This particular video features Doug McKelway interviewing John McEueun, who was instrumental in the production of Steve Martin’s newest CD, The Crow.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lonesome Pine RFD runs from 9:00 a.m. ’till noon (EDT), and the lengthy McEuen interview is set to air at 11:00. WFDU can be heard in NYC and surrounding areas at 89.1 FM, and worldwide via live streaming online.

Carol offers a preview…

“John takes us through the new CD by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Speed Of Life, song-by-song.

Throughout the hour there’s plenty of history shared on the early days of NGDB and John’s solo career.  He also talked about his friendship with Steve Martin since Steve was a teenager, and their work together on The Crow.”

The show will also be available for two weeks in the station’s audio archives after it airs, and will be rebroadcast on Monday (11/2) at 12:00 a.m. on WAMU’s Bluegrass Country.

We’ll have an interview with the band’s “utility infielder,” John McEuen,  as a part of our IBMA Red Carpet coverage, which will be posted over the course of this week and next. McEuen was at IBMA last week to help promote the band’s new CD, and Steve Martin’s banjo CD, The Crow, which he co-produced with Tony Trischka and Pete Wernick.

John plays banjo, fiddle, mandolin and resonator guitar with the band, and is their most direct connection to the bluegrass world.

You can hear audio samples from Speed Of Life on the Dirt Band web site, and here is a behind-the-scenes video from the tracking sessions.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Their 1970 triple album, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, featured stellar guest performances by many of the stars and legends of bluegrass and traditional country music.

It was not only a spectacular critical and commercial success, but also served to introduce the music of Earl Scruggs, Jimmy Martin, Doc Watson, Vassar Clements, Maybelle Carter, Roy Acuff and Merle Travis to a young music audience that may have never discovered it otherwise.

Their recordings since have been geared more towards mainstream country, where they are often billed simply as The Dirt Band, though usually with a nod towards traditional acoustic American folk musics. They did release a second Circle project in 1989 and a third in 2002, both of which made the country album charts.

On September 22, they will have their first new CD in five years, Speed Of Life, released on their own NGDB label, distributed by Sugar Hill Records. It was co-produced by George Massenburg, a recording engineer in the truest sense of the word, and Jon Randall, an award-winning songwriter and Nashville musician. Massenburg not only pioneered the use of parametric equalization in audio recording, he has also produced hit recordings in pop, rock and country music. Randall brings experience in the bluegrass and acoustic world to the project, and has done co-writing with Jeff Hanna of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

The band’s bluegrass connection is cemented by banjo player John McEuen,who was in the news of late for his work with Steve Martin on The Crow, Martin’s first all banjo recording. The two are old friends, with a kinship partially forged by their mutual love of the old five string.

John spoke with us recently about the new project. We first wondered why this was the right time for a new releases after five years.

“The band knew enough songs finally! Well, really… it took a few years to jell as far as what we were looking for to express ourselves with new music, and it came together. When George Massenberg said he would produce, well, that was an unexpected compliment to our potential outcome. What a great thing, and I believe it made it the best NGDB effort in 15 years.”

Here’s a taste of one of the tracks, called The Resurrection (written by Matraca Berg and Alice Randall), which starts with the familiar harmonica of Jeff Hanna.

We also asked McEuen what he most liked about this new CD, and what he expected that the band’s many fans in the bluegrass world would enjoy.

“It is fresh.. I guess that is what I like about it, and the new songs are going over better live than we had even hoped for, as it is often the case for new songs that they do not. But not this time… seems like the ’70’s!

I would like to hear from the bluegrass folks what they get out of it in that regard. But for me, it was the NGDB showing how bluegrass influences can be applied to other types of songs… the instrumentation being used in different settings, like a lot of our recordings from the ’70’s showed.”

More audio from Speed Of Life should start showing up soon.

Martin has been a banjo picker since before he made it big, first as a comedian and later as a film actor, author and playwright. When I was first learning to play banjo in the mid-1970s, Martin’s comedy act was in its hey day. Though he used the banjo primarily as a prop in his show, he always played seriously and gave the old five string a renewed visibility in the pop culture.

