John McEuen: Nitty Gritty to Hippie & Sons

John McEuen says he still loves playing with the Dirt Band but is most excited by his current shows.

String wizard John McEuen, co-founder of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and host of the monthly "Acoustic Traveler" show on XM Satellite Radio, admits, "I'm sort of an unusual DJ in that I only play people I know or have recorded with or performed with."

Fortunately, thanks to a ridiculously overpopulated CV, that's a substantial universe, "and that's what's really fun about it," says McEuen, who performs at the Barns at Wolf Trap on Wednesday with sons Jonathan and Nathan, "proving that the acorns, in fact, do not fall far from the tree."

The show, which McEuen jokingly refers to as "an old hippie-and-family affair," will feature the basics that have served him well for more than 40 years: superb picking, a rich sense of musical heritage, fine songs (mostly sung by his sons), dollops of good humor and storyteller specials. The last category includes a resurrected favorite, the Stephen Vincent Benet poem "The Mountain Whippoorwill (Or, How Hillbilly Jim Won the Great Fiddler's Prize)" set to McEuen's cinematic banjo accompaniment.

"I like all aspects of this business, from the making of something to telling people about it," McEuen says. "What's to not like? I'm very grateful."

Just how much will eventually be revealed in McEuen's autobiography, which, providence allowing, could come out around the same time as "Born Standing Up," an autobiography by Steve Martin. The actor-comedian has been McEuen's buddy since their days at Garden Grove High School and rose to stardom through his tours as an opening act for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Oh, to have been a customer, or a co-worker, at Disneyland in the mid-'60s when the teenage Martin and McEuen worked at Merlin's Magic Shop. Martin actually began working at Disneyland in 1956 when he was 10 years old and the park just one. Both grew up in Garden Grove, a small community about two miles from Disneyland.

McEuen says the Magic Shop was "a great training ground because you had audience turnover every 15 minutes, so you could work on jiving people: 'You want that in a sack or a bag? A bag opens on the top and a sack opens on the bottom, so you better take a bag, otherwise it will fall out!' "

You can see where McEuen developed his narrative skills and Martin his comedic spiels (alongside magic, juggling and the creation of balloon animals). After being blown away by a Flatt & Scruggs album, Martin learned banjo from McEuen, though McEuen had been playing only a few years himself. Both competed in Southern California's renowned Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest, with McEuen winning the advanced bluegrass banjo competition with a lively instrumental original titled "Dismal Swamp," which may have summarized his feelings about growing up in Orange County.

"When I started out, I just wanted to get out of O.C., which was a dream of anybody who spent time there at the time," McEuen jokes. As a teenager, his horizons had already broadened through frequent visits to the legendary Ash Grove folk club, where McEuen ingratiated himself with such local legends as the Dillards as well as the steady stream of visiting musicians. Bluegrass pioneers Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe did their first West Coast concerts there.

"I would see these people come through Los Angeles, and I knew I wanted to do that -- travel around and play and tell stories," McEuen says.

The Dillards, bluegrass trailblazers whose national profile would become much larger as the Darlings on "The Andy Griffith Show," were McEuen's first major inspiration, mentors and models, a debt paid last year when he produced and directed a documentary about them, "The Dillards: A Night in the Ozarks."

As a teenager, McEuen had a business card that read, "Have Wand, Will Travel," but an immediately apparent virtuosity on banjo, guitar, mandolin and fiddle proved a better calling card, first in a series of local bluegrass bands and, beginning in August 1966, in an enduring fellowship forged at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Long Beach. That's where McEuen, Jeff Hanna and Jimmie Fadden commandeered the coffee table "where people would sit around and wait for the new Doc Watson or Flatt & Scruggs record to come in," McEuen says. "Of course, I never had an idea I would meet those people."