Old Crow Medicine Show
Performing at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco, October 2004.
Background information
Origin	Harrisonburg, Virginia
Genres	Folk, country, Americana, bluegrass, old-time
Years active	1998–present
Labels	Nettwerk
Website	Official Site
Members
Ketch Secor Willie Watson Critter Fuqua Kevin Hayes Morgan Jahnig Gill Landry
Former members
Ben Gould Matt Kinman

Old Crow Medicine Show is an old-time string band based in Nashville, Tennessee. Their music has been called bluegrass, Americana, and alt-country, in addition to old-time. Along with original songs, the band performs many pre-World War II blues and folk songs. They have been recording since 1998.

[edit] History

[edit] Early

Ketch Secor and Chris "Critter" Fuqua first met in the seventh grade in Harrisonburg, Virginia in Rockingham County, Virginia, 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" Ketch "was considered a townie." As Ketch 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 Sterns."^[2] Secor formed the Route 11 Boys with St. Ours and his brothers and performed often at Little Grill.

[edit] Heading north

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 . ."^[3]

He then attended Ithaca College to be with his high-school girlfriend who attended Cornell University.^[4] Ketch brought his friend Critter up to New York State, where they joined with Willie Watson, a native, and Willie's friend, Ben Gould, who had just procured an upright bass. They assembled "a whole bunch of these players all around Ithaca, New York, where there is a very lively old-time music scene."^[5] They gathered in Critter's bedroom in 1998 to record an album that they could sell on the road; a cassette of ten songs, called Trans:mission.

[edit] Busking break

One day, while 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 Big Iron World (2006).^[6]

They made their Grand Ole Opry debut on the Ryman Auditorium stage in 2001 to a standing ovation.^[8]

[edit] Wagon Wheel

"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.'"^[9]

Secor and Dylan have since 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.

[edit] Performance

The band has performed at such major music festivals as CMC (Country Music Channel) Rocks the Snowys, Bonnaroo, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and the New Orleans Jazz Festival.^[10] Their 2007 live-performance itinerary included shows in Boone, NC, Seattle, Lawrence, KS, Arcata, CA, Knoxville, TN, Nashville and Boulder, CO, as well as overseas in London and Amsterdam.^[11] 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.^[11]

They have headlined at the Grand Ole Opry,^[6] after earlier having performed at that institution's 75th-anniversary celebration.^[12] They opened for the Dave Matthews Band in 2009.

[edit] Musical style

The band plays a wide variety of music, seeming to pull influence from any of the many musical forms that would have been available to medicine shows of the turn of the century to the nineteen-forties, 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."^[8]

After three years playing guitar, Kevin Haynes 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

[edit] Awards, honors, distinctions

• The band was nominated for a 2007 Americana Music Award in the category of "Best Duo Or Group."^[13]

• Their video "I Hear Them All" was nominated for two 2007 CMT Music Awards. Directed by Danny Clinch, it was a first-round finalist in the Best Group and Wide Open Country categories. The video was shot in the Mid-City area of New Orleans and features local residents each with inspirational stories regarding Hurricane Katrina.

• Their 2004 album O.C.M.S. was selected by CMT (Country Music Television) as one of the top-10 bluegrass albums of that year.^[14]

[edit] Special appearances

• Ketch Secor wrote, arranged, and performs Send No Angels with Lani Marsh on Our Christmas Present (2008) produced by Our Community Place.

• They performed "Tell Mother I Will Meet Her" at the induction of Emmylou Harris and Ernest V. "Pop" Stoneman into the Country Music Hall of Fame April 27, 2008.^[15]

• They perform Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee” on Song of America (2007), a 3-CD set tracing the history of the U.S. through new versions of songs by major artists. Proceeds benefit the Center for American Music, National History Day, and Folk Alliance.^[16]

• 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.^[13]

• They appeared on Austin City Limits after Lucinda Williams, aired December 2007 (taped September 2007).^[17]

• They make frequent guest appearances on A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor.^[18]

• They appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 2003 and again in 2008.

• They have performed at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

• They performed on the soundtrack for the film Transamerica which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005.

• They performed at the first annual BamaJam Music and Arts Festival in Enterprise, Alabama.^[19]

[edit] Personnel

• Ketch Secor – vocals, fiddle, harmonica, banjo
• Willie Watson – vocals, guitar, banjo
• Kevin Hayes – guitjo, vocals
• Morgan Jahnig – bass
• Gill Landry – banjo, resonator guitar, guitar, vocals
• Critter Fuqua – banjo, guitar, resonator guitar, vocals

Since 2008, Gill Landry has been appearing live in place of Critter Fuqua.

[edit] Former members

• Ben Gould – bass
• Matt Kinman – bones, mandolin

[edit] Recordings

[edit] Studio albums

• ^AOut of print.
• ^BO.C.M.S. was re-released under the title Old Crow Medicine Show as an import in 2006. (ASIN: B000GFLI64)

[edit] EPs

• 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"

[edit] Other

• Song of America (2007) Various Artists Split Rock Records/Thirty One Tigers — ASIN: B000T3GK8O
  • OCMS perform Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) (Disc 2/Track 15)
• Ketch Secor wrote, arranged, and performs Send No Angels with Lani Marsh on Our Christmas Present (2008) produced by Our Community Place

[edit] Broadcasts

• World Café with David Dye November 4, 2008.
• NPR "Old Crow Medicine Show: Punk Americana" by David Dye World Cafe October 25, 2006.
• NPR "Old Crow Medicine Show Revives Traveling Tradition" by Melissa Block All Things Considered September 4, 2006.
• A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor February 12, 2005.
• A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor September 25, 2004.
• A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor (all shows and references).

[edit] Videos

• Down Home Girl
• I Hear Them All
• Music Video- Tell It To Me (Windows Users: Right-Click and select Save As)
• Music Video- Wagon Wheel (Windows Users: Right-Click and select Save As)
• Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour Michael Jonathon's Old Time Radio Hour
• Austin City Limits recorded June 9, 2007, broadcast December 22, 2007.
• CMT OCMS videos.

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Old Crow Medicine Show

• Old-time country

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Old Crow Medicine Show official site
• Country Music Television "Top 10 Bluegrass Albums of 2004" January 3, 2005

[edit] Reviews, interviews, articles

• 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