Old Crow Medicine Show

Early history Ketch Secor and Chris "Critter" Fuqua as did Robert St. Ours who went on to found The Hackensaw Boys. Secor had been "driving up to Mt. Jackson, VA to the bluegrass Saturday night in the summer, going up to Davis and Elkins College to participate in the Old-Time Music week there, and meeting guys like Richie Stearns." He brought Fuqua to New York where they met Watson. Watson dissolved The Funnest Game and together they assembled players all around Ithaca, New York "where there is a very lively old-time music scene." This included Kevin Hayes. Not "so much a song as a sketch," Secor would later say, "crudely recorded featuring most prominently a stomping boot, the candy-coated chorus and a mumbled verse that was hard to make out". But the tune kept going through his mind. A few months later, while attending Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and "feeling homesick for the South," he added verses about "hitchhiking his way home full of romantic notions put in his head by the Beat poets and, most of all, Dylan." Secor says he sang his amplification of the song "all around the country from about 17 to 26, before I ever even thought, 'oh I better look into this.'" Secor and Dylan signed a co-writing agreement, and share copyright on the song, agreeing to a "50–50 split in authorship." Officially released twice, on an early EP and their second album ("O.C.M.S." in 2004), the song became the group's signature song—going gold in 2011 and platinum in 2013. Busking break ; where the group had their big busking break The earliest beginnings of the group involved busking in the northeast U.S., attracting fresh talent. "Our performance comes out of all those years spent cutting our teeth on the street corner," claims Secor. He and Fuqua wrote a song called "Doc's Day" "About being on the corner in Boone and [Watson] discovering us. It honors Doc and the high country blues sound." Guitjo player Kevin Hayes, originally from Haverhill, Massachusetts, was in Bar Harbor, Maine raking blueberries when he encountered Secor "on the street in front of a jewelry store playing the banjo." Guitarist Gill Landry first met the group in 2000 while both were street performing during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, joining full-time in 2007. Grand Ole Opry The big busking break led to relocation to Nashville in October 2000. In Nashville they were "embraced and mentored" by Marty Stuart, the president of the Grand Ole Opry, who first spied the group at the Nashville-area Uncle Dave Macon Days festival and added them to his "Electric Barnyard old-fashioned country variety package show bus tour" with acts including Merle Haggard, Connie Smith, and BR5-49. Soon they were opening for "everyone from Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton to Ricky Skaggs and Del McCoury . ." A second show was added December 30 of each year due to popularity. The Rolling Stone commented: "Ketch Secor dazzled the Ryman Auditorium audience with his vaudeville banter, fiddle playing, and some harmonica magic." Sirius XM’s Outlaw Country station broadcast the 2020 New Year’s Eve concert live. In August 2013, Stuart unexpectedly appeared onstage at the Ohio Theatre in Cleveland, where the group was performing, to invite them to become official members of the Opry. They were formally inducted at a special ceremony at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, September 17, 2013. In 2020, the group released three tracks that all referenced contemporary events: "Nashville Rising," written after Nashville's Super Tuesday tornadoes and directly benefiting relief efforts; "Quarantined", a tongue-in-cheek, classic country-inspired number about not being able to kiss your lover while quarantined; and "Pray For America," which was commissioned by NPR as an inspirational piece for listeners coming out of COVID. They appeared on a duet with Keb' Mo' titled "The Medicine Man" as well as teaming up with filmmaker Julia Golonka to create a video for the 2008 track "Motel In Memphis" raising funds for Nashville's community-based grassroots organization Gideon's Army. Later in 2008, Old Crow Medicine Show purchased a building in Nashville which has been dubbed the band's "Hartland Studio," where they record new music and produce their "Hartland Hootenanny" live-stream variety shows. == Albums ==

