Will The Circle Be Unbroken Archives

John McEuen and Les Thompson discuss Will The Circle Be Unbroken at IBMA Bluegrass Live! 2023

During IBMA Bluegrass Live!, a special session was held midday Friday celebrating the 50-year legacy of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken three-record album. Host John McEuen, co-founding member of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and his brother (William McEuen who passed in 2020), conceptualized and delivered an album that stirred music, influenced generations of musicians in multiple genres, and has stood the test of time for more than five decades. John used a film presentation of his “Circle Band” shows to supplement his talk. He and a panel of a few hand-picked industry veterans (Bluegrass Unlimited editor Dan Miller, radio personality and columnist Daniel Mullins, NGDB’s founding member and mandolinist Les Thompson, and singer/songwriter Jim Lauderdale) discussed the making of the album and how it influenced the world.

John began the session, “I didn’t want to be a musician. I wanted to be a cowboy, but I was allergic to horses. When I was 17, I got my first banjo for my birthday. I formed a group at the McCabe’s Guitar Shop (in Santa Monica, CA), a bluegrass group in high school. It was there I met Steve Martin. We went to high school together.”

Reflecting on their success, Thompson shared, “It was a lot of fun. I never thought we’d make a career together. We were a bunch of teenagers. It took us on a nice trip. We opened for Merle Travis at Ash Grove (Los Angeles’s preeminent roots music venue) and released our first album in 1967.”

John talked about meeting Earl Scruggs and his quest to achieve a sound like Scruggs. “I tried to get my banjo to sound like Earl’s and never did. He played it and it sounded like his. I discovered it’s the archer, not the bow.”

He asked Scruggs to record with the NGDB and when he accepted, they were on their way.

John plunged into the project. “The next night I asked Doc Watson and he agreed.”

Les added, “We said, ‘We’ve got Earl, would you be in it, too?'”

John continued…

“Earl was our conduit. He got Junior Huskey, Vassar Clements, and Mother Maybelle. It happened so fast. It was just eight weeks from when I asked Earl until we started recording. We rehearsed four days with Earl in his home. It was heaven. We recorded the whole album in five days, 38 songs. It was supposed to be a two-record set, but my brother said we’ve got more songs than will fit so it became a three-record project.

The best thing was getting a relationship with all these people. Earl brought Uncle Dave Macon’s banjo for me to frail Soldier’s Joy. Doc Watson and Merle Travis met for the first time in that studio. We worried about holding our own. Jimmy Martin said, ‘Pick it solid now.’ We knew they were the stars.

I asked Vassar, ‘How do you play Uncle Pen? Did you learn that off Monroe’s record?’ He said, ‘That was me. I was 17 years old.’ Les and I were on most all the recordings.”

Thompson chimed in, “I told Vassar I was nervous. Vassar said, ‘Well, why don’t we sit together? You can copy what I’m playing.’ For his 400 notes, I played four!”

Then he stressed, “We were California surf kids. We didn’t have the access to bluegrass that people in North Carolina had. We listened to Folkway Records that McCabe’s Guitar Shop had.”

Jim Lauderdale noted, “Mr. Bojangles was a huge hit. I was a 15-year-old that had gotten bitten by the bluegrass bug. I was an aspiring banjo player in Due West, SC. A friend had the Circle album and loaned it to me. It was equally as important to me as the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. It turned me on to other things.”

John explained, “The way it was all presented and came together, it gave Earl a huge shot in the arm, Vassar, too. It elevated their careers.”

Lauderdale agreed. “It lit a fire in me. It unlocked so many things in my spirit, imagination, and desire to make music.”

McEuen talked about the process of making the album at Woodland Studios in Nashville, TN.

“The first song we cut was Cannon Ball Rag, with Merle Travis on a two-track recording. It took four minutes. He played it perfectly. He finished his session in 45 minutes. We had planned for four hours!

Roy Acuff said he liked to do things on the first take, that you lose something after the first one. Seven out of ten of the numbers we used the first takes! Flint Hill Special took seven takes. Earl was perfect, but the others didn’t gel.

We went back to simplicity. Move into the microphone when you take your break. My brother’s genius had a separate tape recorder going at the same time (recording the conversations between musicians). My brother shot 105 studio pictures. He was responsible for assembling it.

His wife did all the calligraphy on the cover (it was Grammy nominated). The first time she did it, Bill put it in the oven to give it a yellowed look. It burst into flame. She could have killed him. She did it over and he put the oven on a much lower temperature.

We had a budget of only $22,000 from the record company. Mike Stewart (President of United Artists Records) said, ‘you make a bluegrass album and I’m not going to sell 10 copies of these.’

Bill Monroe refused to play. Earl told him he was making a big mistake, but Bill didn’t want to play with a bunch of long hairs. We asked Josh Graves, but he said that Lester wouldn’t let him play on anything with Earl on it.

It was a landmark album that had six Bluegrass Hall of Famers on it. Afterward, Monroe said, ‘Hey, John, If you ever do another Circle Album, give me a call.””

