"Bob Carpenter: Songs, Stories & The Dirt Band" Episode

On this episode of The Mike Stone Show Podcast, I sit down for a special conversation with Grammy-winning musician Bob Carpenter of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. From his early days in Philadelphia to his influential work in country, folk, and rock, Bob shares stories from a remarkable career that has spanned decades and shaped American music. We talk songwriting, studio sessions, life on the road, and the creative spirit that continues to drive his music today. It’s a relaxed, insightful conversation with one of the true craftsmen behind some of the most enduring sounds in modern roots music.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, this is Mark with the Mike Tone Show. Music Stories and Conversations. Welcome to Mike's Conversation with Musicians, and a longtime member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Bob Carpenter. There are musicians, and then there are musicians musicians, the ones whose fingerprints are quietly all over the soundtrack of our lives. Bob Carpenter is one of those artists. A Grammy and CMA award winner, Bob Carpenter has spent decades shaping American music from behind the keyboard, behind the microphone, and sometimes quietly behind the scenes. From his early rock and ERB roots in Philadelphia to the country in Bluegrass Mountains of Colorado, and now in Los Angeles. Bob has followed one simple rule: play great music wherever it leads. As a longtime member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Bob has toured the world, helped earn 15 golden platinum records, and co-written hits like Make a Little Magic, Fire in the Sky, and Babies Got a Hold on Me. He also sang the lead on the band's number one hit, Stand a Little Rain. Along the way, he's worked with some of the greatest names in music history Johnny Cast, Willie Nelson, Vince Gill, Allison Krauss, Chet Atkins, Earl Scruggs, John Denver, Kenny Rogers, and many more. But beyond the awards and the hit songs, Bob Carpenter's story is about passion, versatility, and a lifelong love of music that crosses every genre. Today, we sit down for a conversation with Bob Carpenter of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Talking music, songwriting, road stories, and a remarkable journey through decades of American Sound. It's a conversation you won't want to miss. Mike's conversation with Bob Carpenter starts right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

And we're excited to be speaking with Bob Carpenter and a longtime member, I would say, of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Bob, we really thank you for putting out some time to do this for us. We really, really appreciate it. My pleasure, Mike. Well, Bob, I'm located right here in uh Ruston, Louisiana. We have a university, Louisiana Tech University, and I clearly remember the nitty-gritty dirt band coming to the university here. That's probably been uh well a long time ago. Uh were you there? Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_02 2:25

We were at the Louisiana Tech, I believe, about 50 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yes, I saw you there. Rust Rust Rust is close to you, right? Yes, Bob. Yeah, I saw that concert at the Louisiana Tech, and I'm gonna tell you, it was the best concert that I've probably ever been to. You got called back three times at least on that show, and the f the people there at Louisiana Tech went crazy. So it was just a fantastic time. So I'd like to talk to you a little bit first on the tour, the good times. Is this really gonna be a uh a farewell tour for Nitty Gritty Dirk band?

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Yeah, we're we're not gonna we're not gonna be doing this into our 90s. So rather than just disappearing one day, we decided we'd go out and celebrate our career and thank the fans and give them one last chance to see us. Now, of course, we can't do all the cities we want to do in one year because we can't do 300 shows a year anymore. But, you know, we'll we'll do like 60 sub-shows this year. We've been getting so many requests from so many cities to come in and do a show. Uh, we're probably going to extend this into next year a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Well, I think as long as you extend it, Bob, that people would come and would be there because hey, to me, the nitty-gritty dirt band was the deal, and it still is the deal, and that's the way I feel about it. Hey, uh, just a little bit about your musical journey. Uh, I understand you're a Philadelphia guy. I am. Yeah. Well, I I did a little research, and I I know you played the accordion, or you got the accordion. I was sort of in the same vein. I I played a little bit on my ten cans, and they said get out of the get out of the living room. Uh tell us a little bit about where you got started with your music journey.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Well, my parents brought me an accordion when I was four years old. I wasn't quite ready yet, but I played it on and off as I was growing up. We had it around the house, you know. And uh the funny thing is that I've actually ended up with a band where I could use the accordion because we've used it a lot on all of our albums and all the Circle Beyond Broken albums. I played more accordion on those albums than I played piano, you know, because it just lended itself to what we were doing. Uh we just came out with a new album last year called Dirt Does Dylan, and I played a lot of accordion on that. So I still played on stage. In fact, I still played the accordion on stage that my parents got me when I was four years old.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

