Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Biography

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was formed in 1966 in California when Bruce Kunkel and Jeff Hanna began jamming together at a local guitar shop. With southern California discovering a new love for folk rock, the timing was perfect for the two men to form a band and begin performing around the state’s southern beaches. The debut album, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, was released in 1967 and featured their first top 40 hit, “Buy for Me the Rain.” After a performance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band began to garner more attention, and eventually launched a career that would span more than four decades.

Over the years, the Nitty Gritty Dirty Band has enjoyed a number of successful albums, including: Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy (1970), All the Good Times (1972), The Dirt Band (1978), An American Dream (1979), Make a Little Magic (1980), Jealousy (1981), Let’s Go (1983), Plain Dirt Fashion (1984), Hold ON (1987), Workin’ Band (1988), Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Volume Two (1989), The Rest of the Dream (1990), Live Two Five (1991), Not Fade Away (1992), Acoustic (1994), and Bang, Bang, Bang (1999.) The albums have spawned the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band hits: “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream),” “I Love Only You,” “High Horse,” “Modern Day Romance,” “Home Again in my Heart,” “Baby’s Got a Hold On Me,” “Fishin’ in the Dark,” “Oh What a Love,” “Workin’ Man (Nowhere to Go),” “I’ve Been Lookin’,” and “Down that Road Tonight.”

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band enjoyed their peak level of success in the 1980’s, when Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Volume Two earned the band multiple Grammy Awards and the Country Music Association’s Award for Album of the Year, in addition to the award for best Country Vocal Performance. Another Country, a collaborative effort with the Chieftains, also brought the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band an additional Grammy in 1992.

With the current lineup of John McEuen, Jeff Hanna, Bob Carpenter, and Jimmie Fadden, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is still going strong in the new millennium, recently having released Speed of Light in 2009.  The band continues to tour and perform, and has plans for additional releases in the near future.