Keeping Their Wit About Them

In one of those rare moments of onstage candor by a musician, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s singer-bassist Jimmy Ibbotson proclaimed to the faithful gathered Friday evening at the Cerritos Performing Arts Center, “We used to have huge gaps between successes. Well, we’re in one of those gaps right now.”

He was quick to add, “but fear not.”

A sound assessment because despite its current commercial slump, the quartet’s creative drive remains unflappable. Like skilled craftsmen, Ibbotson, vocalist-guitarist Jeff Hanna, drummer-harpist Jimmie Fadden and keyboardist-vocalist Bob Carpenter continue to ply their trade with workmanlike efficiency and a self-deprecating sense of humor.

Relaxed and engaging, the Dirt Band was warmly conversational throughout the evening. Perhaps the best line of the night was when Ibbotson, remarking on the divorce histories of all four band members, told the audience: “We are a vacant lot of losers up here.” He then asked: “How many of you women out there have been married to one of us at one time?”

Failed marriages notwithstanding, these guys still can get hearts pounding.

During the first of a two-night engagement celebrating its 30th anniversary--the Long Beach-bred jug band debuted at the Paradox in Orange in 1966--the quartet played a richly rewarding retrospective of its appealing mix of pop, folk, bluegrass and country-rock.

Besides performing still-hummable versions of its signature hit songs (“An American Dream,” “Buy for Me the Rain,” Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles”) and some lesser-known gems (“Stand a Little Rain,” “Cosmic Cowboy”), the group added to the homecoming atmosphere by welcoming back an old friend.

*

A founding member and string man extraordinaire, John McEuen left the Dirt Band in 1986 to score films and pursue solo projects. But he has said recently how much he misses his pals. During an opening set with his own band, the String Wizards, and a mini-reunion with the Dirt Band, he sure played as though that were true.

His powerful presence and skills lent spirit, humor, and some darn fine pickin’ on banjo, guitar and mandolin to the proceedings.

The silver-haired, bearded McEuen joined his former mates after Fadden’s wild harmonica solo on “El Harpo” pumped up the less-than-capacity but adoring crowd. With McEuen in tow for the set’s remaining nine numbers, the quintet reached back to play some tunes from deep in the vaults, including a bluegrass-flavored reading of Kenny Loggins’ “Santa Rosa”--which dates back to the Dirt Band’s first release, 1970’s “Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy” (unfortunately, now out of print).

The 25-song program was capped by a wonderfully collaborative rendition of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” a spirited jam that also featured two other members of McEuen’s band, his guitar-playing 20-year-old son, Jonathan, and fiddler Phil Salazar. When an energized McEuen busted his banjo strings, he fittingly set the instrument aside, picked up his fiddle and, like a true stringed wizard, carried on.

In a charming, cordial opening set, the chatty McEuen and his five-piece band proved captivating in their own right.

Mixing early Dirt Band material and songs drawn from his three solo albums on Vanguard Records, McEuen was at his best during a frenzied jam titled “Dixie Hoedown” and two sparkling instrumentals, “Go Lightly in the Night” and “Moonlight Dancing,” the latter introduced as “what you might hear if a bluegrass band got stuck in Brazil.”