For nearly six decades, the three-time GRAMMY® Award-winning Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has entertained audiences with their top-shelf musicianship and timeless hits. Now the time has come for the band who has carried a torch for American country and roots music to say so long to the highways and byways they’ve crossed an unimaginable number of times throughout their career. On March 21st, 2024, the Dirt Band will kick off the first leg of their last traditionally scheduled gigs, ALL THE GOOD TIMES: The Farewell Tour. This isn’t goodbye forever, but it will be the last fans see of multi-city runs and long bus rides. These special shows will celebrate the music created by the legendary, yet ever-evolving NGDB. Many veteran bands trade on nostalgia, on replication of past glories, and on recycled emotions from younger, more carefree days. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band trades on a mix of reimagined classics and compelling newer works. The group formed in 1966 as a Long Beach, California jug band, scored its first charting single in 1967, and embarked on a selfpropelled ride through folk, country, rock ‘n’ roll, pop, blue- grass, and the amalgam now known as “Americana.” The first major hit came in 1971 with the epic “Mr. Bojangles,” which, along with insistent support from banjo master Earl Scruggs, opened doors in Nashville. Behind those doors were Earl Scruggs, Roy Acuff, Doc Watson, Mother Maybelle Carter, Jimmy Martin, and others who would collaborate on a multi-artist, multi-generational, three-disc 1972 masterpiece: Will the Circle Be Unbroken went triple Platinum, spawned two later volumes, and wound up in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Was this a cutting-edge combo or a group of revivalists? Was the goal rebellion or musical piety? Yes, to all these things. In the 1980s, the Dirt Band reeled off 15 straight Top 10 country hits, including chart-toppers “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream),” “Modern Day Romance,” and “Fishin’ in the Dark” (co-written by Jim Photoglo,…