That's amazing. And hey, I I got a little connection. I did find out that uh maybe the first recorded song that you ever did was with your mother, and you sang You Are My Sunshine.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

We can't find that anywhere. I don't know. I don't know if you're you're old enough to remember, probably not, but you used to be able to go into these booths and stick in a nickel and uh piece of wax would fall down and you could record your voice onto a little 45. So we went in and sang, but uh yeah, that is that is I remember it, but it's gone.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Well, I'll tell you what, uh, you sang one of our Louisiana favorite sons song, You Are My Sunshine. I believe that's what you recorded. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, and Jimmy Davis, former governor of Louisiana, is the one who wrote that song, You Are My Sunshine.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

So I think you probably played a little bit in church like so many musicians did, you and your family and so forth.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah. All right. Well, I tell you, we want to we're talking to Bob Carpenter of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Bob, I remember my wife and I saw the nitty-gritty dirt band over a year ago now at the Strand Theater in Streepport, Louisiana, beautiful theater venue there. And uh I believe that the nitty-gritty dirt band had been there before, but you've been to so many places, different venues, different audiences all across this nation and around the world. But uh I just wondered if you remembered anything about the Strand Theater and maybe more about some of the venues you've played at.

SPEAKER_02 6:09

You know what happens, Mike? I uh you we go, have we been here before? And then we walk in and we look through and we go, I think we have, and then we go down to the like the dressing rooms or something, we go, Oh, there we are, and there we signed the wall, you know. It's like so Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, you remember when you get there sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

What about the the early formation of the nitty-gritty dirt band? Do you know a little history about how I know it formed in Long Beach, California?

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Yeah, band came together uh uh actually as a jug band. At a wash tub bass, Jimmy Fadenbild, and stuff like that, you know? All acoustic instruments and the band just kept playing music through the years and it progressed through all the different iterations. I mean, Jeff used to play drums on some stuff, and Jimmy played lead guitar, and now Jimmy's playing drums and Jeff's playing lead guitar, and that change took place a long time ago. But everybody's moved around a little bit. I used to play bass in the band for a while. You know, we just kept on doing whatever we could keep doing to make music, you know.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

I understand the McCabe's guitar shop, which I'm a little familiar with. I've been I got people at Long Beach, but that is uh where a lot of uh the guys would meet and start playing music, I think, right there at McCabe's guitar shop. Yep, up here in LA. I understand Jackson Brown was an early member of the Nitty-Gritty Dirt.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Oh, for a nanosecond, yeah. He was he was in the band. Yeah, yup, yep, yeah. In fact, there's a really famous, well, not a famous, but a good story that Jimmy Fadden tells about him walking outside uh at a rehearsal, and Jackson sitting on the curb uh trying to find a rhyme to these days. He was in the middle of writing that song. We've been in touch with Jackson. Uh we did a thing for PBS back in 2016 uh called Circling Back 50 Years for our 50th anniversary, 50 year anniversary. And Jackson was nice enough to come in that and do that show for us on for PBS. So we filmed that whole thing. There's there's a recording of it. He came and did a couple songs with us.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

That's a great story. And uh I guess some other original members, Ralph Barr, uh Les Thompson, Dave Hannah, I guess that was a brother of Jeff.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

That was Jeff's little brother, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Okay, and uh Glenn uh Crawklos, I guess I'm saying that right. And uh Jimmy Fad. Is it Jimmy and Bobson? Is that he came a little later, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