Carry Me Back (2012) Carry Me Back was released July 17, 2012, on ATO Records. Recorded at Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville, produced by Ted Hutt, the name derives from "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny", former official state song of Virginia. "Levi" is "about a soldier who grew up in the wild hillbilly woods of Virginia," First Lieutenant Leevi Barnard from Ararat, Virginia who was "killed by a suicide bomber" In the NPR broadcast where Secor heard the story, the late lieutenant's friends Remedy won the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album in 2015. was won by Guy Clark in 2011 and Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn in 2012. Also nominated in 2015 were Mike Auldridge, Jerry Douglas and Rob Ickes for Three Bells, Alice Gerrard for Follow the Music, Eliza Gilkyson for The Nocturne Diaries, and Jesse Winchester (1944–2014) for A Reasonable Amount of Trouble. 50 Years of Blonde on Blonde (2017) The group released 50 Years of Blonde on Blonde on April 28, 2017 on their new label Columbia Nashville. The album pays tribute to Dylan's 1966 masterpiece Blonde on Blonde with live recordings of the group's re-creation of it at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville in May 2016. The project doubles as the group's first release for the Columbia label, which also released Blonde on Blonde. They announced their addition to the roster with an impromptu performance of "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" from the Dylan album. In support of the album release, Secor said: Fifty years is a long time for a place like Nashville... Time rolls on slowly around here like flotsam and jetsam in the muddy Cumberland River. But certain things have accelerated the pace of our city. And certain people have sent the hands of the clock spinning. Bob Dylan is the greatest of these time-bending, paradigm-shifting Nashville cats. Volunteer (2018) Old Crow Medicine Show released their sixth studio album, Volunteer, through Columbia Nashville on April 20, 2018—coinciding with their 20th anniversary as a group. The album was recorded at Nashville's "historic" RCA Studio A with Americana "super-producer" Dave Cobb, known for his work with Jason Isbell and Chris Stapleton. The album features electric guitar for the first time since 2004—when David Rawlings added his Telecaster to "Wagon Wheel". Joe Jackson Andrews plays pedal steel guitar. "Look Away" is a "Rolling Stones-inspired tribute to the history of the American South," while "A World Away" is an "upbeat homage to refugees." "Dixie Avenue" is a wistful tribute to the place in Virginia where Secor and Fuqua first "fell in love with music." The closing song "Whirlwind" is a "bittersweet love song that could easily describe Old Crow Medicine's rise to prominence from the ground up." In March 2023, Old Crow played at C2C: Country to Country, Europe's largest country music festival, performing at the 3Arena in Dublin, OVO Hydro in Glasgow and The O2 Arena in London. Jubilee (2023) Celebrating 25 years as a group, Old Crow released their eighth studio album, Jubilee, 25 August 2023 through ATO Records. Nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, the album, with Matt Ross-Spang co-producing, features as guest artists Sierra Ferrell, Mavis Staples, and (former group member) Willie Watson. OCMS XMAS (2025) On November 21, 2025 the group released its first "holiday album" entitled OCMS XMAS on Hartland Records featuring two covers of Christmas classics and 11 originals. Their take on the John Lennon and Yoko Ono "global peace anthem" "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" uses harmonies from the children of the Episcopal School of Nashville (founded by Secor and his wife). UNION MADE (2026) The group's new album Union Made, available June 5, 2025 on Hartland Records (via Firebird Music), features a number of guests, including: John Carter Cash, Evan Felker, Maggie Rose, and Jesse Welles. Secor says of the project: ==Musical style==

Variously described as old-time, Americana, bluegrass, alternative country, and "folk-country", the group began with infusing old Appalachian sounds with new punk energy. Country Music Television notes their "tunes from jug bands and traveling shows, back porches and dance halls, southern Appalachian string music and Memphis blues." Gabrielle Gray, executive director of the International Bluegrass Music Museum, who sponsors ROMP: Bluegrass Roots & Branches Festival, which Old Crow headlined one night in 2012, says the group "is in the direction of progressive bluegrass." Their live touring show has been described as a "folk-bluegrass-alt-country blend." "We just knew we wanted to combine the technical side of the old sound with the energy of a Nirvana," said Fuqua. Starting from old-time music in the Appalachian hills, the group found themselves "making a foray into electric instruments and 'really knocking up the rock 'n' roll tree' on their 2008 release 'Tennessee Pusher'." On the documentary "Big Easy Express" about the Railroad Revival Tour with Mumford & Sons and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros they "practice(d) a complimentary variation of folk" bringing "a pleasingly smoky amalgam of country, bluegrass, and blues." With "Carry Me Back" (2012) they've "circled back to the original sound that so excited (Secor) and Fuqua as kids... full of old-timey string sounds updated for the 21st century, sing-a-longs that lift the soul, ballads that rend the heart and a few moments of pure exhilaration." Influences An early Secor influence was John Hartford who performed for his first grade class in Missouri, making him want "to play the banjo after that;" and the first song he ever learned to play was Tom Paxton's "Ramblin' Boy". "Take 'Em Away", written when he was 17, is "loosely based on Mance Lipscomb, a blues singer and sharecropper from Navasota County" who he says "was a big influence on me." To Americana Music Association (AMA) President Jed Hilly, the historic path of Americana music passes through the group: "The baton is passed from Emmylou Harris to Gillian Welch and David Rawlings to Old Crow Medicine Show to the Avett Brothers." Mumford acknowledges in "Big Easy Express", Emmett Malloy's "moving documentary" about the vintage train tour they'd invited Old Crow to join them on, that "the band inspired them to pick up the banjo and start their now famous country nights in London." Old Crow received the 2013 Trailblazer Award from the Americana Music Association. ==Songwriting==

