Old Crow Medicine Show is a folk band based in Nashville, Tennessee. Their music has been called bluegrass, Americana, and alt-country. Along with original songs, the band performs many pre-World War II blues and folk songs. They have been recording since 1998.
Ketch Secor and Critter Fuqua first met in the seventh grade in Harrisonburg, Virginia in Rockingham County, and began playing music together. They performed open mics at the Little Grill diner which was "really the first chance that . . Critter had to play on stage." Being "a bit younger" than the "college students at James Madison University who typically hung out there" Secor "was considered a townie." As Secor says today: "They knew that we had talent, but it was raw. I mean, I was up there beating on a jaw harp when I was 13."[1]
It was at Little Grill Ketch first saw his "contemporary" Robert St. Ours—who later went on to found The Hackensaw Boys--singing and "he was so cool with his leather jacket and side burns. I knew that's what I wanted to do." His early influences also included " . . driving up to Mt. Jackson, VA to the bluegrass Saturday night in the summer. And going up to Davis and Elkins College to participate in the Old Time Music week there, and meeting guys like Richie Stearns."[1] Secor formed the Route 11 Boys with St. Ours and his brothers and performed often at Little Grill.
Meanwhile, Willie Watson first met Ben Gould in high school in Watkins Glen, New York in Schuyler County, and began playing music together. Both Watson and Gould dropped out of school and formed the band "The Funnest Game". They played a unique brand of electric/old time music heavily influenced by the lively old time music scene prominent in Tompkins and Schuyler County, New York. Most notably, The Horse Flies and The Highwoods Stringband. "We were like Tommy Jarrell jamming with Crazy Horse".[2] Performing locally from Watkins Glen to Ithaca, New York the young band earned the respect of their local "old-time heroes" and gained a dedicated local fan base by performing weekly at the Rongovian Embassy with Richie Stearns and annually at the Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance in Trumansburg, New York
After Secor finished his schooling at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where he learned to play the banjo, he spent a year taking short musician-hobo jaunts up to Maine and Canada from his home in Harrisonburg. "I had just read the book, Bound for Glory, and I knew that I wanted to go hobo with music. So we went out on the road . ."[1]
After the breakup of the Route 11 Boys, Secor attended Ithaca College[4] and brought Fuqua up to New York State, where they met Willie Watson through mutual friend Richie Stearns. Watson dissolved the Funnest Game and they assembled "a whole bunch of these players all around Ithaca, New York,[5] They gathered in Critter's bedroom to record an album that they could sell on the road; a cassette of ten songs, called Trans:mission. In October 1998 the band left Ithaca for the "Trans:mission" Tour. Busking their way west across Canada and circling back east again where they settled in the Appalachian Mountains outside of Boone, North Carolina.
One day, while the band was busking outside a pharmacy called Boone Drug in Boone, North Carolina, the daughter of folk-country legend Doc Watson happened by and was impressed by what she heard. Doc Watson invited the band to participate in his annual MerleFest music festival in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.[6] That break led to the act's relocation to Nashville in 2000,[4] where they were "embraced and mentored" by Marty Stuart, the president of the Grand Ole Opry, Gillian Welch and Welch's longtime songwriting partner and guitarist, David Rawlings.[6] Stuart helped them land some high profile gigs and Rawlings later produced their first two albums "O.C.M.S" and Big Iron World (2006).[6]
They made their Grand Ole Opry debut on the Ryman Auditorium stage in 2001 to a standing ovation.[7]
Ketch Secor is married to writer Lydia Peelle,[8] winner of the O. Henry Award and Whiting Award for her short stories.[9] They met freshman year at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, later moving to Ithaca, New York together—where she attended Cornell and he Ithaca College. It was her breaking up with him in 1998 that led to the creation of Old Crow.
She later had a change of heart, but "honestly thought (she)'d never see him again." Shortly after graduating from Cornell, she read in the newspaper about an old widower who visited his wife's grave daily. "Something about that true love and devotion hit" her and she "thought of Ketch." Getting his address from his parents, she boarded a train the next morning, landing in Butler, Tennessee at 2 a.m. "Secor and his band were living in a tiny cabin in the woods" in this "freckle of a town near the North Carolina border." Once she knocked on the front door and Secor opened it "it was like (they) had never left each other."[8]
"She was young, but she was always in love with him. It just took her time to realize that."
