Old Crow Medicine Show: Growing at the Speed of Asparagus Relix (Oct./Nov. 2014) www.relix.com/articles/detail/old_crow_medicine_show_growing_at_the_speed_of_asparagus

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K
e t c h S e c o r i s d r e ss e d i n a b l u e p e a r l -
snap shirt with white piping, jeans and
worn leather cowboy boots. His hair is
slightly tousled, and he has a wad of dip in
his lower gum. He speaks slowly and with
intent, pausing often in thought—his vocal
delivery echoing the cadence of some of his
songs and lyrics, almost as if it’s a spoken
word poem. Sitting backstage before his
band’s headlining show at New York’s Central Park SummerStage,
he comes off as earnest, passionate and well learned.
Secor has the road-worn look of a musician who’s traveled many
miles, but also the sincerity and wide-eyed wonder of someone
much younger, just seeing it all for the first time. And maybe that’s
because only now—after 16 years with Old Crow Medicine show—
he’s finally entered the pop-culture consciousness and also because
he continues to see “it” differently over and over. He doesn’t really
believe in technology but he champions pass-along value, face-to-
face conversations, and handing down stories through generations,
times and places.
“I actually don’t put a lot of stock into the computer as a source
for music,” he says as an album by blues singer and banjo player
Karen Dalton blasts over the venue’s loudspeaker. “I think that with
folk music, it’s so much more powerful to discover what your older
brother’s listening to. Music is such an emotional expression. It is
almost spiritual, the way it draws you in—like a sermon.”
He pauses before mentioning his band’s signature song, “Wagon
Wheel,” a slow-burn anthem that he built from the scraps of an
unreleased Bob Dylan ditty called “Rock Me Mama,” intended for
the 1973 soundtrack to the Western film Pat Garrett and Billy the
Kid.
“A song like that stays with you because you’ve heard it in a
coffee shop or some cute girl was singing it on a street corner with a
dog on a hemp leash when you were 14,” he says with a laugh before
changing the subject to his beloved Atlanta Braves baseball club.
O l d C r o w
M e d i c i n e S h o w:
Growing
at the
Speed of
AsparagusOld Crow Medicine Show have
gradually grown into one of the biggest
string bands in the country. And they have an
almost century-old song to thank for
their success.
B y Am y J a c q u e s
At 36 years old, the multi-instrumentalist (fiddle, harmonica,
banjo, vocals) has already traveled much of the world and festival
circuit playing to sold-out crowds, received platinum certification
for “Wagon Wheel” and been inducted into Music City’s famed
Grand Ole Opry—all since he and Critter Fuqua (slide guitar, banjo,
guitar, vocals) founded Old Crow Medicine Show at age 19 in
Upstate New York.
“It all feels like it was yesterday—the songs that we wrote back
then,” Secor says of Old Crow’s early days. “I had this relationship
withthosesongs,andIstillsingthemeverynight.It’slikeasparagus.
It takes about three to four years to put your seeds in the ground
Old Crow Medicine Show today: Kevin Hayes, Gill Landry, Ketch Secor,
Morgan Jahnig, Chance McCoy, Critter Fuqua, Cory Younts (l-r)

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and just start eating it next spring—you have to invest in it and keep
working on it. There are crops that come through stages in their
development before harvest time. And the way that we’ve kind of
cultivated the landscape in the past 16 years, there are places that
are ready to reap and there are places where we’re still sowing.”
Secor speaks in long, somewhat rambling metaphors and cloaked
references that recall the narratives made famous by the folkies that
served as his original inspiration. He has a low-key demeanor and
slow, Southern drawl, yet describes his band’s ascent with a sense
of sharp, business suavity.
“It’s exciting on a night-to-night level to be able to cross the
country and see what we’ve done before and to know almost
immediately what we need to do,” he muses. “From the earliest days
of this band, Critter and I were playing street corners anywhere
that we could get to in a car, and it was really limitless. Once you get
in the door—that’s when the game starts. But when you’re on the
curb, you’re a free agent.”
* * *
O l d C r o w M e d i c i n e S h o w ’ s r o o t s d at e b a c k t o t h e 1 9 9 0 s
when Secor, who is originally from South Carolina, and Fuqua
first started playing music together as middle school students in

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going to breathe in the songs and exhale them—that we believed in
ghosts, spooks and boogers,” he says. “These are the kind of ways
that you could take the music into yourself more, making sacrifices
to the music, like treating it like a god, and the mythology of the
songsters that performed it. If you could do all these things at once,
then it sort of made you this journeyman or apprentice to old-time
music. I became that and still am that, but now, I’m at a point where
there’s all these other bands that are doing things related to it and
I’m able to pass it along, just like it was passed down to me.”
* * *
I t ’ s a m i l d s u mm e r n i g h t a n d o p e n e r s L a n g h o r n e S l i m
and Spirit Family Reunion are nearby tuning up in the backstage area
outside Central Park’s SummerStage. This like-minded lineup speaks
volumes about the state of the Americana genre of music in 2014 as
Secor discusses how traditional music, bluegrass, gospel, revival and
folk songs have impacted the modern generation. These musicians
believe themselves to be the torchbearers of the current scene,
playing visceral string music and collaborating hootenanny style.
