CMT News

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band will release Speed of Life, their first album of new music in five years, on Sept. 22 on NGDB Records. Distributed by Sugar Hill Records, it features the band's current lineup of Jeff Hanna, Jimmie Fadden, Bob Carpenter and John McEuen. The project, recorded in Nashville at Martina and John McBride's Blackbird Studio, was produced by George Massenburg and singer-songwriter Jon Randall. The songs include covers of two rock classics from the '60s and '70s -- Canned Heat's "Going Up the Country" and Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle With You." "Jimmy Martin," a song written by Phil Madeira and Jimmie Lee Sloas, pays tribute to the late bluegrass legend who appeared on all three volumes of the Dirt Band's Will the Circle Be Unbroken series.