No, Jim Jimmy and Jeff are are the two originals. They're still up on stage playing and recording. I I came along, started working with them in the middle 70s, joined in 1980. So a lot of those guys that were in the band were there for the first uh I don't know, probably maybe six or seven years. And then things changed a lot after that. Jimmy and Jeff have been the guys. We got everybody in the band now, mostly the Sung Lead on all the hits, have written a lot of the songs, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Well, I've always been curious uh about how the name nitty-gritty dirt band. Bob, I've always been curious. How did he get his name? Who came up with that? Jeff Jeff came up with the name.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

He claims he was sitting in a class in freshman year of college thinking about other things, and something that the professor said uh triggered it in his mind. Nitty gritty is a phrase that's been around for a while. I think the dirt band thing got tacked on there. It's really hard to say because even when somebody tells you a story, you're not sure they remember it correctly in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

That's a neat story, though. Uh yeah, nitty-gritty has been around. That's what my mama used to call me when I came in from the summer. You nitty gritty all over, go take a bath. You know? Uh so uh would you say in the early days or even now, the California folk rock mixed with bluegrass and Americana music, is that would that be uh I mean you're you're not in really in a lane that you can identify with too much, and I like that. I love that about the nitty-gritty dirt band. You really can't pigeonhole what's a genre and what what kind of music you play, right? Yeah, you know, it was funny.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

When Bo Jangles came out, they played it on pop radio, and then they paid the band on country radio, and then they played the band, and then it was Roots Music, and now it's Americana, and we don't care what anybody calls it, as long as they keep talking, as long as they they say something about it. Well, we've been the same thing. We've been an acoustic bass band for the most part. We got accordions and harmonicas and mandolins and fiddles and acoustic guitar, you know, so it's like we do a lot of singing on everything. We were never much we put an instrumental on an album every once in a while, but mostly it's not singing, it's about the songs, it's about the word. That's always been where the band was at. So we haven't, I don't think we've changed a little bit. You know, everybody evolves as they go through their musical career, but I think we've we've remained pretty true to ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yeah, well, whatever you call it, you call it good music down here in the south.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Well, there you go. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Uh so I know you told me a little bit about when you first uh became a member of the band. You said you started playing with them about 1975, and uh how did that workplace?

SPEAKER_02 10:52

We were up in Colorado and I was playing music, and uh I had a little band and we had the same manager, dirt band, and I just got to know them just from being around town and stuff like that. And uh they asked me to come in the studio and play some keyboards and stuff like that. That's how we got started. Then I started working on the all the albums with them. Jeff and I started writing songs together, and it was a real natural thing. I didn't audition for the for the gig or anything. We just started playing music together.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Yeah, and they all just migrated from California and said we're going up to the mountains and uh Rocky, Rocky Mountains, and just get away a while.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Yeah, everybody everybody went to the middle of the country at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Evidently it was a good move for everybody because uh that's uh really where everything seemed to come together, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:33

It seems like it worked out.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Well, I'd like to ask you, Bob, about some of the early recordings. I was really interested in this album. It was a great album. I played it over and over. Uncle Charlie and his dog Teddy. That that that is an amazing piece there when Uncle Charlie and his dog Teddy. Uh I just got that in my mind about come here, Teddy. But uh, can you tell us a little bit about uh who was Uncle Charlie?

SPEAKER_02 11:55

I've always wondered who was Uncle Uncle Uncle Charlie was the band the band's manager was named Bill McEwen, and that was actually his uncle. Bill had a little uh Niagara tape recorder and went up and recorded his uncle talking. And what happened was interesting thing, there were nine tracks recorded for that record, and the band needed a tenth cut, and uh that's how Bo Jangles was recorded. But nobody ever thought it would be a hit, and nobody ever thought they would play it on the radio because it was a waltz and it was really long, and who wanted to hear a song about a dog dying, you know. So what happened was is that uh Bill at the time had that recording of his uncle and just tacked it on the front of the cut. And as it turned out, it was we still play it every night on the stage.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Oh man. That that's a great story. And I uh you could tell this was not an actor, this was really Uncle Charlie. I mean, he was really talking. That's him. That's really him. Yeah. And uh, of course, some of the songs that I played over and over, uh the Shelly Blues, some of the Shelly Blues.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

Uh and I think they were still doing that song.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Man, I tell you that. And Mike Nesbith from the Monkeys wrote that song, I understand.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Yes, he did.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

And I think he also wrote another one from that album, Popinquity. Is that am I saying that right?

