Nitty Gritty Dirt Band onstage tonight

SANDPOINT — The Nitty Gritty Dirt band graces the Festival at Sandpoint stage four the fourth time tonight.

The legendary country, folk and rock band has performed at the festival in 1999, 2002 and 2010.

Almost everybody has at one point been introduced to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band at one point during their 50-year-career.

Whether it’s through the musical western “Paint Your Wagon,” a cover of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles” or the band’s first number one country hit “Long Hard Road,” the band’s music has gotten through to listeners. Some may have unwittingly heard the band on the Steve Martin hit, “King Tut,” which backed the comedian and banjo player as the Toot Uncommons.

“You put all those people together and it makes up this broad audience,” said John McEuen, one of the band’s multi-instrumentalists. “There’s things that everybody responds to and then there’s quite a few people who say, ‘I didn’t know they did that song.’”

But McEuen — who plays banjo, guitar, fiddle, mandolin and lap steel guitar — said “Bojangles” is the song most people know and it’s a song they don’t tire of performing.

“We’re going on a ride back to their past and ours too at the same time. Everybody’s transported back to a time when that meant something different in your life and it was good, and you live in that space for a while.” The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band does not lack for memorable moments over its lengthy career. It was the first band to play in Russia. It recorded with a laundry list of country music pioneers such as Mother Maybelle Carter and Roy Acuff on “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” When the band opened for Bill Cosby at Carnegie Hall, Cosby said a friend would be sitting in.

That friend happened to be Dizzy Gillespie.

“He did one song with us and I couldn’t remember what an E chord was,” said McEuen.

The band also worked with Dolly Parton, Willy Nelson and Tom Petty on the third volume of the “Circle” series.

McEuen said those opportunities would never had materialized without the fans the Dirt Band has gathered over the decades.

“The followers are the people that have given us this career because all these opportunities — from Russia to the No. 1 record and being able to say something to Tom Petty at all — happens because people like what we have done as a band,” he said.

McEuen has worked with a breathtaking list of artists — from Jerry Garcia and June Carter Cash to Jimmy Buffet, Phish, and the Doors — but there are a couple more he would love to work with, namely John Fogarty and Paul McCartney. He’s met both and was astonished to learn Fogarty and McCartney knew his music.

McEuen, by the way, does spot-on voice impressions of Parton, McCartney and dour Community Party officials.

Joining the band on their 50th anniversary trek will be Jim Photoglo, a bass player who co-authored the Nitty Gritty hit, “Fishing in the Dark.”

“Jeff was asked if he would like to go on the road and see what people do to the song he wrote. And he’s liking it,” said McEuen.

McEuen, meanwhile, is poised to release his latest solo album, “Made in Brooklyn,” which has contributions from Martin, David Bromberg and John Carter Cash and others (johnmceuen.com).