Whether members of the audience at Nashville’s iconic Roman Auditorium came to hear Nitty Gritty Dirt Band play from their extensive lineup of hits or Bob Dylan tunes from their most recent album, Dirt Does Dylan, no one left the Mother Church disappointed on Friday night of Americana Music Festival.
Jeff Hanna, longtime front man of the band, was joined by veteran members Jimmy Fadden on drums and Bob Carpenter on keys and vocals. The band has brought on Hanna’s son Jaime Hanna on vocals and guitar, along with Jim Photoglo on bass and Ross Holmes switching out between fiddle and mandolin.
The band opened with a dose of Dylan, playing “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You” and “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” before shifting to Michael Martin Murphey’s “Cosmic Cowboy,” inviting the audience to “hoot” at appropriate points in the song.
Other Dylan classics were woven throughout the show, with Hanna’s son Jaime singing lead and featured on guitar on “Girl from the North Country” and “She Belongs to Me.”
Throughout the show, the band featured other Nashville singer-songwriters, including “The Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream)” written by Rodney Crowell for his father, along with his “Voila! An American Dream.”
Grammy and IBMA award-winning banjo player Alison Brown joined the band for the late John Prine’s “Grandpa Was a Carpenter,” from Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Volume Two. Hanna remarked that the last time they played the Ryman stage, Prine had been “right there.” He dedicated the song to “Handsome Johnny” who “always had the best time.”
Alison Brown also joined the band for a lively gospel number, “Take Me in the Lifeboat,” featuring banjo and fiddle breaks and concluding with the father and son Hannas arm in arm.
Hanna noted the pace of the song had his cardio up, joking about “old people working hard,” leading into another Dylan classic, “Forever Young,” a more apt description of Hanna, as he swapped out leads with Jaime.
Introducing the longest-standing members of the band, Hanna noted that he and Fadden had been playing together “since we were teenagers—back in the 1800s.” Fadden sang lead on Hank Williams’ “Honky Tonkin’” as he had on the original Will the Circle Be Unbroken. He also performed his song “”Working Man (Nowhere to Go)” inspired by Willie Nelson’s first Farm Aid.
They were joined by Larry Campbell, who often played with Dylan, and his wife, singer-songwriter Teresa Williams for Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released.” They transitioned to a crowd favorite “Mr. Bojangles,” the Jerry Jeff Walker classic NGDB introduced to the world in the late sixties. The crowd sang along as they moved from Bojangles to “Ripplin’ Waters,” as the band swapped out instrumental breaks.
Hanna said, “That was fun,” and as most of the band left the stage, he added, “They’re gonna go outside, smoke a cigarette, and talk about it.”
Hanna and Carpenter shared the stage, accompanied by a single guitar, as they sang, “Bless the Broken Road,” recorded by the band “back in the 1900s” and then enjoying success by Rascal Flats more recently. Fadden returned to stage to join them on harmonica, showcasing the the music of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band at its stripped-down best.
The full band returned to stage with no sign of slowing down, playing “Fishin’ in the Dark” and “Down at the Bayou Jubilee,” with Holmes interjecting a fiddle break of “Orange Blossom Special.”
The special guests also returned to the stage with Campbell carrying the opening lead on “Don’t Think Twice.” With the stage teeming with musical talent, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and guests closed with the ideal encore: “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” stopping abruptly before the closing measures to sing “The Weight,” then closing with the final lines “in the sky, Lord, in the sky.”
No one left disappointed.