On Friday afternoon while buzzing with excitement about that evening’s Old Crow Medicine Show concert—my first—a coworker asked what show I was about to see. Like so many unfortunate yet music-loving people, my coworker had never heard of Old Crow Medicine Show. She asked me what kind of music they played—and that had me stumped for a few seconds before I stumbled out something like, “Rock-infused hillbilly country with a modern sensibility.” “Okay....” my coworker said. “Well, basically it’s bluegrass but all the songs are about whiskey and cocaine.” That seemed to create a clearer, if still baffling, picture in her mind. Later while standing outside Webster Hall on the drizzly streets of the East Village, it hit me that the band describes it best in their boot-stomping, heart-thumping ballad, “Wagon Wheel”:
Runnin' from the cold up in New England
I was born to be a fiddler in an old-time string band
My baby plays the guitar
I pick a banjo now
You’d have to hear it as it is sung for it to take it’s full, glorious effect. Preferably, you’d hear it live, perhaps even at a not un-grandiose yet still intimate venue such as Webster Hall, even more preferably on the night of the first of the presidential debates, so that the floor would be relatively uncrowded and you’d get the intoxicating feeling that you had them all to yourself. Old Crow Medicine Show is indeed an old-time string band, with six members, most of whom play multiple instruments including banjo, fiddle, guitar, upright base, mandolin, and harmonica. The star of the show that night was undoubtedly the fiddler-slash-harmonica-er, Ketch Secor, who indeed was born to this calling. By the third song—“Don’t You Let No Woman Rule Your Mind”—Secor had busted at least two strings on his instrument. No matter—he had an armory of four other fiddles waiting behind him. The other bandmembers were in fine form as well—the wailing harmonies and syncopated rhythms interlocked and sped and swayed organically as one. Soon all the hipsters in attendance were stomping their feet like at a Nashville ho-down.
OCMS is a younger band than you’d think—their debut, self-titled album is only four years old. Perhaps it’s their mix of old-timey roots and modern influences that make them rock so hard. Perhaps it’s the medicine for which their band is named (of which particular brand of bourbon I’d recommend anyone about to see one of their shows to partake generously [I did]). Whatever their secret, it was refreshing to skip out on dread-inducing presidential debates and soak in some genuinely feel good music.
