Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - Welcome to Woody Creek

It's great to hear the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band playing that old time mountain music again on a disc all their own (without it being a delightful, but heavy on the star-power, "Will the Circle" collection). Yep, the Dirt Band have their Nitty Gritty back, and it's been worth the wait.

For more than four decades the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has existed in one form or another, whether it be as sharp-picking solid purveyors of mountain music or their lamentable stint as mainstream "The Dirt Band." Fortunately for their long-time fans, this disc, following up the tremendous "Will The Circle Be Unbroken III" last year, shows that their return to solid dirt is the real thing.

Returning to a lineup that's more or less identical to the group during the early seventies, with Jeff Hanna, Jimmy Ibbotson, Jimmie Fadden, John McEuen, and Bob Carpenter (with special guest Dan Dugmore), they're sounding better than ever. Back then they were already too country for country, and I didn't even learn about them until my rebellious rock- loving teen years. NGDB were, like Gram Parsons, the Byrds, and others, into that roots sound which made it hard for folks to place 'em (heck, even now you can find the NGDB filed in "rock and pop." But country is what they are, and country is what they play. Most of the songs are originals except for a strange, but pretty cool, cover of the Beatles' "Get Back," and "She," written by Parsons/Etheridge.

Country radio will likely never spin one of these songs, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go out looking for it. These boys know how to put a song together to make it more than worth listening to. Clever without being slick, this disc is intelligent, real, solid, roots music.