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Propinquity is his song, yep. Yeah. You know, the dirt band's been really good at identifying really good songwriters. The dirt band was the first band to record uh any of Kenny Loggin's songs.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Yeah, House at Pooh Corner.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Yeah you go.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

I'm telling you, Bob, at Louisiana Tech that night, 50 plus years ago, that song, that song stood out to me. I told uh my buddy Rick about it, House at Pooh Corner. I said, they could have played that all night long.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

You know, the the one thing the band's been really good at is when when the band records some other people's songs, uh usually very high quality, like uh, you know, we've we've had our first number one country hit with a Rodney Crow song. Yeah, we love Rodney. So, you know, so it it's it's worked out really, really good, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Yeah, and of course uh the old Jerry Jeff Walker that the Mr. Bojangles and y'all didn't really think that would uh take off like it did.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Oh, the record company, you know, they're they're a little short-sighted sometimes, but nobody really thought that. We've only had one song in our entire career out of probably 500 songs we recorded that when we were recording it, we listened back, we thought it was a hit. There was only one. Gracious. You just never know, do you? You want to take a guess? One song we knew was going to be a giant hit, and it turned out to be a giant hit.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Well, I right now, it's this on my mind, Bob. I can't think of it right now.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Fishing in the Dark.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

I mean, I we realized the other day that when that thing came out, the people that were listening to it that loved that song that made it a hit back in the middle eighties, uh, they're all in Medicare right now.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

We're talking to Bob Carpenter, and uh just a few more questions, uh Bob, if you don't mind. Of course, y'all did When the Circle Would Be Unbroken. I got that triple album. Can you tell us a little? I know you had, man, Roy Acov, Merle Travis, Mabel Carter, Earl Scruggs. How did you get those folks involved?

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Earl Scruggs was uh really instrumental in doing that. He had two sons, Randy, who produced our second circle album. But anyway, uh they were fans of the dirt bands. They loved the Uncle Charlie album. So they came to see a dirt band show and they brought their dad along. And after the show, everybody got talking. He was amazed at how much the uh the guys in the band loved acoustic string music, you know, old timey songs and stuff like that. So Earl was the guy that convinced most of those people, the old timers on that record, uh, to come and play on the record. And when I say old timers, I I have to laugh because those guys were in their 40s at that point.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

I believe I've read where Earl Scrooges helped John McEwen, your former band mate, they played together, or there was a lot of association there with uh John McEwen and Earl Scroges. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 15:38

John was in the band at the time, and yes, they were both banjo players. And uh I think John had cut his teeth on on Earl's style, you know. So yeah, they had a lot in common, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

So there were three of the uh Circle Will Be Unbroken, three of those albums. The first one is a triple set. Is that correct? That's true. And now the uh you just mentioned this a minute ago. I've already listened to this, The Dirt Does Dylan. So how did that uh project come about?