Early on the group didn't perform songs they'd written, instead drawing on a storehouse of pre-war jug band, string band, minstrel show, blues, and folk fare. As with other young groups in the genre, driven by all that punk music energy, they played this old material "fast and hard". When they started writing original material they distinguished themselves "from the crowded field of New Wave string bands as genuine stars. And both groups have done it by writing new songs more ambitious than mere rewrites of old hillbilly and blues numbers." ==Awards, honors, and distinctions==

• Old Crow Medicine Show performed on a float for the 2003 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. • Their music video of "I Hear Them All" (from Big Iron World) was first-round finalist in both CMT Award categories in which it was nominated. • The band has been inducted as official members of the Grand Ole Opry. • The group performed during the 12th Annual Americana Honors & Awards Show, which took place September 18, 2013 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, sharing stage with such acts as Stephen Stills, Richard Thompson, Emmylou Harris, and Rodney Crowell. ==Film==

• Old Crow Medicine Show performed on the soundtrack for the film Transamerica in 2005, which was nominated for a number of awards—including two Academy Award nominations—winning several around the world. "Critter" Fuqua wrote "Take 'Em Away" while "We're All in This Together" was written by Ketch Secor and Willie Watson. • They appeared in the PBS American Roots Music series; "In the Valley Where Time Stands Still", a film about the history of the Renfro Valley Barn Dance; • They appeared in the musical documentary Big Easy Express, directed by Emmett Malloy, being made of The Railroad Revival Tour, which premiered March 2012 at the South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival (SXSW Film) in Austin, Texas—winning the Headliner Audience Award. ==Members==

In August 2011, the group announced they were on hiatus, cancelling three shows scheduled for the following month, with "little word from the band on whether there would continue to be a band." Original member Willie Watson He had left in 2004 for "rehab for his drinking, then staying out to attend college." (or The Buzzards) on world tour to support White's album Blunderbuss, returned to the group in 2013. Drummer Jerry Pentecost left in 2023 to join Bob Dylan's European tour, replacing "fabulous Charley Drayton" starting in Japan. Announced May 13, 2024, co-founder Fuqua, rejoined the group, saying: Fuqua again left Old Crow as announced July 2024. Chance McCoy rejoined in early 2025. Current • Ketch Secor – vocals, fiddle, harmonica, banjo, guitar, cigar box guitar (1998–present) • Morgan Jahnig – upright bass (2000–present) • Chance McCoy – fiddle, guitar, banjo, mandolin, vocals (2012–2019; 2025) • Cory Younts – mandolin, harmonica, keyboards, vocals (2013–present) • Mike Harris – guitar, mandolin, banjo, dobro, vocals (2021–present) • PJ George – accordion, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, guitar, guitjo, drums (2023–present) Former • Chris "Critter" Fuqua – slide guitar, banjo, guitar, vocals (1998–2007, 2012–2020, May 2024–July 2024) • Willie Watson – guitar, banjo, fiddle, harmonica, vocals (1998–2011) • Ben Gould – stand-up bass (1998–1999) • Kevin Hayes – guitjo, vocals (1998–2020) • Matt Kinman – bones, mandolin, vocals (1999–20??) • Gill Landry – banjo, resonator guitar, guitar, vocals (2007–2015) • Robert Price • Dante' Pope – drums, percussion, piano, vocals (2023–2025) Timeline Gallery File:Old Crow Medicine Show at the Grand Ole Opry 23 February 2013.JPG|At the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, February 23, 2013 File:Chris "Critter" Fuqua Ketch Secor Our Community Place benefit show Little Grill Collective Harrisonburg VA January 2012.jpg|Chris 'Critter' Fuqua (guitar) with Ketch Secor (banjo) at benefit show for Our Community PlaceLittle Grill Collective in Harrisonburg, VirginiaJanuary 14, 2012. File:Old Crow Medicine Show Tivoli Theatre Chattanooga TN May 2010.jpg|Ketch Secor (harmonica) Morgan Jahnig (bass) Willie Watson (guitar)Tivoli Theatre in Chattanooga, TennesseeMay 5, 2010 File:Old Crow Medicine Show Cambridge Music Festival Cambridge UK July 2005.jpg|Cambridge Folk Festival in Cambridge, England,July 30, 2005. File:Old Crow Medicine Show 9-30 Club Washington DC August 2012.jpg|At 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. August 2, 2012. ==Discography==

