Old Crow Medicine Show Not Picking For Pennies Anymore

By Will Jordan

They started out picking on street corners for spare change, food and a place to rest their heads, but now are billing some of the top venues in the country.
While their stage settings have evolved greatly, Old Crow Medicine Show stay true to their roots, which are deeply entrenched in pre-World War II blues, fiddle tunes, rags, hollers, hokum and jug band music.
The five-piece jug band joined forces in New York and lit out “gypsy style across Canada in a van, playing for food and shelter. Afterwards they settled for a year in the mountains of North Carolina, where their knowledge of old-time string band music grew before they set their sights on Music City.
When Old Crow Medicine Show first came to Music City in their “battleship” Cadillac in 2000, they were already seasoned buskers, but they hadn’t yet endured the competitive nature that thrives in Nashville.
They brought their raw jugband music to Nashville’s highly trafficked 2nd Avenue and then graduated to the plaza in front of the Grand Ole Opry House. Soon thereafter they were invited to play the Opry itself.
As the five-piece jug band evolved, so did the quality of their gigs, and soon Old Crow were filling opening slots for Dolly Parton and the Del McCoury Band, were invited to join Marty Stuart and Merle Haggard on a U.S. tour, were included on the Bonnaroo roster and even appeared on public radio's A Prairie Home Companion.
“An Old Crow show isn’t exclusive to any one scene,” says fiddler/singer Ketch Secor. “The music isn’t generational, because it’s timeless. We make music because we want to play. We make records because we want the sound to last forever.”
It’s that diversity in Old Crow audiences that lead to a relationship with Nettwerk America (the label that launched Coldplay’s career) and an enormous Internet presence through Napster, ITunes and all of the satellite radio services.
“We’re running a little ahead of schedule,” Secor laughs. “I think we have arrived as a band.”
Despite their wide-ranging success, aided by the Internet and Nettwerk, Secor fondly remembers Old Crow first making their bones by selling albums on consignment and playing street corners for random audiences.
“When we first moved to Nashville, we played on the street,” Secor says. “People remember you when you put on an amazing show on a street corner. They sure remembered us. It’s how we got our agent. We were playing one night on 2nd Avenue and there were so many people on the street, the cops had to move them along. The people that saw us that night led to us working in Nashville.”
While they spend most of their time on the road and some members have moved away from Nashville, Old Crow still consider Music City their hometown.
“We think of our band as being very much a part of Nashville’s music community,” Secor says. “Our entire scene is in this town. We give credit to Nashville for putting us on the map.”
Old Crow is returning to Nashville December 3 to play their last show of the year.
Secor says last year when they played the Ryman, they were received with such an ovation “you could feel the wind generated by the audiences applause.”
“It’s going to be a killer show to end the year with,” Secor says. “There should be a nice mixture of good-hearted rednecks, hippies and other folks. We’re excited about it. The music is sounding really good.”

Old Crow Medicine Show are performing at War Memorial, 301 6th Avenue North in Nashville, December 3 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $22.50-$24 and can be purchased at www.ticketmaster.com.

A shorter version of the story originally ran in All The Rage.

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