[8]—Deborah Schoeneman, college friend
Peelle is named for her great-great-aunt Lydia Maria Child, the novelist, journalist, teacher, and abolitionist who authored the poem "Over the River and through the Woods"[10] (later sung as a Thanksgiving song).
Busking in Boone, North Carolina led to Doc Watson's daughter discovering the group and a personal invite from the country legend himself to appear at his annual MerleFest music festival in Wilkesboro, North Carolina in April 2000.[6][11] This break knocked the act into the popular spotlight,[6] and they have continued to appear at the festival in years since (2004, 2008).[12][13]
Since then the band has performed at such major music festivals as CMC (Country Music Channel) Rocks the Snowys in Thredbo, Australia (2009), Bonnaroo (2002, 2005, 2007, and 2011),[14][15][16][17] Telluride Bluegrass Festival (2005 and 2011),[18] Coachella, All Good Music Festival (2010),[19] and the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival (2003, 2004, and 2009).[20][21][22] They performed at the 41st Annual New Orleans Jazz Festival in 2010,[23] an event featuring Pearl Jam, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, Lionel Richie, The Neville Brothers, Allman Brothers Band, and Anita Baker.[24] Their 2007 live-performance itinerary included shows in Boone, NC, Seattle, Arcata, CA, Knoxville, TN, Nashville and Boulder, CO, as well as overseas in London and Amsterdam.[2] The band has also toured the UK several times, including an appearance at the Cambridge Folk Festival and on the BBC show Later with Jools Holland.[2]
They have headlined at the Grand Ole Opry,[6] after earlier having performed at that institution's 75th-anniversary celebration[25] and appeared in special New Year's Eve shows in 2009 (with special guest Chuck Mead)[26] and 2010[27] at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. They opened for the Dave Matthews Band in 2009 at the John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville, VA; the Verizon Wireless Music Center in Pelham, AL; and the Nikon at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, NY. In the summer of 2009, the band co-billed The Big Surprise Tour with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, The Felice Brothers, and Justin Townes Earle.[28] They performed as part of the Prairie Home Companion Cinecast October 23, 2010 broadcast from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, MN and viewable in cinemas throughout the U.S. and Canada.
In April 2011 the group joined Mumford and Sons and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros on The Railroad Revival Tour, a tour inspired by the Festival Express tour across Canada in 1970 that included Buddy Guy, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, and The Band.[29] Traveling exclusively in vintage rail cars, the three bands performed in six "unique outdoor locations" over the course of a week starting in Oakland, California.[30] They appear in the musical documentary Big Easy Express, directed by Emmett Malloy, being made of the trip which premiered March 2012 at the South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival (SXSW Film) in Austin, Texas[31]--winning the Headliner Audience Award.[32]
Old Crow Medicine Show announced in August 2011 that the group would be on hiatus until further notice. Three scheduled shows for September 2011 were cancelled. The banner announcing the hiatus was removed from the official band website as of December 13, 2011. Secor and Chris 'Critter' Fuqua, an original member of the group who has not performed with them for some time, began playing tour dates January 2012, including a benefit show at Little Grill Collective[33][34] where their performing careers began. Proceeds of this benefit performance went to Our Community Place, for whom Secor recorded his original Christmas song "Send No Angels" for the fundraising album Our Christmas Present in 2008.[35]
Founding member Fuqua rejoined the group in January 2012,[36] after years of separation. Also an original member, Willie Watson,[4] guitarist and lead vocalist for the group, has 'parted ways'. The official announcement at the group webpage reads as follows:
We are happy to announce that one of the original founding members, Critter Fuqua, is back in the band. Critter has written and recorded some of Old Crow’s classic songs, including “Take ‘em Away”, “James River Blues”, “Big Time In The Jungle”, and “New Virginia Creeper”. Old Crow Medicine Show have decided to part ways with Willie Watson. They wish him all the best in his future endeavors.[36]
The band has recorded a new album for According to Our Records (or ATO Records), which will be released in 2012.[36] ATO was founded by Dave Matthews and his business manager Coran Capshaw in 2000 as a division of RCA Records. Based in New York City, it distributes through RED Distribution, the Sony Music independent-distribution arm.
