radio.

-Right.

- Bojangles had mandolin.

-Hmm-mm.

-Dance Little Jean, a Dirt Band hit, that was a guitar.

Our first hit, Buy for Me the Rain, was five-string banjo with a mute on it.

And then next was Shelly's Blues , which was banjo frailing.

And that was one of my real pursuits.

And the field was pretty open.

There weren't a lot of banjo pickers out there with access to a record deal, and we had one because of my- My brother was our manager, and photographer, record producer.

And Bill McEuen, thank you.

He's no longer with us.

But he's with me.

-Yeah.

-And... Bill did a bunch of fantastic things.

He designed the Uncle Charlie album.

-Right.

-The cover and everything to make it go, "Wow, what's that?"

If you didn't know the band, you at least were interested in this album with this old man on it.

Uncle Charlie and his dog Teddy.

What's that about?

Oh, it's got a band in it, you know.

The Dirt Band I'm forever grateful to because it gave me a format to do my eclectic things: play a bluegrass tune, play a folky guitar tune, play the mandolin, play the lap slide.

I did a lot of the lap slide work, and an acoustic guitar sometimes.

That was a wonderful opportunity that we worked all through the '80s.

I left in the '90s and came back in 2002 with the reissue-- remastering of Will the Circle Be Unbroken album.

I remastered that and put out the 30th year anniversary, and that was an exciting time.

Getting back in the band, that was, old friends, kind of.

-Right, right.

Hey, that's bands.

Bands are family.

-And, nah.

We were friends and didn't know it.

-Yeah.

-But... it was what drove me to do it.

-That's, you know-- what was-- to me, it sounds like it's just the freedom.

You had so much freedom to express yourself however it worked.

-I guess my brother was one reason that was allowed or happened.

Because it was when somebody says, "What do you want to do on this song?"

Well, I don't know, maybe this, you know.

-Right.

-Or "Oh, I've got an idea for this song."

"Well, let's go record it."

You know, and we would just-- I don't think anybody-- I don't think very many people really know what makes hits.

-Right.

-You know, they record songs out of a bunch of angst or sorrow or happiness, and it's hard to get back to that time to create all of that energy that made that song happen, if they happen to be the writer.

Maybe that's why so many groups have one or two or three hits.

-Right.

- Because they... they run out.

-So, you're talking about just some of the amazing stuff that you have done in your career.

I think one of the coolest things that you've done is playing with Earl Scruggs.

-Uh-huh.

I think so too.

I always-- from the first time of seeing Earl, live at the Grand Ole Opry.

My brother and I made a trip out to Nashville.

We were on a business trip for my dad.

I'm 18-19 years old.

And the reason for the trip was so we could get to the Grand Ole Opry in 1965.

You know, when there's-- couldn't-- didn't know if it was even running still.

There was no internet or anything.

And we got there on a sold-out Saturday night.

I couldn't get in.

And we went over by the north windows.

And I looked in.

I said, "Bill, Lester and Earl are on stage."

-Wow.

-And right there Lester Flatt goes, "We'd like to bring out Maybelle Carter, Mama Maybelle Carter to do the Wildwood Flower."

-Wow.

-And the place went nuts.

And I said to my brother, "I gotta meet those people someday.

I want to record with them," you know.

That was-- that was six years in the future.

-Right.

-And I had no idea.

There wasn't a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band yet.

And... and it happened.

Strangely enough, it happened.

-It's one of those amazing, fortuitous moments, you know, but you worked hard.

You didn't-- it just didn't fall out the sky.

I mean, you put the effort and the time and the energy into making that happen.

-Well, yeah, I wanted to start a band.

Jeff wanted to start a band.

Les wanted to start a band, everybody.

We got a band going at McCabe's guitar shop.

-Yeah.

-And I moved in the first couple months, and we made our first record deal and did Washington at Valley Forge and a bunch of other stuff.

Our first important job was at the Improv opening for Merle Travis.

Did 10 days with him.

That was in 1966.

Boy.

I was the oldest one in the band.

I was 20 years old.

And I'm not 20 now.

