O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : After 27 Years, Band Still Dishes the Dirt With Relish

After a weekend of mudslides, who would have thought that the perfect antidote would turn out to be an evening of pure dirt? While intermittent showers still pelted the Crazy Horse on Monday night, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band played with such infectious good spirit that you just knew the sun was going to shine.

During its 85-minute early set, the band managed to distill its tangled 27-year history of ups and downs, hits and misses, and comings and goings into a joyful and seemingly effortless celebration of its own longevity. “In 1966 a bunch of teen-agers in Long Beach had nothing better to do than to put together the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and it has outlived most of our marriages,” singer Jimmy Ibbotson noted after a lively version of “Mr. Bojangles,” the first big hit for the band (which played its very first gig in Orange).

“People ask me if there are any original members in the band,” co-frontman Jeff Hanna added. “I tell them, ‘Nah! Those guys are too old. They’re all dead. We bought the name at a flea market.’ ”

Actually, Hanna and drummer Jimmie Fadden have been with the NGDB the whole 27 years. Ibbotson joined around 1969 (though he did take a sabbatical in the late ‘70s). Keyboard player Bob Carpenter is the newcomer: He joined in 1978.

In contrast with so many bands, in which straining egos make interaction seem like the Clash of the Titans, these four musicians meshed smoothly. Hanna and Ibbotson took turns on lead vocals and their harmonies were so seamless, the vision of the band so focused, that they never projected the sort of schizophrenia that can plague groups with more than one frontman.

Hanna played some nice guitar solos, adding some bite to such sweet ballads as “Stand a Little Rain,” while Carpenter enhanced such numbers as “Mr. Bojangles” and “Modern Day Romances” with his stunning, multitextured keyboard work.

The musicianship, like the vocals, also was part of the whole. Even Fadden’s crowd-pleasing harmonica solos--delivered while he pounded on the drums--fit naturally into the songs and didn’t seem like grandstanding.

This lack of tension between members, and the ease with which the band seemed to play its songs, created a relaxed atmosphere that was welcomed by a crowd that was itself tense and weary from two weeks of fighting the elements. Listening to this music, and sensing the obvious joy in it, was like jumping into a rejuvenating hot spring.

For all of the Nitty Grittys’ lack of ego, however, this is anything but a faceless band. Without interrupting the harmony of the group, each member was able to reveal more and more of his own talent and personality as the set progressed.

Hanna led into the band’s country-rock hit “High Horse” by playing a few bars of Duane Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser.” Carpenter’s keyboard playing became more expansive with each number. After the band knocked out a rollicking version of Fadden’s “Working Man (Nowhere to Go),” Fadden stepped out for a harmonica number while the rest of the group left the stage.

By the time the band played its 1980 hit “An American Dream,” Ibbotson was trying to limbo under his microphone stand.

Returning for a second encore at the end of its 19-song set, the band summed up its attitude with “The Dream,” a song Fadden wrote for the band’s latest album: “It ain’t for the fame or the glory/Guess we do it ‘cause we still love to play/Guess we do it ‘cause there’s no other way.”