SPEAKER_02 16:04

We had just added uh Jeff Sun to the band to come up on stage and play with us, and we wanted to we had taken this lineup that we have on stage into the studio, and rather than going in and spending a whole long time doing a whole album of original material and sorting that all out, we just wanted to go in and do a project that would probably take us about ten days. So we decided to find to focus around one songwriter and go in and and do our version of that songwriter's song. And of course, the guy with the biggest catalog in the world to choose from is Bob Dylan, and we thought it'd be interesting because we have a lot of harmonies in our band, and he doesn't have a lot of harmonies on his songs, and we thought it'd be nice to reimagine some of his songs. So it was supposed to take about ten days, two weeks, and we were on there for a couple days and got some stuff cut, and then the pandemic came along. So we didn't do anything for a year and a half. Went back and so the album that was supposed to come out in the the spring or summer of twenty twenty, you know. Or came out three years after that. We've always been a fan of Jones. We grew up, you know, same age and stuff like that. So uh we thought it would be fun just to try to go into his catalog. The real challenge was out of all his material finding the stuff that we really wanted to record and settle on Channel Eleven songs.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

But it was fun doing it. Right. I think uh correct me if I'm wrong, did y'all do a PBS special to Ryman Auditorium? Yep, for PBS. All right, is that available?

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Well, you can go on PBS and and look at it if you're if you're a member. I think you can go online and and find it, but I think it's it's also uh it's it's also available, but it it is available, yeah. You might try Amazon, but you can certainly see it on PBS.

unknown 17:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Yeah, when PBS airs something, there's we do it as a fundraiser for them. So there's always two versions of it. There's a version that they air which takes about an hour, and then there's an extended version for about an hour and a half, which you can get delivered to your house on DVD or s and or C D if you if you donate money to PBS. That's the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Yeah, they have the pledge pledge drives that they do.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

And I'm yeah, we've we've done pledged drives for our 50-year anniversary show, you know, with Jackson and all those people, and and this one we've done it for that. Done a lot of a lot of stuff for PBS over the years.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Yeah, I love the song Forever Young on that album, Dirt Does Dylan. I love that song, and I believe that's uh Jeff and his son, I believe, singing that, I believe.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

Yeah, it's it's Jeff and his son and me singing that song Forever Young. Yeah, you know, there's two versions of that Dylan song. Uh one he did with the band, uh, which is an Uptempo song, and then there's another one that's slow. We try to combine the two versions a little bit and reimagine the course. So, yeah, that's a fun song. We got a video out on that too.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Oh, one of the things.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

If you go on uh YouTube, we got videos on that. Girl from the North Country. Can't think of it right now. But anyway, yeah, so there's a bunch of uh videos that we uh we produced for that for that album.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Well, Bob, tell me if I'm wrong here on the numbers. I have 25 studio albums, four compilation albums, one live album, 41 singles, and four number ones. Is that about right for the nitty-gritty dirt? That's a little bit low. That's a little bit low.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

We got we we got we got as far as I know, we got three or four live albums. So now I'm called Live 25, we did it on our 25th anniversary up in Canada, which I think is a really good one, too. Uh but uh I I don't know. We it's it's hard to say. Um we don't really keep track of that, but I think we're we're probably higher than that on most of that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Well, let's just say the knee-to-gritte dirt band has a tremendous catalog through the 50 uh plus years that it's been in existence. That's that's for sure. I want to ask you about a couple songs that I love. I really love these songs, and I think you had some singers that backed you up. American Dreams, uh, that was written by Rodney Crowell, right? I think Rodney wrote that. And Linda Ronstadt, I think she backed up uh the band with American Dreams. I don't know, can you say anything about that that song? I just love that song, and she did a great job with it.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Only that we all grew up together, you know, we know Linda forever. And Jeff used to play with her every once in a while. You know, she had this little band called the Cadillacs or whatever it was. Right. And so when the song came up, uh we thought, boy, it would be great to do a recording with her. I mean, there's tons of stuff on YouTube of her playing with the dirt band on stage here and there and you know, just jamming and stuff like that. But yeah, so she came and did that. And then when we had Make a Little Magic, Linda wasn't available. So our friend Nicolette Larson.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

That was my next question. That was my next question. Because I am oh I'm a b I'm a fan of Nicolette Larson.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Me too. We love Nikki. Down the street for me. We were good friends.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Oh gracious. Well, she left us way way too early. The nitty-gritty dirt band. Bob, thank you so much for uh speaking with a good deal.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Thanks. Take care. All right, bye-bye.