-There's not a lot of 20-year-olds who can say that that's where they were at 20.

-One thing that was told to me when I started playing was, if you can't play Red Wing-- An old Indian, that's what we called Woody.

He was a Choctaw from Oklahoma.

He worked for my father, and he said, "If you can't play Red Wing, you don't know music."

And-- you know Red Wing?

-Yeah, yeah.

-Yeah?

-I'm gonna do my best to-- It's a little intimidating playing Red Wing next to you.

-Let's do Red Wing and then you go into Soldier's Joy.

-I will do my best.

-We'll see what I can get through.

[strumming] Yeah.

[♪♪♪] Oh, yeah.

[♪♪♪] Play.

[♪♪♪] Oh, yeah.

[♪♪♪] -I have to admit, John, that's probably the first time I've gone through that particular medley and my nerves are a little bit-- -Me too.

-Whoo!

How did I do that?

So that's something I can ask, like a musician-type question to somebody.

How do you handle it when it's the nerves, or you're nervous?

-When I know I'm gonna make a mistake, I don't play.

-Okay.

-And I don't always catch it.

-Oh.

-Gary Scruggs used to say to me, "I like it when you play yourself into a corner."

You know, when I get somewhere and I was messing up, so just starting to mess up because what you play to get out of it, is better than what you intended.

-Oh.

-It's like, well, good.

I'm glad that happened.

But Gary Scruggs was a good friend.

-Wow.

And you know, great lineage there.

All kinds of talent in that family.

-Yeah.

-But that's sound advice, sound advice I'd need to think on a little bit more myself.

When I see those corners starting to happen, I just put on the brakes and think, "Oh, man, don't do it."

But that's really-- that's great advice for young musicians out there.

Do you have any other advice?

-Advice to musicians is always from me, I say, "Enjoy what you do.

And don't worry about making money because if you're really good at what you're doing, it will come eventually."

But it may not come while you're trying to develop.

So, have some form of work.

Have something that brings you money but doesn't take all your time.

Go think about your music.

Watch the 8 Mile , the Eminem movie.

He was a guy that grew up in a horrible situation, and he had two jobs so he could make enough money to make his first demo.

-Right.

-His friends were like, "Want to want to go party, man?"

"No, I got a job.

I'm working."

You know.

Read the Flatt and Scruggs biography and how they traveled around by car.

Or Keith Urban.

He played under a bridge in Australia.

He lived under a bridge.

-Yeah.

-Jewel flew from Anchorage to Chicago and started yodeling on the street.

Somebody handed her a guitar and said, "You ought to write a song with us."

So she wrote that first hit.

And so, just go after it.

Nobody says you can't but you.

-Exactly.

-And at the same time, study some of the music business because otherwise everything you make, somebody else will get the money.

But not if you're Taylor Swift.

She-- and Dolly Parton, and Kenny Rogers, you know, they knew what they were getting into.

-That's really, really great advice and things that I wish I would have known as a younger musician.

John, I want to say thank you so very much for making the drive and taking the time to come down here and impart your talent and your wisdom.

And we're looking forward to the next episode that you're on.

-Well, it's nice to see all you people out there that are watching.

And... be good to see you on the road sometime.

I'm out with my band, The Circle Band, I'm calling it.

It's John Cable and Les Thompson, two previous Dirt Band members, and Matt Cartsonis, and we go out and do a show.

-Yeah, and it's a fantastic show.

John, thank you so very much for coming all this way down here.

-You're welcome.

-Thank you for sharing your wisdom.

Thank you for sharing your advice and your talent.

-Yeah, thank you.

-And folks, thank you very much for joining us on The Life Of A Musician, and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode and please be well.

[♪♪♪] -There you go.

[♪♪♪] Yeah.

[♪♪♪] There you go.

[♪♪♪] There you go.

[♪♪♪] [ending notes] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for being a part of our show.

We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of The Life Of A Musician .

[♪♪♪] This program is brought to you in part by the City of Danville's Office of Economic Development and Tourism.

And by Santa Cruz Guitars and Santa Cruz Guitar Strings.

Additional support provided by these sponsors.

[♪♪♪]