The Dillards are a well-known and influential bluegrass band. Launching their first album Back Porch Bluegrass in 1963, the band started a major legacy in the genre. During the band's decades-long career, they have inspired other musical groups such as The Eagles, The Byrds, and Elton John and have the distinction of being one of the first bluegrass bands to go electric. For many people, their biggest claim to fame occurred when they appeared on The Andy Griffith Show as in-universe musical family The Darlings, which led to at least three albums. The band started with Mitch Jayne, Douglas and Rodney Dillard, and Doug Webb. However, since Doug Dillard left in 1968 to pursue a separate career, the membership has undergone significant rotation for various reasons.
The Dillards provide examples of the following tropes:
- Accidental Murder: "Polly Vaughn" (a more modern version of the Irish folk song "Molly Ban") follows a young man who shoots his true love Polly during a hunting trip, having mistaken her white apron for swan plumage.
- Age-Progression Song:
- "Hey Boys" is a song from the perspective of a country man. As a youngster, he planned to buy a Cadillac and roam around. However, he got older and became more sensible. Now he realizes he's getting old because he's quite happy to sit by the fire with a drink during cold weather.
- "There is a Time" is a somewhat more oblique example, using the seasons to discuss periods of life from youth all the way to death. The singer recommends doing your wandering when you're young.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: "Rainmaker" tells the story of a rainmaker coming to a drought-stricken town and magically making it rain. However, like the townsfolk of Hamelin, the locals refuse to pay afterwards. The rainmaker just smiles and leaves...and doesn't turn the rain off before doing so.
- Break Up Song: "Reason to Believe". The lyrics indicate the singer knows he should leave behind his old girlfriend, who is All Take and No Give and who lied to him, not caring about his feelings. However, he knows that if he gives her a chance to talk him out of the breakup, he'll forget it all.
- Dogs Are Dumb: Mitch declares outright that foxhounds have no sense during the introduction to "Old Blue." This results in them running themselves to exhaustion and then ending up in any shelter they can find.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Implied in "Old Home Place". The singer says that all his money went to the taverns directly after mentioning his girlfriend running off with another man.
- Ghostly Goals: Polly Vaughn appears twice after her death to comfort her boyfriend and to testify in his favor at the trial. The song ends there, so we never find out what happened afterwards.
- Hillbilly Moonshiner: "Dooley" concerns a particularly talented moonshiner, who produced a lot of the drink in the area and always managed to elude the officers sent to deal with him. When he died, it upset the men and he ended up with a jug and a barrel marking the place he was buried.
- Homesickness Hymn: A number of the band's songs focus on a country boy missing his home.
- "Never See My Home Again" is sung by a country boy who waxes nostalgic for the rural beauty and family he has back home, but suspects that the continual road stretching on before him will keep him away for good.
- "The Old Home Place" tells about a man who left his homestead for a job in town after falling in love with a town girl. However, the girl was unfaithful to him, the homestead was torn down, and now he wishes for death.
- Instrumental: "Liberty" and "Banjo in the Hollow" are both fast-paced, wordless banjo numbers.
- Man Bites Man: Mitch jokingly claims Rodney bit Pete Seeger during one festival.
- Mr. Muffykins: While explaining the way the band sings "Old Blue", Mitch says that people in the Ozarks see dogs differently than people from other places, especially Los Angeles. Back home, they don't shave their dogs into funny hairstyles, dye them unusual colors, or put rhinestone collars on them. He jokes that more likely the mom of the family would take any rhinestone collars lying around for personal use.
- Murder Ballad:
- "Pretty Polly" centers around a Villain Protagonist who plots to kill his girlfriend after getting her pregnant because he doesn't want to marry her. Unfortunately, The Bad Guy Wins.
- "Reuben's Train" includes a verse about the narrator killing Reuben for some reason and burying him. It may not even be the last, because the singer refers to "starting his own graveyard."
- New Sound Album:
- Roots & Branches and Tribute to the American Duck are more in tune with folk rock and soft rock. Most of the band's albums from The '70s followed this style.
- The albums Wheatstraw Suite and Copperfields are a mix between the electrified folk rock style and the more iconic bluegrass sound they had in The '60s. For what it's worth, these two albums immediately preceded Roots & Branches
- No Ending: "Polly Vaughn" ends directly after Polly's ghost appears to defend her boyfriend at his trial. We never hear whether he got convicted for accidentally killing her or what happened afterward.
- Noodle Incident: "The Biggest Whatever" has some kind of furry undescribed thing running around attacking people. An old man says there used to be more, but they usually didn't come this far south.
- Potty Emergency: Referenced obliquely in the intro for "Old Blue"; Mitch explains why their version of "Old Blue" is less sentimental than Joan Baez's. Namely, dogs in the Ozarks are likely to hole up in your privy after running out of steam and growl you out regardless of how desperately you need to go.
- Revisiting the Roots: The 1991 album Let It Fly and the compilation There Is A Time: 1963-1970 marked a return to the bluegrass sound in full, something that they largely kept to from The '90s onward.
- Starving Artist: "Ebo Walker" tells about a farm boy whose fiddle-playing hobby became a full-time vocation. He left Kentucky after his father cussed him out for failing to do any work on the farm. Afterwards, he wandered around playing the fiddle, living off food and drink from listeners.
- Toilet Humor: A large part of the explanation for "Old Blue"'s non-sentimentality focuses around the perils of braving a frigid winter night only for the hound curled up in your privy to growl you out again before you can gain relief. The audience starts howling multiple times during the skit.