"It sort of exists separately from the world of things that are on the radio. 'Wagon Wheel' has made it around the camp fires and the jam sessions and the parking lot scenes, in a way that songs of this decade or the last decade tend not to. When you go to a drum circle at a camp fire, you’ll hear songs that are 40 years old that a kid with a hemp leash just learned, like 'The Weight' by The Band, and then you’re going to hear 'Wagon Wheel.'"[37]
"Wagon Wheel" has become something of a signature song for the group, but its origins predate its formation. Says Ketch of its authorship:
"I heard a
Dylan song that was unfinished back in high school and I finished it . . As a serious Bob Dylan fan, I was listening to anything he had put on tape, and this was an outtake of something he had mumbled out on one of those tapes. I sang it all around the country from about 17 to 26, before I ever even thought, 'oh I better look into this.'"
[1]
The Dylan outtake, generally titled "Rock Me Mama", came out of recording sessions for the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid movie soundtrack (1973) in Burbank, California.[38] Secor later met Dylan’s son, Jakob, who said "it made sense that I was a teenager when I did that, because no one in their 30s would have the guts to try to write a Bob Dylan song."[37]
When Secor sought copyright on the song to release on an album in 2003, he discovered Dylan credited the phrase “Rock me, mama” to bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, who likely got it from a Big Bill Broonzy recording. As Secor says: "In a way, it’s taken something like 85 years to get completed."[37] Only the chorus (or refrain) comes from the Dylan outtake:
-
- So rock me mama like a wagon wheel
- Rock me mama anyway you feel
- Hey mama rock me
- Rock me mama like the wind and the rain
- Rock me mama like a south-bound train
- Hey mama rock me[39]
Secor and Dylan signed a co-writing agreement on the song. It has been covered by an increasing number of acts since its release on O.C.M.S. in 2004. The group's version of the song was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in November 2011.[40] To celebrate they released a limited edition 7” vinyl record of the song with "'All Night Long' Live At The Station Inn" (2003) on the B-side.[41]
The band plays a wide variety of music, seeming to pull influence from any of the many musical forms that would have been performed by musicians of the turn of the 19th to 20th century to the 1940s, including old time, bluegrass, country, and folk blues. Country Music Television notes the band's "tunes from jug bands and traveling shows, back porches and dance halls, southern Appalachian string music and Memphis blues."[7]
"I feel like when we play, people can feel the timelessness. They can feel that they're rooted in something. Like we're able to play for a collective feeling that's lost, that used to be a big part of everything."[4]
Ketch Secor
After three years playing guitar, Kevin Hayes switched over to the guit-jo, making him perhaps "the only professional guit-jo player in America."[5]
"Well, the guit-jo is a very percussive instrument, and it's got the kind of hollowness that the banjo has, that kind of plunk that the banjo has, but it doesn't have a twangy thing. It's not really high end. It's like an empty, hollow, bass-y sound. If you need to identify it on the record, once you hear it, once you identify it as the guit-jo, then you'll be able to determine where it is through the record. Because once you know what it sounds like, I mean, it only sounds like a guit-jo. You'll never have it confused with anything else."
[5]—Ketch Secor
- They took part in the Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration Concert, "This Land Is Your Land", March 10, 2012 at the Brady Theater in Tulsa, Oklahoma, performing classic Woody Guthrie songs with Arlo Guthrie, John Mellencamp, Jackson Browne,[43] Rosanne Cash, Del McCoury Band, The Flaming Lips, Hanson, Tim O'Brien, and Jimmy LaFave.[44]
- They joined Uncle Earl, Sunny Sweeney, Todd Snider, The Avett Brothers, Guy Clark, Emmylou Harris, the Hacienda Brothers, Elizabeth Cook, Amy LaVere, and Ricky Skaggs with Bruce Hornsby as performers for the Americana Honors and Awards Show held November 1, 2007 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.[48]
- Their music video of "I Hear Them All", a song from Big Iron World (2006), was nominated for two 2007 CMT (Country Music Television) Music Awards; making first-round finalist in the Best Group and Wide Open Country categories.[49] Directed by Danny Clinch, the video was shot in the Mid-City area of New Orleans featuring local residents with inspirational stories regarding Hurricane Katrina.
- Their 2004 album O.C.M.S. was selected by CMT as one of the top-10 bluegrass albums of the year.[50]
- Ketch Secor wrote, arranged, and performs "Send No Angels" with Lani Marsh on Our Christmas Present: 2008, a fundraising album for Our Community Place in Harrisonburg, Virginia where his music career began.
