'69 Alum Jimmy Ibbotson's Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Releases New CD

September 20, 2004

September 20, 2004, Greencastle, Ind. - In a review of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's new CD, the Minneapolis Star Tribune writes, "the guys who set out in their teens and early 20s to emulate musical heroes such as Bill Monroe, the Carter Family, Roy Acuff and Earl Scruggs are now standing on equal footing with them." The disc, Welcome to Woody Creek, will be released tomorrow. One of the band's long-time members, Jimmy Ibbotson, is a 1969 graduate of DePauw University. The songs were written at Ibbotson's home in Woody Creek, Colorado, and recorded in his studio. (Ibbotson is third from left in photo)

"The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has described the creation of this album as one of those serendipitous accidents, triggered in part by an invitation to last year's Country Music Association Awards show's Johnny Cash tribute," writes John Rogers of the Associated Press. "One can only hope that many more such accidents befall this wonderfully inventive but wildly erratic and long-enduring country-rock-pop-gospel-western-bluegrass-folk aggregation."

It continues, "Welcome to Woody Creek showcases the best of the group's talents, from its members' dazzling abilities on an array of musical instruments that include mandolins, fiddles, banjos, drums, accordions, keyboards and guitars to that enduring cosmic cowboy attitude that always comes through in the Dirt Band's best songs. As such, this album deserves to be put up on the shelf with Uncle Charley & His Dog Teddy and the group's Will the Circle Be Unbroken series as among the finest works the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has produced in its 38-year run."