Old Crow Medicine Show

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Ketch Secor redirects here.

Old Crow Medicine Show
Performing at Granada Theater - Dallas, TX - March 2006. Photo by Rich Anderson.
Performing at Granada Theater - Dallas, TX - March 2006. Photo by Rich Anderson.
Background information
Origin Flag of the United States
Ithaca, New York
Trumansburg, New York
Nashville, Tennessee
Harrisonburg, Virginia
Genre(s) Folk, Country, Americana, Bluegrass, Old-time
Years active 1998–present
Label(s) Nettwerk
Website Official Site
Members
Ketch Secor
Willie Watson
Chris "Critter" Fuqua
Kevin Hayes
Morgan Jahnig
Former members
Gilbert Landry
Ben Gould
Matt Kinman

Old Crow Medicine Show is an old-time musical group based in Nashville, Tennessee.

Contents

[edit] History

Ketch Secor was graduated in 1996 from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire where he learned to play the banjo. Instead of going immediately to college, he spent a year taking short musician-hobo jaunts up to Maine and Canada from his home in Harrisonburg, Virginia until attending Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York to be with his high-school girlfriend who attended Cornell University. She dumped him that summer.[1]

"I was in a hard place. I was hurting. All of us might have been in it at that time, the same kinda rut."

Driving alone one night, crying, he says, he had a brainstorm, and the next day began assembling a band. He asked along Critter Fuqua, his best friend since seventh grade (who had also just broken up with his girlfriend), and Willie Watson, a native of upstate New York. Willie's friend, Ben Gould, had just procured a stand-up acoustic bass. Together with an already-wandering folk singer Ketch had met while picking blueberries in Maine, Kevin Hayes, and a painter friend, Jacob Hascup, who came along as a traveling companion and muse, they set out with a few hundred dollars between them, a big brown van, a rusted black Volvo with flame detailing, and a dog.[2]

After working for two weeks picking grapes for gas money, they gathered in Critter's bedroom to record an album that they could sell on the road. It would be a cassette of ten songs, called Trans:mission. It was the first time they had all played together. As Ketch recounts:

"Kevin had never played old-time in his life. Critter had been playing the banjo for, like, four months. And I was a shitty fiddler."

The plan was to drive across the continent and earn their keep busking on the streets, playing for gas money and food.[3]

[edit] Big break

One day, as the members were busking in front of a Doc Watson's favorite restaurant, the daughter of the folk-country legend happened by and, impressed by what she heard, gave the band its big break. As fiddler Ketch Secor remembers,

"We were busking in front of Doc's favorite restaurant and Doc's daughter saw us playing there, and she comes up and says, 'Boy, you guys sound so good. My dad loved this kind of music.' And we're like, whatever. She didn't throw a tip. We're talking about tips, man! So she says, 'I'm going to go get my dad.' So we're like, whatever. She goes away. We don't think nothing about it. And then this woman comes back with her dad, and it's Doc Watson! . . we play a tune for Doc, and we play some old time stuff for him. He says, 'Son that sounds good. You should play at this festival we have in honor of my son over in West Wilkesboro.'"[4]

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, San FranciscoOctober 2004. Photo by Craig Williams.
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, San Francisco
October 2004. Photo by Craig Williams.

That's how the band came to participate in his annual MerleFest music festival in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.[5]

[edit] Nashville

That big break led to the act's relocation to Nashville in 2000.[6] There they were embraced and mentored by Marty Stuart, who met them at a music festival, Gillian Welch and Welch's longtime songwriting partner and guitarist, David Rawlings (who produced Old Crow's most recent album, 2006's Big Iron World).[7] As Ketch Secor said of the experience,

"I think we had dreams to fulfill(, a)nd there wasn't anything that was going to stop them from being fulfilled; they were just meant to be. Critter and I, we talked about going to Nashville when we were sixteen and then forgot all about it, and then we found ourselves going there."[8]

Having lived in Nashville only four months, Marty Stuart, the president of the Grand Ole Opry, had helped them land some high profile gigs. They had opened for Dolly Parton at the Ryman Auditorium, and had performed at the Opry's 75th-anniversary celebration.

Even with all this rapid success, founder of the group Ketch Secor said philosophically:

"This town is shitty. This town is everything that the mountain is not. This town is full of money. This town has no kinship. This town has no brotherly love. But this town is where we are, and we have never been in the wrong place."[9]

[edit] Roughing it

Garrison Keillor, introducing Old Crow Medicine Show during a live Prairie Home Companion broadcast from the Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota, told the band,

“ Remember this, boys, I say this from the heart: To play this kind of music, you can't let yourself get too luxurious. You gotta stay in bad hotels, you gotta eat bad food, to play this music the way it needs to be played. ”

The band didn't have to be reminded. As Secor remembers life prior to such success on the national stage,

"Before all of this, we were playin' in kind of extreme locations, whether they were the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota or some hillbilly bar on a dirt road way up on the mountainside in east Tennessee. We were playing places where people our age didn't go, where nobody looked like us. It was like the dark stranger in town; there were a lot of eyes for a long time."