The final (December 2008) online issue of Bluegrassnow.com had a lengthy article about the CD, written by IBMA’s Nancy Cardwell. She takes us into the studio while the CD, The Crow, was being recorded, talks with producer John McEuen, and reports on the goings on when she was there.

“John McEuen invited me over to the studio for a couple of days in October, when he and Steve were in town to work on the record. Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Earl & Gary Scruggs, Stuart Duncan and Jerry Douglas were there, also.

The songs I heard so far are great–looking forward to hearing the whole CD soon.”

Nancy also provides a good bit of background on Steve’s discovery of the banjo, which he did along with McEuen, a childhood friend.

John and Steve met each other the summer before their senior year at Garden Gate High School. “We used to play chess every lunch period,” John said. “There wasn’t a whole lot to the conversation other than ‚Äòcheck’ and ‚Äòcheckmate.’ I think I said ‚Äòcheckmate’ more often,” he added, laughing. “We worked at Disneyland and sometimes would play chess by telephone, from two different stores, when business was slow.”

They heard the banjo live for the first time in 1964, when John’s older brother, Bill, invited Dave Simpson from McCabe’s Guitar Shop over to the McEuen house. Dave knew four songs: “The Ballad of Jed Clampett”; “Hard, Ain’t It Hard”; “Jesse James” and part of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Martin scraped together $200 and bought a banjo from Simpson‚Äîan open-back Gibson RB170.

“Around that time period I saw the Dillards for the first time,” John continued, “which got me started for real. We both acquired banjos‚Ķ Steve would come over to my house after school and I’d show him some lick I had learned, and he’d take it from there. Even in the early days, he was able to take some technique and come up with his own songs. He started doing that in the early ‚Äò70s. Both of us liked frailing and three-finger style. In fact, Steve is one of the sweetest frailers I know‚Äîhe’s very sensitive and he has a light touch.”

Read the full piece online.

That record contained his two biggest hits, Wildfire and Carolina In The Pines, the latter of which featured the banjo and mandolin prominently (by John McEuen, then with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band). It played a major role in igniting the folk/rock movement in the 1970s, as well as a revival of interest in acoustic and traditional music among young people at that time.

Carolina In The Pines quickly worked its way into the bluegrass repertoire, and has since been recorded dozens of times by bluegrass acts.

Now, 34 years after that song made its mark on bluegrass, Michael is returning the favor, and is set to release his first all-bluegrass album on February 10, 2009 (Rural Rhythm Records). Buckaroo Blue Grass will combine his current focus on cowboy and western themes with a red hot roster of bluegrass pickers – Sam Bush, Rob Ickes, Ronnie McCoury, Andy Leftwich, Pat Flynn, Charlie Cushman, and Rhonda Vincent.

The songs are all Murphey originals and include some of his top hits (Carolina In The Pines, Fiddlin’ Man, Lost River) plus a couple he wrote that were cut by other artists (The Monkee’s What Am I Doing Hangin Around and John Denver’s Boy From The Country).

Michael debuted his bluegrass sound during the 2008 IBMA Fan Fest in Nashville and he will be touring with a bluegrass band in support of Buckaroo Blue Grass in 2009.

We will be doing an interview with Murphey shortly, and look forward to hearing how he found himself cutting a bluegrass record. In the meantime, here is a sample from one of the tracks, Lone Cowboy.

Listen now:

That song, along with a newly rerecorded version of Carolina In The Pines, shipped to bluegrass radio this week on a Rural Rhthm radio sampler. You should be hearing them soon on your favorite radio shows.

The recording has been completed, produced by fellow banjo man John McEuen, with assistance from Tony Trischka and Pete Wernick. Helping out in the studio were Russ Barenberg on guitar, Matt Flinner on mandolin and Brittany Haas on fiddle, among others. New Martin compositions are the foucs, performed in both 3 finger and clawhammer styles.

