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.
Ketch Secor and Chris "Critter" Fuqua first met in the seventh grade in Harrisonburg, Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley, 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."
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." Secor formed the Route 11 Boys with St. Ours and his brothers and performed often at Little Grill.
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 . ."
He then attended Ithaca College to be with his high-school girlfriend who attended Cornell University. 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." 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.
One day, while busking outside a Boone, North Carolina pharmacy, 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. That break led to the act's relocation to Nashville in 2000, 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. Stuart helped them land some high profile gigs and Rawlings later produced their Big Iron World (2006).
"It's such a pivotal part of American music making, the sound that was created in the 1920s, before the radios, before bluegrass, before record sales were nearly as important--back in the old days when people thought that maybe they shouldn't make records, like making records was a way that other bands would steal their live shows.”
—Ketch Secor
They made their Grand Ole Opry debut on the Ryman Auditorium stage in 2001 to a standing ovation
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.'"
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.
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. 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."
After three years playing guitar, Kevin Haynes switched over to the guit-jo, making him perhaps "the only professional guit-jo player in America."
"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."
The band was nominated for a 2007 Americana Music Award in the category of "Best Duo Or Group."
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.
Wagon Wheel
Down Home Girl
Caroline
Next Go 'Round
Tear It Down
