Fishing in the dark nitty gritty dirt band

So, we took it out and put in on our funky little record player that had pennies on the needle to hold the arm down, and listened to it. Bojangles.' Somebody had given him that record before he left Indiana and it had been under the spare tire the whole time. He pulled out this 45 rpm single from under the spare tire-scratched to pieces by the way-of Jerry Jeff singing 'Mr. Then, Jimmy Ibbotson, who was playing with us at the time, said that he thought he knew what song I was talking about and he ran out of the room into the parking lot and started digging in the trunk of his car. I kept hearing it in my head because it was mandolin and accordion, which I thought would be perfect for our band. I went into rehearsals the next day and just started raving about this song that I thought we had to do. As it turns out, it was Jerry Jeff Walker. I was driving back from one of our rehearsals while we were putting tunes together for the record down in Long Beach, and I heard this song on late night radio with no back announcing and I really loved the tune. We started recording it in late 1969, and I think it came out in early 1970.

JH: Well, we were assembling songs for the album that became Uncle Charlie And His Dog Teddy-that was actually the first alternative country album that we recorded. I've got a gold single of 'King Tut' hanging on my wall. Then, when Bill took it to LA to record it with the A-list session guys, Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker, who were the guys running Warner Brothers at the time, said 'No, that's the record,' so there we were. It was really just an afternoon session that we cut in Colorado, and it was only supposed to be a demo. It was me on guitar and a couple of guys who were playing with us at the time-Merel Bregante and Richard Hathaway on bass and drums-and we did all the background work with Steve. We had a lot of fun, and the rhythm section and myself came up with what was called 'The Toot Uncommons,' which was us as the band on the 'King Tut' record-that's a little known fact. The cast was John Belushi, Bill Murray, who was the new kid at the time, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin, the amazing Gilda was great. I think that there were a lot of great line-ups, but it was the first bunch sans Chevy Chase. I think it was during the third season, which was awesome because it was one of the classic line-ups. Then, he returned the favor and had us as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live a few years later, which was great. Steve was actually our opening act for a long time. They were buddies all through school, then, later on, John's brother Bill-who was our manager for a long time-was also Steve's manager, so there was an association through the late '60s and early '70s. John taught Steve a lot about playing the banjo and I think Steve taught John a lot about telling a joke. He and John McEuen when to High School together, actually, and they traded a lot of tricks. We were combining that sound with a rock sensibility. (laughs) You see a lot more Marshall stacks on the road in country music these days, which is fine, but what we were doing was geared more towards the sound of The Everly Brothers and those groups. I think now it bears a lesser resemblance to Buck Owens and the Buckaroos and more of a resemblance to some hybrid between AC/DC and I don't know what. Then, of course, there was the bluegrass influence from Flatt and Scruggs and The Greenbriar Boys, and a bunch of other acts that we were really big fans of back when we were teenagers, so the shift that we made way back in '69 really formed what we do now, you know? But, as a point of reference, country-rock in 1969 has nothing to do with country-rock today. That was something that worked really well for us because we grew up cutting our teeth on The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and Buck Owens. Then, in 1969, we sort of reinvented the band as a country-rock band. We did that whole thing for about three years. We were playing music that was mostly written in the '20s and '30s with all acoustic instruments, a washtub bass, and a washboard. We were a bunch of folk puppies, basically.

Of course, they didn't have a term called 'roots' back then, but I do think it's a great term because it covers a lot of bases and I totally get what it means.

JH: Well, it started in 1966 in Long Beach, California, and we began as a jug or roots band.

Fishing in the dark nitty gritty dirt band