John McEuen - The Life Ive Picked: A Banjo Players Nitty Gritty Journey

W hat seemed to happen so quickly took a long time. I didnt think I would get here from there. I love what I do and have a passion for travel and for meeting people. As I looked back on my life in the process of this writing, it became apparent that from my earliest days in school, I was searching for something.

I started looking for acceptance in those early school years as a dork who worked his way up to nerd level by high school. I practiced my autograph in high school for no apparent reason. I wasnt doing anything notable, but I had a vague dream that it was possible to become known somehow, by doing something. As a teenager, I filled my time with magic tricks and dreams of being on stage. I learned magic from old books and at the Disneyland Magic Shop, and continued dreaming. Then I was on stage! For three years, I worked at Anaheims Disneyland doing magic tricks all day. It was there that I met and became friends with Steve Martin, who at sixteen, like me, was a natural performer always reaching out for an audience. As seniors in high school we became Magic Shop coworkers.

Then music lit up the seventeenth year of my life, thanks to my older brother showing me guitar licks. After seeing the bluegrass group the Dillards six months later, I knew what I wanted to do: play the banjo (and through that, get on the radio and see the world). Steve and I discovered banjo at the same time; he became my first student.

After playing in four music groups as a teenager, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (NGDB) was born, all of which led to a music career that has taken me through fifty-plus years of radio, film, and television, and to stages all over the world. This teenagers dream came true, despite multiple warnings to not go the music route. Steve soared beyond all expectations. I guess we both did. His dedication to his work, which led to his successes, has been a lifelong inspiration to me.

For many years, interviewers have said to me, You should write a book, as many interview stories seemed to be more than just funny reminiscences to them. They sensed a deeper resonance, as if in describing my experiences, I was describing their own lives.

And what a broad range of experiences Im able to share. We were the first American band to go to Russia, and our recordings are in the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress. Ive done more than ten thousand shows in fabled venues like Carnegie Hall and the Grand Ole Opry, as well as on remote flatbed trucks and in obscure halls located everywhere from Armenia to the Alaskan bush. Others certainly had more blockbuster success than NGDB, but none of our contemporaries covered as much varied ground. We opened for Jack Benny, the Doors, and Bobby Sherman all in one year, and have played with Maybelle Carter, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Sammy Hagar, and ZZ Top. Our years together have generated stories both light and dark, and as I go on my own the stages get better and people keep coming.

I was seldom content with the bands successes and struggled with others lifestyle excesses, as I felt more could be done about both. The drug years were very difficult for me. I never joined that club and became the outcast I had been during my early school days. Raising kids a lot earlier than others I knew made it necessary to again push the solo front, because I had to bring in enough money for a large family. But something else simultaneously drove me to search out other creative things: writing film scores, making other albums, producing concerts, writing for a magazine, selling a script, producing a play, recording someone as a producer, making film documentaries. Make it and they will come was my philosophy, so I make thingsand hope they will come.

Its been a lifetime of comings and goings. For more than fifty years Ive been hitting the road, literally, as a traveling musician with banjo, guitar, mandolin, and fiddlean acoustic traveller, as I like to say. But life is also full of great journeys and new beginnings. More than once, the band fell apart and then came back together as resentments grew and faded between the oldest friends and partners. My marriage came undone, partially under the weight of a lifetime on the road and its influences, but again, new love rose up in its place. Grounding and sustaining me through it all was the desire to createto make art and music, but also to create unbreakable bonds of love with my family and children. When I had the chance to create projects with my grown kids, I truly felt the strength of the circle unbroken.

Thats the life I want to share with this story. Its a story with chapters yet to be written. I feel like my career is just now getting under way, and I hope to have more great music and experiences to share with fans and listeners.

Time to get ready for a show. Thanks for tuning in. Enjoy the ride. I have.