- Critter Fuqua - Banjo, Resonator Guitar, Guitar, Vocals
- Kevin Hayes – guitjo, vocals
- Morgan Jahnig – bass
- Gill Landry – banjo, resonator guitar, guitar, vocals
- Ketch Secor – vocals, fiddle, harmonica, banjo, guitar
- Cory Younts - mandolin, vocals
-
-
Cambridge Folk Festival in Cambridge, England
July 30, 2005
-
-
Ketch Secor (harmonica) Morgan Jahnig (bass) Willie Watson (guitar)
Tivoli Theatre in Chattanooga, Tennessee
May 5, 2010
-
Kevin Hayes on guitjo
Tivoli Theatre in Chattanooga, Tennessee
May 5, 2010
- AOut of print.
- BO.C.M.S. was re-released under the title Old Crow Medicine Show as an import in 2006. (ASIN: B000GFLI64)
- CBig Iron World charted: (27) Country Albums, (1) Bluegrass Albums, (2) Heatseekers Albums, (11) Tastemaker Albums.[57]
- DTennessee Pusher charted: (7) Country Albums, (1) Bluegrass Albums, (16) Digital Albums, (9) Tastemaker Albums.[57]
- Vegas (out of print) **Cassette only
- Troubles Up and Down the Road (2001) (out of print)
- The Webcor Sessions (2002) (out of print)
- NapsterLife 09/29/2004 (2004)
- Down Home Girl (2006) Nettwerk Records — ASIN: B000FORKT0
- World Cafe Live from iTunes (2006) Broadcast on NPR's World Cafe October 25, 2006
- Caroline (2008) Nettwerk Records - Three track single featuring previously unreleased song "Back To New Orleans"
- ^ a b c d Americana Rhythm Music Magazine "American Roots from the Soul" by Greg Tutwiler May/June 2009 issue.
- ^ a b c Official Site bio
- ^ "Roots Revival" by Neal McAlister, American Way Magazine; 2011.
- ^ a b c d "Hardcore Troubadors" text and photos by Matt Dellinger for The Oxford American March/April 2003.
- ^ a b c Pure Music interview with Ketch Secor by Frank Goodman.
- ^ a b c d e f "Old Crow Medicine Show: Ketch Secor and company's old-timey music invokes a simpler time" by Michael Alan Goldberg, published November 15, 2007 in Denver Westword.
- ^ a b Biography: Old Crow Medicine Show CMT.
- ^ a b c "WEDDINGS: Lydia Peelle and Ketch Secor by Abby Ellin; November 11, 2001 in The New York Times.
- ^ Lydia Peelle biogaphy HarperCollinsPublishers.
- ^ "WEDDINGS: Lydia Peelle and Ketch Secor by Abby Ellin; November 11, 2001 in The New York Times
- ^ 2000 Artist Lineup MerleFest official webpage.
- ^ 2008 Artist Lineup MerleFest official webpage.
- ^ 2004 Artist Lineup MerleFest official webpage.
- ^ a b 2002 Bonnaroo Lineup Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.
- ^ a b 2005 Bonnaroo Lineup Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.
- ^ a b 2007 Bonnaroo Lineup Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.
- ^ a b 2011 Bonnaroo Lineup Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.
- ^ Telluride Bluegrass Festival Past Festival Performers.
- ^ All Good Music Festival Artists.
- ^ 2003 Artists Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival webpage.
- ^ 2004 Artists Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival webpage.
- ^ 2009 Artists Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival webpage.
- ^ "Hot Young String Band Old Crow Medicine Show Plays Jazz Fest May 1st" by Fred Kasten, WWNO; April 15, 2010.
- ^ "New Orleans Jazz Fest 2010 Lineup Announced" by WHITPERSON in FESTIVALS, Live Music Blog; December 15, 2009.
- ^ "OpryFest Bluegrass Jamboree Has Cross-Generational Appeal" by Michelle Nikolai CMT News July 24, 2000.
- ^ Old Crow Medicine Show with special guest Chuck Mead NowPlayingNashville.com December 31, 2009.
- ^ "OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW RETURN TO THE RYMAN STAGE FOR NEW YEAR’S EVE 2010" Ryman Auditorium press release; October 18, 2010.
