John McEuen says fame has given him more artistic room, rather than boxed him in.
It lets him do big shows as a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, along with solos and duos at little local venues, like a friend's neighborhood coffeehouse in Los Angeles or Javarita in Sahuarita.
McEuen will play the Javarita Coffeehouse at Good Shepherd United Church of Christ in Sahuarita at 7 p.m. Friday with hot-shot multi-instrumentalist Matt Cartsonis.
McEuen, 65, has also appeared on TV shows with banjo accomplice Steve Martin (he produced Martin's Grammy-winning banjo album, "The Crow," last year), a show on satellite radio (Channel 15 on XM Radio), and just about everything in between.
McEuen, in a phone interview during an East Coast swing last month, said one of his favorite shows was a "midnight ramble" at the home of Levon Helm last year.
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Helm, drummer for The Band - the band that backed Bob Dylan when he went electric in the 1960s and is probably the most influential group in rock other than the Beatles - holds parlor concerts at his home in Woodstock, N.Y., and webcasts them on the Internet. The shows, which he calls "midnight rambles," are named for the slightly more adult-themed second shows that chitlin'-circuit bands did in rural Arkansas and throughout the South when Helm was growing up in the 1950s.
Helm, 70, survived a bout with throat cancer a few years ago and came back to play and have another career as a solo artist long after The Band broke up.
"I did my 45-minute set and sat in with him for 35 or 40 minutes. He's the nicest guy," McEuen said. "His drumming is so wonderful."
The Dirt Band, as they're commonly known, made their biggest mark in the very early 1970s with a cover of Jerry Jeff Walker's "Mr. Bojangles."
They had been together for a few years at that point. Singer-songwriter Jackson Browne and Bernie Leadon, who went on to join and leave the Eagles, had already left the band by then.
The Dirt Band had a good deal in common with The Band, having also introduced a primarily rock audience to acoustic instruments and adding elements of music from earlier times to an electric-band setting.
McEuen still works with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, occasionally, and he said he relishes those shows.
McEuen - who plays banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar and slide - said he's proud of still seeing "some 25-year-olds" in his and the Dirt Band's audiences, decades since he was last on the charts.
"It may have helped that I played with Phish a few times," McEuen said of doing some festivals with the famed jam band several years ago.
"I like what I do solo," he said. "It's been getting more success. I've done a wide variety, now I get to do it all - the Dirt Band, Gerdes Folk City, festivals, TV shows, a club that holds 45 people. It's all fine."
And keeping things fresh with a lot of variety pays off, too, McEuen says.
"Like last year, once (while touring with the Dirt Band) we did the best Bojangles we ever did. The audience may not have noticed."
But McEuen and the rest of the band did. And that was enough.
If you go
• What: John McEuen concert.
• When: 7 p.m. Friday.
• Where: Javarita Coffeehouse at Good Shepherd United Church of Christ, 17750 S. La Cañada Drive, Sahuarita.
• Tickets: $20 at the door.
