Bob Carpenter, keyboardist of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, checks in with KGNU’s Greg Schultz ahead of their upcoming “All The Good Times” Farewell Tour performance at Denver’s Paramount Theater. The band has been active for 58 years and is known for its wide-ranging musical repertoire, including country, bluegrass, and hits like “Fishin’ in the Dark” and “Mr. Bojangles.” Carpenter discusses the band’s longevity, the current lineup, and their recent work, including the “Dirt Does Dylan” album, which reimagines Bob Dylan’s songs. The tour aims to cover the band’s extensive career, providing fans with a comprehensive musical experience (8/9/2024)
Greg Schultz: Alright folks, we’re going to bring up Bob Carpenter now from The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Bob, you with us?
Bob Carpenter: TGIF. Greg, how are you?
Greg Schultz: Good. Thanks for joining in. I do appreciate your call. Looking forward to your show on Sunday evening. Folks, I’m talking to Bob Carpenter and he is the keyboardist with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – three time Grammy winning Nitty Gritty Dirt Band formed in 1966. I just want to let you know, it was formed in my hometown of Long Beach California, so that’s pretty cool. I grew up in Long Beach and I know the band was started by Jeff Hanna back then. You guys have been on the road or playing for almost 60 years now.
Bob Carpenter: Well, we’re getting close.
Greg Schultz: Not quite 60, I know. Maybe you can tell us how long it’s been.
Bob Carpenter: It’s 58.
Greg Schultz: 58 and counting.
Bob Carpenter: Yep.
Greg Schultz: That’s a good thing. The counting part for sure.
Bob Carpenter: It’s still counting.
Greg Schultz: And you have a show Sunday night at the beautiful Paramount Theater. “All The Good Times”, Farewell Tour. Why don’t you tell the folks about the show, the tour, and what they can expect to hear Sunday night, because it’s going to be an extravaganza for sure.
Bob Carpenter: We’re doing everything – from the very first single the band put out, all the way up to a song off of our latest album, Dirt Does Dylan. Everything in between. We’re doing our country hits, we’re doing bluegrass. We’re doing just about everything.
We’re trying to reach into every decade of our career. We’re gonna play all the songs people expect to hear, “Fishing in the Dark”, “Bojangles”, stuff like that. This is the beginning of the end. We didn’t want to just disappear one day and everybody goes, what happened to them?
We’re taking this opportunity to tour around the country. And thanks, folks, for all the support over these years, because without our fans, we wouldn’t be doing this. So if people want to come see the band in their hometowns now’s the time to do it, because we’re not going to be going back to the same place again.
Greg Schultz: That’s fantastic. That’s a long time to be on the road and together. I think you’ve been with the band quite a long time. When did you join the band, exactly?
Bob Carpenter: I started playing on their records and I wrote a song or two that they recorded back in the middle 70s, and it’s been full time since 1980.
Greg Schultz: That’s fantastic. I’m a big fan personally. Of course, I grew up in that era of music – the 70s. Will The Circle be Unbroken, the original record. I just wanted to let folks know if they’re not familiar. Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Emmylou, the list goes on. That must be just amazing to go out and recreate those songs this many years later yet. They still resonate so great with the fans.
Bob Carpenter: It is, and it was fun a year ago last December. We went into the Ryman, and we got about 15, 20 people together, and we recreated all the songs from that album live on stage for two straight nights acoustic. It was really fun. We got a lot of guys from the younger generation to join us, and it’s really fun doing that music, yes.
Greg Schultz: Yeah, I saw a video of that, actually. I remember checking that out on YouTube or maybe a Facebook page at one time. I find, when you do these acoustic things, at least in my personal opinion, that it’s really fresh. And it almost seems new. I’m wondering, as a musician, does it resonate with you when you’re doing these tunes? And you do them quite often. Isn’t it pretty cool going acoustic and just sitting down, sitting around and doing them like you used to do them when you were a kid?
Bob Carpenter: Yeah, it’s great, and it’s easy, and it’s natural. It’s just the way it’s supposed to be, in a lot of ways.
Greg Schultz: Exactly.
Bob Carpenter: It’s the way music started before it evolved into all these different kinds of music and different kinds of electronic things.
Greg Schultz: Yeah, I like a guy and his guitar, to start with. I like all kinds of music, but I really resonate with what you guys have been doing forever, and like I said, a big fan. So can you just bring us up to date? Who’s currently in the group now? Can you give us the names of the members?