- ^ "Justin Townes Earle: Tour". Groundcontroltouring.com. http://www.groundcontroltouring.com/tour/justintownesearle/. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
- ^ "Mumford's railroad revival: The band boarded the Big Easy Express for a US tour with a difference" interview by Sinead Garvanin 6 Music News, BBC Radio; 27/02/2012.
- ^ The Railroad Revival Tour tour info.
- ^ "SXSW Film Announces 2012 Features Lineup; 'Big Easy Express' to Close Festival" by Nigel M. Smith, IndieWire; February 1, 2012.
- ^ "SXSW 2012: 'Big Easy Express' Wins Headliner Audience Award: Emmett Malloy's film follows folk rock bands on the road" by Jay A. Fernandez, Hollywood Reporter; March 19, 2012.
- ^ Little Grill Collective calendar page.
- ^ ”Hometown Boys Make Good” by Michael J. Farrand, Our Community Place Newsletter, Issue #23; February 2012.
- ^ Our Christmas Present at CDBaby.
- ^ a b c d Official Website
- ^ a b c "‘Wagon Wheel’ goes gold, one campfire at a time" Peter Cooper On Music: by Peter Cooper; December 8, 2011 in The Tennessean.
- ^ Heylin 1995, pp. 91–92
- ^ Wagon Wheel lyrics: Old Crow Medicine Show song lyrics Encyclopedia of Road Subculture.
- ^ a b "American single certifications – Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel". Recording Industry Association of America. http://www.riaa.com/goldandplatinumdata.php?artist=%22Wagon+Wheel%22. If necessary, click Advanced, then click Format, then select Single, then click SEARCH
- ^ a b Old Crow Medicine Show official webpage.
- ^ "Bluegrass Museum's 3-Day ROMP Fest Attracts National Talent" by Casey Piscitelli, SurfKY News Reporter; May 9, 2012.
- ^ "Jackson Browne joins lineup for Guthrie tribute concert" by Jennifer Chancellor, World Scene Writer, Tulsa World; 3/1/2012.
- ^ Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration Website
- ^ "Warren Hellman tribute concert slated for Feb. 19" by Jim Harrington, Oakland Tribune; 02/10/2012.
- ^ Events Nashville Public Library.
- ^ BamaJam - Artist Line Up
- ^ a b "Old Crow Added to Americana Honors Show"
- ^ "Old Crows nominated for two CMT Awards" by John Lawless, Bluegrass Today; February 6, 2008.
- ^ "Top 10 Bluegrass Albums of 2004" CMT.
- ^ Rolling Stone dubs Bonnaroo "Best Festival"
- ^ "New Marley’s Ghost Album Features Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Old Crow Medicine Show, Larry Campbell and More" posted 2012/03/29 at jambands.com.
- ^ "EMMYLOU HARRIS, ERNEST V. “POP” STONEMAN ENTER COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME" posted 4/29/2008 at The Newsroom Country Music Hall of Fame.
- ^ Austin City Limits episodes
- ^ A Prairie Home Companion search.
- ^ "Parades, Peeps, & Pop Stars: Old Crow Medicine Show Does Turkey Day in Style" by Steve LaBate, Paste Magazine, Scrapbook, Issue 8; February 1, 2004.
- ^ a b Old Crow Medicine Show Chart History, Billboard.com.
- State of Mind "Purely Righteous" - State of Mind Magazine, December 2008, by Gary Miller
- Hickorywind review of Tennessee Pusher posted September 24, 2008 by Brendan McKennedy
- Crawdaddy! review of Tennessee Pusher by Matt Gewolb
- Paste Magazine "Catching Up With...Old Crow Medicine Show" interview by Jedd Ferris on September 25, 2008
- Boston Herald "Old Crow's show rules the roost" by Christopher Blagg, review of Berklee Performance Center concert, September 24, 2008
- Chattanooga Times Free Press CD Reviews: New release 'Old Crow Medicine Show – "Big Iron World" – Nettwerk Records – Out Aug. 29' filed by M. Trevor Higgins July 30, 2006
- The Village Voice The Sound of The City "Big Ole Time Country-blues revivalists wail against wars for Phish-heads" by Yancey Strickler March 22, 2005
- Country Standard Time "Old Crow Medicine Show dispenses the right potion" by Dan MacIntosh March 2004
- News8Austin "Meet Old Crow Medicine Show" by Doug Shupe March 12, 2003
- In Music We Trust review of Eutaw (OCMS) by Mark. A Lawrence the IV, Issue Sixty May–June 2003
