| Old Crow Medicine Show |
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Old Crow Medicine Show
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Members: |
Ketch Secor |
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Born: |
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Origin: |
Harrisonburg, Virginia |
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Years active: |
1998-present |
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Labels: |
Nettwerk |
330
Phoots comi...
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.
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 Stearns."[1] 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 . ."[1]
He then attended Ithaca College to be with his high-school girlfriend who attended Cornell University.[2] Ketch brought his friend Critter up to New York State, where they joined with Willie Watson, a native of Watkins Glen, 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."[3] 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 the band was 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.[4] That break led to the act's relocation to Nashville in 2000,[2] 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.[4] Stuart helped them land some high profile gigs and Rawlings later produced their first two albums "O.C.M.S" and Big Iron World (2006).[4]
"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.”[5]
Ketch Secor
They made their Grand Ole Opry debut on the Ryman Auditorium stage in 2001 to a standing ovation.[6]
[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.'"[1]
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, Coachella, All Good Music Festival, and the New Orleans Jazz Festival.[7] 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.[8] 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.[8]
They have headlined at the Grand Ole Opry,[4] after earlier having performed at that institution's 75th-anniversary celebration.[9] They opened for the Dave Matthews Band in 2009. They perform as part of the Prairie Home Companion Cinecast October 23, 2010 broadcast from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, MN and viewable in cinemas throughout the U.S. and Canada. They appear New Year's Eve 2010 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
[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."[6]
After three years playing guitar, Kevin Paul Hayes switched over to the guit-jo, making him perhaps "the only professional guit-jo player in America."[3]
"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."[3]
—Ketch Secor
[edit] Awards, honors, distinctions
The band was nominated for a 2007 Americana Music Award in the category of "Best Duo Or Group."[10]
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
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 Stearns."[1] 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 . ."[1]
He then attended Ithaca College to be with his high-school girlfriend who attended Cornell University.[2] Ketch brought his friend Critter up to New York State, where they joined with Willie Watson, a native of Watkins Glen, 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."[3] 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 the band was 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.[4] That break led to the act's relocation to Nashville in 2000,[2] 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.[4] Stuart helped them land some high profile gigs and Rawlings later produced their first two albums "O.C.M.S" and Big Iron World (2006).[4]
"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.”[5]
Ketch Secor
They made their Grand Ole Opry debut on the Ryman Auditorium stage in 2001 to a standing ovation.[6]
[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.'"[1]
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, Coachella, All Good Music Festival, and the New Orleans Jazz Festival.[7] 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.[8] 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.[8]
They have headlined at the Grand Ole Opry,[4] after earlier having performed at that institution's 75th-anniversary celebration.[9] They opened for the Dave Matthews Band in 2009. They perform as part of the Prairie Home Companion Cinecast October 23, 2010 broadcast from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, MN and viewable in cinemas throughout the U.S. and Canada. They appear New Year's Eve 2010 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
[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."[6]
After three years playing guitar, Kevin Paul Hayes switched over to the guit-jo, making him perhaps "the only professional guit-jo player in America."[3]
"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."[3]
—Ketch Secor
[edit] Awards, honors, distinctions
The band was nominated for a 2007 Americana Music Award in the category of "Best Duo Or Group."[10]
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