"Jeff Hanna, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band founder and de facto leader, is tucked into a nondescript booth at El Palenque, a 30-years-plus local restaurant in a Nashville strip mall, talking about "Nashville Skyline," a pensive track from their EP, "Night After Night." The family-owned Mexican restaurant is the kind of place he's gravitated toward since starting a jug band with friends in Long Beach before migrating to Los Angeles' folk/rock scene."
"Threaded with fiddle, piano and lead vocal by his son Jaime, "Nashville Skyline" is an elegy for Nashville's rapacious gentrification as well as a love lost to time. The metaphor isn't lost on the elder Hanna, who recognizes what's been lost with a dignity and sweetness."
"Beyond "Mr. Bojangles," written by Jerry Jeff Walker, and "The House at Pooh Corner," written by Kenny Loggins, the regulars of the Troudadour/Ash Grove clubs would have pop success as the '70s became the '80s with "Make a Little Magic," featuring Nicolette Larson, and "Viola! An American Dream," with vocals from Linda Ronstadt. But it was the multi-generational and genre-bridging Grammy-nominated "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," recorded with Nashville royalty Roy Acuff, Maybelle Carter and Earl Scruggs among many others, that grounded the band's future as a mainstream country act in the '80s and '90s, as well as what's become Americana."
Jeff Hanna, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band founder and de facto leader, reflects on "Nashville Skyline," a pensive track from the EP "Night After Night." The song, threaded with fiddle, piano and lead vocal by his son Jaime, functions as an elegy for Nashville's rapacious gentrification and a love lost to time. Hanna recognizes the simultaneous loss with dignity and sweetness. Hanna began in a jug band in Long Beach before migrating to Los Angeles' folk/rock scene. The band's sound has remained consistent across six decades, moving from club regulars to pop success and landmark collaborative albums that helped define Americana.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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