What they got out of it was irreplaceable, as he recounts,

"But there was something strange and awesome about being in places like that, and it made our pack really strong, too, because we were the only ones of us for miles around. We didn't hang out in the coffeehouses with the other bands, working on a press kit. We were riding around in the back of a car with hitchhikers that didn't speak for a thousand miles."[10]

Secor says the trying road the band has traveled to get to where they earn a living playing music and fill large venues, makes luxuries like a tour bus that much more acceptable. He's grateful for the years of busking and the "traveling musical-salesman lifestyle," which he says helped the group develop "a backbone":

"Playing on a street corner, you have to get people to stop; you have to get people to reach into their wallets, pull out money. That conversion is a real challenge, because you got nothing on 'em. All you got is your music and your voice and the strength of your band, the unity of your group and the strength of music as a whole. But when they've already paid twenty dollars to come in the door and there's a big line that wraps around into the alley, where there's a big diesel bus sitting there all heated up, with tinted windows and a big American flag on it...well, you sorta have to suspend that way of thinking."

Still, the performer doesn't like to get too far from his roots:

"I try to busk a couple times every year, just for fun. I like to walk into bars in Cajun country and bring a fiddle, talk some broken French and try and follow along. I like to play music with people. I don't need there to be a thousand people out there freaking. Certainly, it's a privilege to have people come out, and I'm glad the people are there to make the show. But I didn't sign up for this 'cause of shows. The good times and the bad times, all of the music that was made, all of the strings that were broken, all the stubbed-out pencils that songs were scribbled with — all that stuff was going on, and it doesn't really matter what came out of it, what kinda gems were unearthed, but it was that process, the passion of playing music with my friends — that's what I signed up for."[11]

[edit] Performance

Old Crow Medicine Show made their Grand Ole Opry debut on the Ryman Auditorium stage in 2001, where they received a standing ovation.[12] Their tours today generally include bars, festivals, and larger venues. They make frequent guest appearances on A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor.[13]

In 2007, the band played to sold-out crowds at Boone, NC, Seattle, Lawrence, KS, Arcata, CA, London, Amsterdam, Knoxville, TN, Nashville and Boulder, CO.[14] Much of their success can be attributed to their relentless touring schedule. Between headlining shows and music festivals such as Bonnaroo, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, New Orleans Jazz Festival, etc., the band is constantly on the road and thrives off fans and live shows.[15]

Not only have they enjoyed success in North America, including appearances on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and on the soundtrack for the Oscar-nominated film Transamerica, but the band has also toured the UK several times. Highlights include an appearance on Later with Jools Holland (BBC) and the Cambridge Folk Festival.[16]

[edit] Musical style

The style of music they perform is sometimes called bluegrass, Americana, or alt-country, in addition to old-time. Along with original songs, the band performs many pre-World War II blues and folk songs.

The New Yorker described their debut album:

“Heartbreaking, plunky ballads and unfastened fiddle tunes charged with youthful vigor.”[17]

Country Music Television (CMT) says:

"Old Crow Medicine Show is a young five-piece rollicking, punkified old-time acoustic band. They bring it all together to play songs from some of the earliest traditions of American music - tunes from jug bands and traveling shows, back porches and dance halls, southern Appalachian string music and Memphis blues."[18]

Lead vocalist/fiddle player Ketch Secor stated:

"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."[19]

[edit] Distinctions and awards

[edit] Personnel

[edit] Former members

  • Gilbert Landry
  • Ben Gould
  • Matt Kinman

[edit] Recordings

[edit] Full-length

[edit] Other

  • Greetings from Wawa (2000) (out of print)
  • Eutaw (2001) (available only at live shows or through the band's website)
  • The Troubles Up and Down the Road 2001 (out of print)
  • The Webcor Sessions 2002 (out of print)
  • Live (2003) (available through the band's website)
  • Vegas (out of print)
  • Trans:Mission Tapes (out of print)

[edit] Broadcasts

[edit] Videos

[edit] Reviews, interviews, articles

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Hardcore Troubadors" text and photos by Matt Dellinger for The Oxford American March/April 2003.
  2. ^ "Hardcore Troubadors" text and photos by Matt Dellinger for The Oxford American March/April 2003.
  3. ^ "Hardcore Troubadors" text and photos by Matt Dellinger for The Oxford American March/April 2003.
  4. ^ "Old Crow Medicine Show dispenses the right potion" by Dan MacIntosh, appearing March 2004 in Country Standard Time.
  5. ^ "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.
  6. ^ "Hardcore Troubadors" text and photos by Matt Dellinger for The Oxford American March/April 2003.
  7. ^ "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.
  8. ^ "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.
  9. ^ "Hardcore Troubadors" text and photos by Matt Dellinger for The Oxford American March/April 2003.
  10. ^ "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.
  11. ^ "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.
  12. ^ Biography: Old Crow Medicine Show CMT.
  13. ^ A Prairie Home Companion
  14. ^ Official Site bio
  15. ^ bio Nettwerk.
  16. ^ Official Site bio
  17. ^ bio Nettwerk.
  18. ^ Biography: Old Crow Medicine Show CMT.
  19. ^ "Hardcore Troubadors" text and photos by Matt Dellinger for The Oxford American March/April 2003.
  20. ^ "EMMYLOU HARRIS, ERNEST V. “POP” STONEMAN ENTER COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME" posted 4/29/2008 at The Newsroom Country Music Hall of Fame.
  21. ^ Official Website.
  22. ^ "Old Crow Added to Americana Honors Show" The band was nominated for an Americana Music Award in the category of "Best Duo Or Group." September 26, 2007 CMT News.
  23. ^ A Prairie Home Companion search.
  24. ^ "Top 10 Bluegrass Albums of 2004" CMT.
  25. ^ Biography: Old Crow Medicine Show CMT.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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American roots music
v • d • e
Bluegrass music
Typical instruments
Stylistic origins
Sub- and fusion genres
Notable festivals
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