Will the Circle be Unbroken was the seventh studio album by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, with collaboration from many famous country and bluegrass notables afore mentioned plus Pete “Oswald” Kirby, Randy Scruggs, Norman Blake, Tut Taylor, and others. The album was released in November 1972, through United Artists Records. The original album was certified platinum by the RIAA on November 6, 1997, indicating shipments of 500,000 copies.

“The Circle album would do more than $60,000,000 in sales…and it keeps going,” said McEuen.

In August 2022, John released a coffee table book, Will The Circle Be Unbroken: The Making of a Landmark Album, on its 50th Anniversary. It contains many studio photos taken by his brother, William. He offered his book, along with records, CDs, and t-shirts for sale at the end of the session, personally autographing them for attendees.

The highly-celebrated Will The Circle be Unbroken, the seventh and perhaps most consequential album released by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, will celebrate its 50th anniversary in November. To mark this Golden Anniversary, John McEuen is releasing a book that details the making of the star-studded 3-LP set released in 1972.

John was not only the banjo player with the Dirt Band, he and his brother, William (Bill) who produced the recordings, were the driving force behind the whole project. John I sat down for a phone interview a few weeks ago about the book. If you ever get the opportunity to talk to John, it’s best to just listen as his memory is impeccable, and his thoughts of yesterday, as well as his future endeavors, are always foremost on his mind. However, one part of our conversation is what I especially want to share with all bluegrass lovers, like myself.

“This has been fifty years in the making. Will the Circle be Unbroken was a collaboration of many famous bluegrass and country-western players. In fact, the album played a significant role in furthering Vassar Clements to a much wider audience,” said John.

This book is filled with memories showcasing the recording of this album. Stories are shared by John McEuen, Marty Stuart, members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and many more. Photos Bill had taken during the recording sessions are included, which have never been seen until now.

John shared that, “I had always wanted to meet two artists. Mother Maybelle and Earl Scruggs. Bill and I traveled to Nashville in hopes of seeing them perform. The old Ryman was sold out that night. On the west side of the building, people would line up and peek through the windows, which were opened. When it was our turn, Earl Scruggs was introducing Mother Maybelle. I stood there as I watched her, and knew that I was in the right place.”

The McEuens eventually did meet Earl and Maybelle, and when they agreed to be part of this next Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album, it exploded into a once-in-a-generation project that also featured luminaries like Roy Acuff, Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Jimmy Martin, Vassar Clements, and Earl’s sons Randy and Gary Scruggs.

So in August 1971, this group of stellar musicians assembled with the rest of the Dirt Band in the old Woodland studio, which was on a corner street in East Nashville. And magic was captured.

Magic is an apt term when it comes to McEuen, as magic was his first stab at the entertainment world, and where his path first crossed with fellow banjo player Steve Martin. Both John and Steve were magicians at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA when they were younger.

In 1971, the NGDB had a “hippie” look with authentic country/rock sounds, layered with plenty of fiddle and banjo. They had seen some success with earlier albums, but Roy Acuff described them as “a bunch of long-haired west coast boys.” In that circle of established country acts, most of the artists were much older than these boys, but they all had one thing in common. Their undying love of music, both bluegrass and country. Acuff had reservations about being a part of this album, but later agreed, and his contributions are now ones for the history books.

John told me that each track on the Circle album was recorded on a first or second take, straight to two track masters (which McEuen is proud to have retained).

During our conversation, I asked John about a Circle album memento I had acquired at an estate sale in Guthrie, OK (the hometown of Byron Berline), which had bumfuzzled me since my purchase. It’s a 12” x 6” section of an old railroad tie, and on the top is a rail spike with “Will The Circle be Unbroken” stamped on it, and “Nitty Gritty Dirt Band” in smaller letters. On the front is a decoupaged black and white photo of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. John McEuen is donned in a leather suit, and his reaction to my mentioning it was, “I don’t know how long I wore that suit before I had it cleaned.” On the back of this old railroad tie is a black and white photo of the iconic album cover.

The history of this rare find blew me away. “You have one of those?”, asked John in surprise. “Bill was always coming up with promotional items and that is one of them. I don’t even think I have one of those. He only had 200-250 made.”

Will the Circle Be Unbroken – the Making of a landmark Album is set for release in August. Pre-orders are enabled now from popular online bookstores.

It is blurbed by Richie Furay, John’ contemporary, who was a member of Buffalo Springfield and the founder of Poco.

“After reading John’s book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken (the behind-the scenes stories of the recording of the album of the same name), you get the feeling you were there! The album was truly a historic moment in American music history, and John takes us on the journey of how it all unfolded into reality: you get to ‘meet’ the players and hear them talk about the project and tell their stories, just as if you were a ‘fly on the wall’ of each session. Listening to the album afresh while reading the book brought goosebumps to me. It’s more than just a musical journey the Dirt Band was on—it is reliving a historic moment in time.”

Jump on the train, read the book, and enjoy the ride with John McEuen. He is clearly a man of many talents.

Tag: Will The Circle Be Unbroken

The making of the Circle album, and its impact on the music world

John McEuen book on the making of Will The Circle Be Unbroken in August