Bob Carpenter: Jeff Hanna, singing and playing guitars, playing drums and harmonica, who started the band. I’m playing keyboards and accordion and singing since the middle seventies, early eighties. Then we got Jim Photoglo who we’ve known for a long time. He’s been a friend of ours for about 30, 40 years. He wrote “Fishing in the Dark”. He’s playing bass. We’ve written songs with Jim on our albums over the years. We’ve known him for a long time. So he’s been with us since 2015, which is almost 10 years now. And then back in 2018, Jeff’s son Jamie joined the band singing and playing guitars. His next door neighbor, Ross Holmes, is playing fiddle and mandolin. Those guys got quite their own little track record going. Ross used to play with Warren Haynes, and Mumford & Sons, and Jamie played with the Mavericks and things like that. So this guy’s been out there doing it for a long time. We’ve always wanted to have Jamie join us, and Jeff certainly did because it’s his son. And the opportunity presented itself. So Jamie showed up. He said, hey, I got an extra neighbor who plays really great. So he brought him along.
Greg Schultz: God, that’s fantastic. And it’s nice to have that legacy in the band. It’s great to see youngsters play with their parents, their father, their mother, and to rise to those heights and more than hold their own, because I know he can really rip it on guitar. That’s fantastic, man. That’s a great story.
Bob Carpenter: The great thing about Jamie was he’s been out on and off the tour bus since he was just a little guy. First music he ever heard was Dirt Band music. He’s heard every song on every album we’ve ever recorded, so it wasn’t like he had to learn anything.
Greg Schultz: Oh, man, that’s fantastic. Listen, I won’t keep you too much longer. So on Sunday night, this is gonna be a great show. “All The Good Times” Farewell Tour, although like I said, it’s not necessarily the end. I know the folks in Denver are looking forward to seeing this show and we’re just happy and proud to have you on this morning and to talk about everything else. Are you guys going to do some acoustic stuff? It sounds like you’re going to just run the gamut.
Bob Carpenter: Yeah, we won’t necessarily set up around one microphone. But, we can get all our acoustic instruments. We got accordions, mandolins, fiddles, harmonicas, acoustic guitars. But we won’t be doing the traditional bluegrass thing where we all get up and stand around one microphone.
Greg Schultz: It’s nice to know that you guys are going to cover a lot of area, old and new. One last thing – that Dylan thing you guys did. I know that Jeff Hanna was a big Dylan fan growing up, does that have something to do with circling back and just wanting to honor Bob Dylan, or was there more than what I just said?
Bob Carpenter: We were all Dylan fans, and on Circle, we did “You Ain’t Gone Nowhere”, with Norman and McGuinn. That actually charted for us, that was on the radio. We’ve been around Dylan all our lives. We haven’t gone in the studio with this configuration, so at the beginning of 2020 in March, we went, let’s go in and do a real quick album in a couple weeks. Let’s find an artist, and re-imagine their music. We thought, who has a deeper catalog than Dylan? Nobody. We thought that what we did would fit his music, and we have a lot of harmonies, which he didn’t have a lot of on his record, so we thought we could do that. And we got in for about a week and cut some stuff, went on the road, and then all went home with the pandemic and didn’t get back together again for a year. So that album actually took a year and a half or something like that to finish. And that’s how that ended up.
Greg Schultz: It’s a great album. Like I said, we all love Dylan. You go in there and you start playing these Dylan tunes and you’re going, wow, which ones do we do? There’s so many.
Bob Carpenter: We started out with about 50 or 60, I think, and narrowed it down. We cut some stuff that just didn’t work and we cut some stuff that did. The other thing is, I think there’s some people that aren’t familiar with Dylan’s songwriting and how great his songs are because their ear doesn’t catch the format of his voice and his singing and sometimes his words are hard to understand. So we figured that there would be some value, too, to doing things our way that might attract more people to his music who might not be familiar with it.
Greg Schultz: Wow, that’s a good approach. I like that. And you’re exactly right. Sometimes the words can be a little hard, unless you have headphones and you’re a deep music listener. Doing a little tribute to Bob Dylan is admirable for sure. Listen, again guys, we do appreciate you giving us a call and checking in and we wish you guys the best down the road. Have a great show Sunday evening at the Paramount Theatre. You want to make sure you make that happen. Bob, thanks for calling in. It’s really great to talk to you.
Bob Carpenter: Thanks Greg, appreciate talking to you, see you a mile high.
Greg Schultz: You guys take care of yourselves and be safe on the road out there.
Bob Carpenter: Thank you, bye.
