Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Celebrate 60th Anniversary with Guest-Packed Farewell Show at The Grand Ole Opry House
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, photo by Madison Thorn
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band stepped into the spotlight at the hallowed Grand Ole Opry House on Wednesday to celebrate their 60th anniversary and set off the last lap of their farewell tour. From the storied Nashville stage, the legendary country-rock outfit bid a fond farewell to Music City with a staging that honored their deep roots and testified to their tremendous cultural impact with a cast of high-profile special guests.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band set off their show with Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Going Nowhere,” which the band recorded in Nashville for the second volume of their Will the Circle Be Unbroken series in 1989. In keeping with the design of that landmark project and the Opry’s custom, the sextet of Jeff Hanna, Jimmie Fadden, Bob Carpenter, Jaime Hanna, Ross Holmes, and Jim Photoglo soon started welcoming surprise collaborators, with esteemed dobroist Jerry Douglas, who played on the Will the Circle Be Unbroken albums, jumping in first for “Long Hard Road.”
Other country powerhouses who lent their talents to the celebration included Alison Brown on “Grandpa Was a Carpenter” and Suzy Bogguss and Kathleen Edwards on “An American Dream.” The 24-track exploration of the enduring group’s catalog of originals and beloved covers of John Prine, Jerry Jeff Walker, Bruce Springsteen, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and more roared 60 years to the day after the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s first concert in Long Beach, Calif. in 1966. After capping off the performance with a medley of the traditional “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” and The Band’s “The Weight,” Hanna expressed his gratitude for the special evening and the six decades that built to it:
“We appreciate y’all coming to our shows all these years and buying our records, and buying our cassettes, and buying our 8-track tapes,” the frontman said. “It’s not lost on us how lucky we are to have done this with you guys all these years.”
In June, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band will cross the country with the final leg of their All the Good Times farewell tour. After a kickoff from Dodge City, Kansas’ United Wireless Arena on June 5, subsequent plays in La Vista, Neb. and Rapid City, S.D. will take the band to Jackson Hole, Wyo., where they’ll take the stage at the Jackson Hole Center for the Arts for two nights on June 9 and 10. The group will continue their trek through the mountains with shows in Helena, Mont. Billings, Mont. and Sandy, Utah on June 11, 13 and 14, then finally conclude a long history of tierless touring with a double-header in the Centennial State, stepping into the spotlight at Dillon, Colo.’s Dillon Amphitheater and Denver’s Mission Ballroom on June 18.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s All the Good Times farewell tour began back in 2024, and while it’s served as a fond farewell to the road after an awe-inspiring run, the paradigmatic country-rock sextet has not confirmed if any scattered standalone dates will follow their final formal outing.
Tickets for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Farewell Tour are available now at nittygritty.com.
