The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was due to take the stage in less than an hour, but its front man and founder, Jeff Hanna, was visibly relaxed as he sat on the couch back stage at the Birchmere Music Hall, just outside of Washington, D.C.

Multi-instrumentalist John McEuen, the man, who Steve Martin credits with teaching him the banjo when they were teens, casually strums a guitar as drummer and founding member Jimmie Fadden and multi-instrumentalist Bob Carpenter chat amiably.

The repose is in marked contrast to the electric buzz in the nearly capacity audience that gathered to help celebrate the band’s tour behind the release of its remastered classic album Will the Circle Be Unbroken. When the Dirt Band recorded the album with guests including Mother Maybelle Carter, Roy Acuff, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, and other traditional country artists, it broke down generational barriers around music and set the group apart from The Byrds and other musically similar groups.

Subsequent Circle albums in 1989 and 2002 were well received but the original recording that peaked at No. 4 on Billboard’s Country Album’s chart was the trendsetter.

Hanna took time to talk about why re-releasing the remastered album is still important to fans, his memories of the original recording sessions, and just why the Circle may yet continue.

It had to be incredible to work on remastering such a classic work as Will the Circle Be Unbroken. The thought process had to be something like a flipbook, where you flashed on memories of Mother Maybelle Carter, Roy Acuff, and the other guests.

Jeff: Well it’s incredible to hear something like that front to back that you did that many years ago, that you have such a fondness for. It’s something that you don’t pop in and listen to every day. So to go back and listen and relive that was just an incredible experience for us. When you talk about remastering, so you know, essentially the concept was to give people an opportunity to get their hands on the original record in its original format. So it’s a three disc, 180-gram, which is high- grade vinyl with all the original artwork attached, including some photos that haven’t been published, in a poster insert with some new liner notes, too.

And the images that flashed through your mind as you worked on it?

Well, they were like slides – it was just incredible. That’s one of the things going back to the packaging on this record. Bill McEuen, John’s brother who was our manager at the time, also produced Will the Circle be Unbroken and shot all those photographs. He and Dean Torrence, of Jan and Dean by the way, got the whole packaging together. Dean is a super talented guy and a great graphic artist. It took them a better part of the year to edit all of this audio content – that was also Bill, by the way – and then all the artwork and the beautiful packaging.

Just to put a fine point on it, why was it important to release vinyl as well as a CD?

One thing I love about this record is that I miss the tactile experience I had growing up with vinyl records. When you open it up, especially the gatefolds, the photos and pictures are gorgeous and large. One of those albums for me, and I can still see it, was the second Band album, just titled The Band. There are pictures of them in Sammy Davis, Jr.’s pool house where they recorded the music. And I remember just staring at those photographs when I was listening to the music and how great it was. It was kind of like the anti-video because you could tell your own story by looking at the pictures and filling in the blanks with the music you were hearing.

Another great thing about vinyl albums, too, is that you can get all to read a lot about the album with credits and other points.

Well, you can get all of that information on your laptop or iPhone or iPad, too, which I think is great. But there’s something about paper, you know? And the ritual, listening to Side One, taking a break, flipping it over, listening to Side Two. And there’s the anticipation of waiting for the record to be released by one of your favorite artists. Or somebody calling you and saying ‘Come over to the house! You have to hear this new record!’"

There are a lot of people that still love that, and also love to hear the crackle you get when you play vinyl.

The biggest part of the vinyl market is not people my age. It’s people in their 20s and 30s. There are people who would argue that vinyl isn’t as good [as digital] and there are people who say that it sounds much better. It’s subjective.

Did listening to the remastered Circle album remind you of the difference experiences during the original recording?

There is not much that I have forgotten about that, to tell you the truth. Hearing it all in context is great. I have a tendency to put on a certain track and listen to it. Or listen to all [Doc Watson’s] stuff instead of diving into a two-hour experience with the entire record. But hearing it all front to back is quite an experience.

But to answer your question, it is bittersweet to hear it now. Especially in the last year when we lost Doc and Earl Scruggs.

You know, you hear a lot about Brad Paisley bringing Little Jimmy Dickens out on stage at this concerts, and working with Alabama.

That is great!

Well, yes, but you were the first band to really honor past artists in that way. I’m guessing a lot of younger fans don’t know that.

I think in retrospect we were partly responsible for exposing some of these great artists to a younger generation and we are all extremely proud of that. But from a selfish standpoint, we got to play with them and hang out with them and be on a first-name basis with them throughout the years.

And while so many bands that were contemporary then have long since broken up, you are still with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Well Jimmie too, and John for most of it.

John told me that some people predicted the band’s demise at various times through the years including when he left. And he told me that the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band would go on because of you, that you are such a fine musician and a fine leader, he knew you’d handle the transition incredibly well and continue to lead the band forward.

Really? He never told me that. That’s very nice –

And you really have had a fairly stable line up through the years.

That’s true. If you go to our Wikipedia page, because we didn’t edit that page, it lists a lot of guys that were support musicians over the years that weren’t actually in the band. All of them were great guys but there really have only been a few of us.

What do you – not the band but you – want to do musically in the years ahead? Are there things you haven’t done that you’d like to pursue?

You know, on my bucket list a solo album is part of it. That is in there somewhere. I get to do so much with what I do with our band. It’s still so fun to make this music. I do have these opportunities to play and sing [on side projects] including my wife’s records, which are great. But I got to play on Johnny Cash record, got to play on Don Henley’s track of Desperado even though he and I weren’t in the same room. But all those experiences are great!

I mean, there are a thousands ways a record could go. Let’s see, I sang duets with all of the women I love. I am kidding, of course, but I do love singing with women including [my wife Matraca Berg]. That is always great. I love to sing with my son Jamie, who is a terrific musician. Maybe the two of us would even do a whole album. But I don’t know – I still have a lot of fun with this band.

What I find impressive is that you’ve never become, for lack of a better term, your own tribute band. You continually write and perform new music and you seem to have a lot of energy with the older songs. Singing [Jerry Jeff Walker’s] “Mr. Bojangles” has to be difficult after all of these years.

There are two things that keep it fresh for us. One is the audience. You play a song like “Bojangles,” that you have never really left out of a show, and you get a great response. It is easy for us to put ourselves in the place of audience members who might think ‘Man, I just threw dollars at them, they had better play this one song.’ It’s also essential for us to have newer music make its way into the set. It’s fun and you still feel like you’re still growing.

Do you see a new Circle album in the band’s future?

Maybe there is another ‘Circle’ record in the cards. I don’t know. We’ll see.