Bob Carpenter refers to himself and the two founding members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band as the “OG.”
No, not the “original gangstas”
Old guys.
An unapologetic reference to the fact the trio are all sliding into the back end of their 70s.
The idea of being on the road 200 days a year, something the legendary roots-Americana band has done for most of its 58 years, hasn’t been appealing for some time now.
So, in March, the band set out on its final road trip.
“All the Good Times: The Farewell Tour” will wind its way throughout the country over the next year or more; it pulls into Fox Tucson Theatre on Sunday, Aug. 18.
“We’re going to take it easy and we’re going to visit all these places once and ease into our 60th anniversary (in 2026) and that will be it,” Carpenter said during a phone call from his Southern California home last week. “This is the beginning of the end. We are letting people know that if we come to your town right now, this is it; we’re not coming back. ... We’re going to hit these places one last time.”
“We’re not going to do any more of these long bus tours,” he added. “In fact, we’re crossing our fingers that we will be able to make it to our 60th (anniversary). That’s why we started to say goodbye now because you just never know when it’s going to be the last show.”
Jeff Hanna and Jimmie Fadden started the Dirt in 1966 in Long Beach, California, as a jug band covering folk music in the style of Hanna’s hero at the time, Bob Dylan. Early band members included Jackson Browne, Bruce Kunkel, Ralph Barr and Les Thompson, with Carpenter coming on full-time in 1979.
The band released its first single, “Buy for Me the Rain,” in 1967 and by 1970, its sound took on elements of rock, country and pop. They had their first big pop hit in 1970 with a cover of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles.” In the 1980s, they scored soft rock hits with “An American Dream” and “Make A Little Magic,” and landed on the country charts with “Dance Little Jean,” “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream),” “Modern Day Romance” and, arguably their biggest and most enduring hit, “Fishin’ in the Dark,” which topped the charts.
But one of the band’s crowning achievements was its series of collaborative country albums “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” The first of three was released in 1972, featuring a cast of famous bluegrass and country players, including Roy Acuff, Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson and Earl Scruggs. Volume II, released in 1989, won a trio of Grammys and the Country Music Association’s Album of the Year.
Volume III in 2002, featuring Iris DeMent, Sam Bush, Dwight Yoakam, Tom Petty, Vince Gill and Taj Mahal among the dozens of participants, reached No. 18 on the Billboard country charts.
The band’s most recent album, 2022’s “Dirt Does Dylan,” takes them back to founder Hanna’s original inspiration.
The band — which includes bass player Jim Photoglo, who co-wrote “Fishin’ in the Dark”; Hanna’s son, Jaime; and fiddler Ross Holmes — started working on the album during the pandemic, thinking it would be a four- or five-week project. They had been playing Dylan songs for decades, so “it was a natural thing for us to go in and do his songs our way,” Carpenter said.
But the pandemic pushed the project to a year and a half, he said.
The pandemic also got the band to thinking about leaving the road. When they were forced a few shows into the year in 2020 to shut down, they wondered “if we were ever going to perform live again,” Carpenter said.
“We just don’t want to disappear and they go, ‘What happened to these guys?’ ‘Well they don’t tour any more.’ So we just want to let people know because we want to go out there and have our fans and thank them for the last 58 years, which is really what’s kept us all alive,” he said.
Not that they plan to get day jobs once the tour bus pulls into the garage for the final time, Carpenter said.
“We’re still going to be active in the music business, it’s just we’re not going to go out and drag our butts around the country 10, 11 months a year,” he said. “Can’t do it; won’t do it.”
Sunday’s concert begins at 7 p.m. at the Fox, 17 W. Congress. Tickets are $20 to $85 through foxtucson.com.
The Fox Tucson Theatre has been a Tucson landmark for decades. Its history has been captured in photos since the 1930s, when it opened as a vaudeville venue and movie house. Video by Pascal Albright / Arizona Daily Star
