American banjo player and multi-instrumentalist John McEuen is known best for his time with groundbreaking country rockers the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which he joined in 1966 following the departure of Jackson Browne. He became a formative figure in mixing bluegrass with country and rock and played a major role in the creation of the band's highly influential three-disc album 'Will the Circle Be Unbroken' in 1972. He played with them through several albums and international tours until 1986 when he left to pursue a solo career but he rejoined the band in 2001.
Born in northern California, he learned to play banjo in his teens along with the fiddle and mandolin. Besides the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band he has played with a great many artists including the Allman Brothers, Asleep at the Wheel, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Mark O'Connor, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. A longtime friend of Steve Martin, he played on the comedian's novelty song 'King Tut' which went to number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. He produced and played on Martin's 2009 release 'The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo' which reached number one on Billboard's Bluegrass Albums Chart and won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album.
McEuen won another Grammy Award with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs on their 1978 song 'Earl's Breakdown'. He has written music for several television documentaries including 'The Wild West' (1993), 'Maynard Dixon: Art and Spirit' (2007) and 'Losing the West' (2013). His album 'Made in Brooklyn' (2016) went to number nine on the Bluegrass Chart and he hosts an American satellite radio programme, 'The Acoustic Traveler'. His 2017 tour took in many towns and cities across the American south and his 2018 dates include venues in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Tennessee.
