Santa Ana Gig Brings the Dirt Band Full Circle

Back in 1972, pop music history was made when those brash upstarts in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band walked into a Nashville recording studio alongside Mother Maybelle Carter, Roy Acuff, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Merle Travis and other legends of country music.

The three-record album that resulted, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” shattered many of the us-versus-them attitudes that separated rock musicians and the Nashville Establishment.

But 17 years later, when the Dirt Band members decided it was time for “Will the Circle Be Unbroken--Volume 2,” they returned to the studio not as country-music outsiders but as respected members of that very genre.

“So much water’s gone under the bridge since the first ‘Circle,’ ” said founding member Jeff Hanna, 42, in a recent phone conversation from Nashville. “So much has changed with all the new players, like Jerry Douglas and Mark O’Connor, that it just seemed as though the time was ripe.”

The “Circle” sequel, released in May, is another communal effort among traditional and contemporary country musicians such as Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, John Denver, Douglas, O’Connor and numerous others. Only the context has changed.

“It has a lot (fewer) sociological implications than the first album did--what with the Vietnam War and all the social unrest (going on then)--and I’m glad that some of the barriers of those days have been trampled. This time around, it’s the celebration of a bunch of people getting together and just making music.”

Hanna and his Dirt Band cohorts--Jimmie Fadden, Jimmy Ibbotson and Bob Carpenter--will undoubtedly draw from both “Circle” albums when they visit their old turf for shows Monday and Tuesday at the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana, just a few miles from the small club in Orange where the group played its first show in 1966.

Originally known as the Illegitimate Jug Band (one that briefly listed Jackson Browne as a member), the motley little group of Long Beach buskers first got together to play jug band music--complete with washboard, tambourines and banjos.

“We were like a jug band that played some folk rock--with some bluegrass influences too, because a couple of the guys came from that background,” Hanna said.

“We had quite a following, and we had a lot of fun. But when it came time to make records, we weren’t fortunate enough, I guess, to find a producer who knew how to put jug band music on an album and make it into a hit. So we recorded a country-rock (single) called ‘Buy for Me the Rain.’

“Well, that became sort of weird, because people’d come to see us, we’d play our jug band set and then we’d do ‘Buy for Me the Rain.’ It was definitely schizophrenic. But, as time went by, we got a little more serious about the music and a little less serious about the comedy.”

Not quite serious enough, apparently, since for a while it appeared that the Dirt Band might not last.

“Yeah,” recalled Hanna with a laugh, “after we became weary veterans--two whole years of making records, that is--we did a date with Poco. Well, Poco was so good, what they were playing was so fresh--and we were so tired of what we were doing--that we broke up.

“I went to work with Linda Ronstadt, and one of other the guys went and sold clothes. But I’m glad we broke up then, instead of later, because we kind of got it out of our system. Several months down the road, we decided to re-form, but to play country rock, because we realized it was something that we really loved--it just felt very natural.”

By the early ‘70s, when Hanna and the other band members moved to Colorado, the Dirt Band ranked, along with Poco and the Flying Burrito Brothers, as one of the pre-eminent country rock bands. Then came “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” which featured the Dirt Band performing such classics as “Orange Blossom Special” and “I Saw The Light” with some of their country-music idols.

“It was incredible,” Hanna said. “We got a chance to play with all these guys who were our heroes when we were starting out.”

It was also the beginning of an era in which electric country rock crossed over easily into the pop market, in part because of the eclecticism of FM radio programming. The “Circle” album was successful with both pop and the rock audience.

“Yeah, it was a great time,” Hanna said. “Country-rock was something that you heard on FM radio all the time,” Hanna said. “On any given day, you could hear a country-rock record followed by a Cream record, followed by a traditional record.”

Hanna grunted unhappily: “Then those radio consultants came along and tightened everything up. So, around the time that AOR (album-oriented radio) was coined, they quit playing country-rock.”

The result was a period of transition for the Dirt Band. “We were floundering around,” Hanna said. “At one point, we decided that country-rock wasn’t working. So we hired a sax player and got a little more slick, a little more pop for a couple of years. That resulted in two hit singles in 1981--’Make a Little Magic’ and ‘An American Dream.’ The funny thing is both those records were actually country-rock, but they were hits.

“Around ‘81, we did a real rock ‘n’ roll album, ‘Jealousy.’ But our country-rock fans hated it, and the rock fans thought we were too country. Then our new manager, Chuck Morris, pointed out that country radio was playing the kind of music we used to play.”

The idea of shifting their energies toward country music was a natural. “A lot of country-rock fans have now become country-music fans. And the older, traditional country fans already liked us because of what we did on the first ‘Circle’ album. So, basically, we’d already passed the acid test. We were a country music act.”

Since the mid ‘80s, the group has put together a string of more than a dozen Top 10 country hits.

The Dirt Band’s performances, however, reach beyond the recent success of their country material to survey most of their colorful history. “We’ll do our hits, of course, especially leaning on the ones that are more fun to do. The set covers everything from ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ to our current things. . . ,” Hanna said.

And that’s all right with Hanna.

“Even during our down times, we always made a living,” Hanna said. “Not necessarily a good living, but a living. And we did it by playing the music we wanted to play. With any kind of luck, we can keep right on doing the same thing for the next 23 years.”

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band plays Monday and Tuesday at 7 and 10 p.m. at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 1580 Brookhollow Drive, Santa Ana. Tickets: $28.50. Information: (714) 549-1512.