It has been an exciting few years for Old Crow Medicine Show
and roots music in general. Though bluegrass and Americana have
been popular trends among the hipster set since at least 2000, when
the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack was first released, the
arena-size success of Mumford & Sons and The Avett Brothers
during the past four years have brought the banjo back to the
Billboard charts. Marcus Mumford, in particular, cites Old Crow
Medicine Show as his gateway into string music, and he’s helped
introduce the band to a new, youthful pop audience. Along with
Mumford & Sons and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Old
Crow participated in 2011’s sit-in friendly Railroad Revival Tour,
which was filmed for Emmett Malloy’s documentary The Big Easy
Express (2012).
“Americanrootsmusicisonacyclicaljourney,soit’llkeepcoming
around,” Secor explains. “It’s in an orbit that has a natural tendency.
There’s a hunger; there’s something that’s not satisfied in the daily
dietary needs of humanity. Pop culture has dumbed country music
down so much. We just can’t live off the latest Blockbuster—that
shit’s not nourishing, and we’re smarter than that.”
Unfortunately, after years of hard living, playing small clubs
on the road, less than four months after the railroad tour, things
seemed to fall apart. The group posted to their website: “Old
Harrisonburg, Va. Secor drifted North as a teenager to attend the
prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy—where he overlapped, for
a time, with future Arcade Fire leader Win Butler—and Ithaca
College. During his time in the Northeast, he met future Old Crow
members Kevin Hayes and Willie Watson. Along with Secor, they
hit the road, picking up musicians and odd jobs along the way.
They landed in the Appalachian Mountain town of Boone, N.C.
and busked on street corners where legendary folk artist Doc
Watson eventually discovered the group and slated them for his
local folk festival MerleFest. While already a great inspiration,
Watson also became a great mentor to the band he found on the
very corner where he’d played 50 years prior.
“Doc actually picked that spot because he could plug in there,”
Secor says. “Doc was a rock and roller, but he learned that he
couldn’t make a living playing rock and roll and become a folk
singer. He made the music of those hills accessible to people in
the North in the 1960s—the bearded 18 year olds who were getting
ready to dislike their government but hadn’t yet. Doc whispered in
our ears and we felt the responsibility to carry that on.”
For many years, Old Crow Medicine Show took every gig they
could. Gradually, they scored spots at popular jam-embraced
gatherings, like the inaugural Bonnaroo, and made inroads on the
traditional bluegrass circuit. Bluegrass great Del McCoury recently
told Relix, “We were both working with the same agent at the time
and our agent said, ‘Look, I want to send these guys out to open
shows for you.’ They opened a bunch of shows for us and they were
really struggling. And now, man, they’re hot!”
After a few grassroots releases, they signed with Nettwerk
Music Group and issued a series of Americana/bluegrass favorites
like O.C.M.S. (2004), the David Rawlings-produced Big Iron World
(2006) and Tennessee Pusher (2008). While each release exposed
new fans to the group’s mixture of traditional old-time string music,
alt-country attitude and festival-ready energy, “Wagon Wheel”
remained the band’s calling card. Secor says that Fuqua first played
him a bootleg of “Rock Me Mama” in high school and, soon after,
the Old Crow frontman had the guts to use Dylan’s unfinished ideas
as the basis for a new song. He first added his spin on the song when
he was 17—Old Crow recorded the tune for a 2001 EP and unleashed
it on the world with O.C.M.S.
“That song is one of those rare ones that took almost a century
to come to fruition,” he admits. “When I found out that Bob was
willing to publish it with us, he said, ‘I didn’t write that; Arthur
Crudup did.’ Arthur Crudup said, ‘I didn’t write that; [Big] Bill
Broonzy wrote that.’ Bill’s first recording of the derivative of ‘Rock
Me Mama’ is around 1928. That’s a true folk song—one that has
gathered a lot of dust on the fender before it ever rolled into your
town. And songs like that tend to last longer because they’ve been
influenced by such lasting voices.”
However, of all the song’s guardians, Secor gives Dylan the biggest
nod: “Most of all, the reason why that song is so popular is because of
Bob Dylan and his magical touch. Bob Dylan cast a spell with every
song he made, particularly in 1973, when he wrote that chorus. I’m
convinced that he put down his legal pad after he wrote that chorus,
and he scrapped it because he wrote ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.’
I wrote [“Wagon Wheel”] because I didn’t know what else to write
about when I was 17. So I think it is easy for the listeners to put
themselves into the hero’s role,” he says of the song’s staying power.
Throughout their lean years, the group’s lineup remained in flux.
Of note, in 2007, Fuqua stepped away for a while to work on his
sobriety and attend college. Old Crow also recruited Cory Younts,
who Secor says puts the “Medicine Show” in the band’s name. “He
reminds me of this character called the ‘Grito’ in Tejano music,”
he quips. “He’s a guy that would do, like, hat tricks while the band
plays.” (In recent years, Younts has divided his time between Old
Crow and Jack White’s touring band, The Buzzards.) Yet Old Crow
remained in constant motion.