We’ve not been able to find out yet whether a label is involved, or when the CD might be released. Steve is vacationing now in Greece, but we are hopeful of obtaining an interview upon his return.

We did reach producer John McEuen, who shared a number of thoughts about working with Martin in the studio.

“Steve’s playing was really good. Driving, yet sensitive when needed. This album will amaze many because it will show people that Steve takes his music as seriously as he does his other work and performs it at that level. Steve has written some of my favorite banjo tunes. I think after the release of Steve’s new album a couple of tunes might become standard fare for new pickers.

There was one time, during the opening of one song, where Steve had to play the exact same notes and rhythm as Russ Barenburg was playing on guitar, with just the two instruments opening. Well, Steve was rushing ahead of the guitar and Tony Trischka was a little concerned. Steve needs to lock with the guitar and he’s ahead. How do we get him to do that?

Knowing Steve was accustomed to taking direction and since I had the mantle of producer, I hit the talkback and said ‘Steve …. you’re ahead of the guitar!!!! You’re rushing!! It seems like you can’t wait for the tune to start. So, listen and do exactly what Russ is doing.’

Steve said, ‘Oh!! OK.’

In the middle of the next pass which was the take we kept, Tony Trischka and I looked at each and said at the same time with reference to Steve ‘I wish I could do that.’

Another song required that Steve count it off. Steve was setting the tempo right from the first beat for a big chord from all. Steve went ‘One, Two, Three, Four’ and started playing. I had to stop them and say ‘We need the last number to be silent, so it starts clean Steve, got it?’

Steve said, ‘OK. Here we go.. One, Two, Four’ and started playing except everyone was laughing. We started and counted right the next time.”

McEuen also spoke about the banjos used, including Steve’s newest banjo, a custom Kel Kroydon from American Made Banjo.

“It was great to have the Kel Kroydon banjo on hand for the Steve Martin Album. Although he used his other long time banjos on many cuts, the Kel Kroydon was the one of choice for three or four of the 15 songs recorded. This was determined by trying all the different banjos Steve brought.

Of course, his favorite Florentine that I had found for him in Kansas City in the late ’70s sounds great (I actually think his favorite Florentine is mine). He also brought his RB 250 that was his first banjo, the open back. They all sounded great, but there were some tunes the Kel Kroydon was the one of choice and it performed beautifully.”

It will be very interesting to see how much attention this release gets from the entertainment media, and I’m sure I’m not the only banjo picker eager to hear this recording.

The DVD is entitled Kids’ Favorite Country Songs, and contains all the makings of a musically good time. Sesame Street perennial favorites, Elmo and Elmer, lead the way to a country jamboree featuring both Alison Krauss and John McEuen, along with a number of country music stars.

While John plays his banjo and sings Oh Susannah, he’s accompanied by an assortment of barnyard animals. He commented that he enjoyed the filming of the DVD and had a great time,

playing the banjo with about 50 goats, a cow and about 15 kids running around.

He went on to say that as a musician you are always wondering when you’ve reached the pinnacle of your career. Now he knows.

When Elmo introduces you, you know you’ve arrived.

In addition to McEuen and Krauss’ contributions, country stars, Johnny Cash, the Dixie Chicks, Lee Ann Womack, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, and super star Garth Brooks, all take part in the festivities.

The first is a piece in today’s Washington Post (1/19/07) on John McEuen. Written by Post staffer Richard Harrington, the article covers John’s long career in music, from the early days as a high school banjo buddy of comedian Steve Martin, through The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and the Will The Circle Be Unbroken album, to his current activities writing an autobiography and hosting a radio show on XM.

You can read the whole piece on the Washington Post site, though a brief, free registration may be required.

The other piece is on progressive banjo man Tony Furtado, and is found, oddly enough, on the Modern Guitars Magazine web site. It is a lengthy interview with Tony where he discusses both his banjo and guitar playing, and his musical influences, and which serves up a nice career overview of this gifted artist.

Find it online at Modern Guitars Magazine.