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Authenticity is something that you get through time, through walking down a rocky road, wearing holes in the soles of your shoes. If you walk enough miles and absorb enough of the world around you, then when you go to speak you've got something to say that's bigger than just your body or your mouth or your lexicon. That's what the music of Old Crow is trying to be, something bigger than just the five of us put together, singing and sawing and banging on the banjo. [We are] trying to disturb the sterility and stir it up. -Ketch Secor |
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Secor doesn't necessarily see OCMS as activist musicians, but rather storytellers in the folk tradition.
 Old Crow Medicine Show |
"There's the cause, there's like working for peace and justice, but I look at it from a purely musical standpoint. Here you have this opportunity to tell the stories of the castoff and the walked-over and stepped-on. I feel like folk music has always had an important role among the people, as far as being a sounding board for their wants and their desires. It's a stage for their hunger and their calls [against] inequity and injustice," says Secor. "I'm tapped into that, hearing all the protest music of the 1960's and loving Woody Guthrie so much and Pete Seeger. So that's certainly made it into what I want to talk about with music. See, if you're playing fiddle and the banjo you're really playing the music of the people. And if you're singing about getting fucked up in a bar in Colorado, well I mean sure, it depends on where you're at, but if you're talking about some ski town and everyone is playing 1600 beats per second, then it's not really the music of the people now is it? I'm all for the psychedelia of it all. I'm into that too, but when you get down to it, I want to provide something a little more nourishing. You need protein in your diet. You need substance in your music. It's not enough just to sing a pretty song if it doesn't mean anything."
He pauses briefly, and then says rather wistfully, "But if it means love, well you're doing alright. If you can transmit love through music, then that's what it's all about."
Goodness Floats
The band is too recognizable these days to hit the streets like it used to, although, as Secor explains, "Sometimes we still do. It tends to be a little bit more ironic when we do because so many times that we busk people are like, 'Hey, you're the Old Crow Medicine Show! I just paid 23 dollars to see you. What does it cost me now?' So we don't really do a lot of busking [as a group] but on our own, as individuals, [we do]. I've probably played five times on the street corner since 2008 [began]. I like to go back there and get right with the busker gods and make sure I'm still worthy of my spot. I love to see the reactions. Mostly though, people are bored, especially in Nashville. They are here to see country music and then here it is right in front of them and they hold on to their pocket books a little tighter and walk fast."
 Old Crow Medicine Show by Aaron Farrington |
Busking brings us full circle to a little under ten years ago, to Boone, North Carolina. Doc Watson's daughter spotted a band of "gen-U-ine" troubadours playing outside the pharmacy downtown, guys who had only a few months earlier busked their way across Canada. Some have called these incidents in the band's history lucky breaks, but those breaks were grasped with calloused, worn fingers. In the end, it only comes from real work.
"When people ask, 'How'd you make it work for you?' I always tell 'em, 'You just got to hit the road, just pound the pavement relentlessly. Just go out there and learn, with a kind of journeyman politics [about] being that small level artist on the road.' You just learn so much from traveling, from playing little gigs, from sleeping in people's houses, making those kinds of connections. And those are the things that in the end will lead to your success. It's not about the famous people that you played for, it's definitely not about the people that your management set up for you to play with [or] the times you played at radio stations or the time you played at Capital Records in the lobby. It ain't about that. You might have caught a break but the break was a long time coming if you were true."
"I feel like the goodness tends to float to the surface if it doesn't snuff itself out first," he continues. "We were always going to be on the road to some better place, to something big, as long as we didn't self immolate. And we managed to keep from destructing, which was tested numerous times and is still; you still gotta be wary of it. But bands at the ten-year mark have put a lot behind them just to get that far. Now, it's not about Americana music, it's not about bluegrass, it's not about any of that. It's about one band that people really dig. For a while, in the beginning, it was all about Bob [Dylan] and Jerry, but after ten years it starts becoming about you, and that's when that authenticity card really comes in. It's really important that when it is about you [that] your heart is in the right place."
Old Crow Medicine Show - "Wagon Wheel"
And for a great version of "Minglewood Blues" from Austin City Limits go here.
Old Crow Medicine Show is on tour now. Dates available here.
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