“We had this pack mentality, this sort of blood oath, like we were Continued on page 77
Old Crow Medicine Show make Doc Watson proud at Boston’s TD Garden, 3/8/2014
O l d C r o w M e d i c i n e S h o w

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Continued from page 40
Crow Medicine Show is on hiatus as we
seek health and wellness over the coming
months.” The situation looked bleak,
but Secor decided to revisit the band’s
blueprints and hit the road for an acoustic
outing with Fuqua. Their connection was
palpable and, shortly after the band ended
their brief break, they brought Fuqua back
into the fold. Fuqua participated in the final
sessions for Carry Me Back, which came
out in 2012 on ATO, a label co-founded by
early Old Crow supporter Dave Matthews.
(A few months before Old Crow regrouped
with Fuqua, they parted ways with Willie
Watson, who is now pursuing a solo career.)
Then, the perfect storm hit: As the band
was gearing up to enjoy their newfound role
as godfathers of festival-ready Americana,
Darius Rucker recorded a country version
of “Wagon Wheel” and turned the almost-
century old number into one of the biggest
hits of the year. Around this same time,
Irish singer Nathan Carter also covered the
song on his release Wagon Wheel, which
saw massive success in both the Irish indie
singles and U.K. country charts, and as a pop
chart crossover.
“It’s such the perfect country song,”
Rucker told the Associated Press last year.
“When we were cutting it, all we had (to
model it on) was this perfect bluegrass song.
I couldn’t do it as a bluegrass song. It’s just
not me. So if we were going to do it, we had
to make it a 1950s country song. I’m not
shocked at how successful it’s been, but I
didn’t expect it.”
It speaks to many different types of people
and has become a force bigger than itself,
spanningculturesandgenres—heardatcollege
tailgates, at weddings and even on TV.
The song has turned into somewhat of a
“Freebird” of its generation, so popular and
omnipresent that it has even been banned
from certain bars.
* * *
S i x t e e n y e a r s a f t e r h e o r i g i n a l ly
formed Old Crow, Secor has planted roots
in Nashville, Tenn., and the group recently
released their eighth studio record, Remedy.
A reunion album of sorts, Remedy marks
Fuqua’s true return to the studio with the
band, and the group’s first full-length since
Rucker took “Wagon Wheel” to the top of
the charts. Dylan also helped out and gave
Secor and Fuqua another lost track from
around the time of “Wagon Wheel” to work
with, “Sweet Amarillo.”
“I learned a lot from David Rawlings and
Gillian Welch about how to use the legs of
American folk music to support the tale that
I wanted to tell,” Secor reflects. “That’s a
skill that everybody in this consortium of
people is interested in. Bob stole songs that
were 200 years old or older, and he stole
forms and put them on top of ancient songs.
With this record, I’ve gotten to a point
where I can do that sort of second nature—
to be a conduit for the older musical forms
that come out of my mouth and sound like
they are Old Crow songs. This feels like the
best Old Crow collection that we’ve made.
We think a lot about our audience with
the things we choose to sing about. We set
standards early on with our first couple of
records: We need party songs, songs about
getting high, songs where somebody’s
always gotta die and songs where somebody
always needs be loved. And you always have
to have a dog.”
Despite their newfound popularity, Old
Crow are adamant about maintaining the
“Medicine Show” part of their name. The
troupe—whose lineup currently includes
Secor,Fuqua,Hayes,Younts,MorganJahnig,
Gill Landry and Chance McCoy—traces the
values of their show back to 19th
-century
circus entertainers. One way that Old Crow
Medicine Show have maintained their
minstrel roots is by covering city-specific
songs on each stop during their current
tour to relate to the local community. On
this night in Manhattan, they covered
Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy
in New York.” When they played outside
Burlington, Vt. this past July, they decided
to dust off “Poor Heart” and “Lawn Boy,”
two songs by Phish, which several members
of Old Crow followed in their youth.
“Cory had been on the road with Phish
for like 200 shows, and when I was a kid, I
didn’t go to nearly that many but I went to a
few Phish shows and I saw the Dead twice,”
Secor says with a hint of pride. “Gill went
to Dead shows—he had a couple of years
on us, and he spent his teenage years in
Seattle. I was 16, had dreadlocks and lived in
Virginia—I went to see Phish because they
were present. They played Richmond and
they played D.C. We knew all the words to all
these Phish songs—it was really fun to learn
them again and pick ones that would work
for our band. It’s part of paying homage to
the places that you are.”
Though he has finally made it to harvest
season in a popular music scene, Secor feels
that his time with Old Crow Medicine Show
is only getting started. Like Dylan before
him, he plans to tour with the group into his
golden years.
“I’m in a long-term committed
relationship with Old Crow Medicine
Show,” Secor says. “I’d like to see it over the
course of a long time—where it’s been, what
it has become. It’s all part of a love for music
and a career that I could see on the horizon
when I was a teenager. And so, I just think
about it in the long term. I could see it in 26
years. I haven’t run out of things to say—that
wellspring keeps bubbling up.”