Studio albums • AOut of print. • BO.C.M.S. was re-released under the title Old Crow Medicine Show as an import in 2006. Live albums EPs • Vegas (out of print) (cassette only) • Troubles Up and Down the Road (2001) (out of print) • The Webcor Sessions (2002) (out of print) • NapsterLife 09/29/2004 (2004) • Down Home Girl (2006) - three-track EP featuring previously unreleased song "Fall on My Knees" • World Cafe Live from iTunes (2006) - broadcast on NPR's World Cafe October 25, 2006 • Caroline (2008), Nettwerk – three-track EP featuring previously unreleased song "Back to New Orleans" • Carry Me Back to Virginia (2013) - three-track EP featuring a cover of Alabama's "Dixieland Delight" • Brushy Mountain Conjugal Trailer (2015) - four-track EP featuring the previously unreleased "Mother Church", a live version of "The Warden", and "I Done Wrong Blues" (previously released as a B-side on the "Sweet Amarillo" 7") Contributions • Old Crow Medicine Show performed "Take 'Em Away" (by Fuqua) and "We're All in This Together" (by Secor and Watson) on the soundtrack for the film Transamerica (2005). The film was nominated for a number of awards — including two Oscars — winning several worldwide. • They perform Woody Guthrie's "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" (Disc 2/Track 15) on Song of America (2007), a 3-CD set tracing the history of the U.S. through new versions of songs by major artists. Produced by Split Rock Records/Thirty One Tigers. Proceeds benefit the Center for American Music, National History Day, and Folk Alliance. • Secor wrote, arranged, and performs "Send No Angels" with Lani Marsh on Our Christmas Present: 2008, a fundraising album for Our Community Place in Harrisonburg, Virginia as a favor to founder/director Ron Copeland, who was owner of Little Grill when/where his and Fuqua's music careers began. • The group recorded "Angel From Montgomery" for Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine (2010), an album celebrating Prine's rich and influential catalog, joining other artists contributing including Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, My Morning Jacket, Josh Ritter, The Avett Brothers, Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band, Drive-By Truckers, Lambchop, and Justin Townes Earle. • The group appear on "veteran roots/Americana band" Marley's Ghost album Jubilee, released June 2012 on Sage Arts, celebrating their 25th anniversary. Recorded at Nashville's Sound Emporium and produced by Cowboy Jack Clement, the album features other "full-on collaborations between the band and their friends" such as Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Marty Stuart, and Larry Campbell. The album cover a wide variety of classic American songwriters including Kris Kristofferson, Levon Helm, Bobby and Shirley Womack, and John Prine "alongside a half-dozen original compositions." • The group performs "Back Home Again" (track 6) on The Music Is You: A Tribute to John Denver (2013) on ATO Records, an album spotlighting "Denver's folky, sentimental songs done by popular and generally fashionable artists", including My Morning Jacket, Brandi Carlile, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Dave Matthews, Lucinda Williams, and Josh Ritter. • They have a song about how all creatures talk called "Creature Talks" and "Wonder Why" about some of the world's biggest questions to PBS Kids. • The group collaborated with Marty Stuart on a cover of "I Can See For Miles" for his album Compadres: An Anthology of Duets in 2007. • They contributed a cover of "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)" to the Song of America folk music compilation album. • The group contributed two songs to the 2013 album Woody Guthrie: at 100! Live At The Kennedy Center, including "Howdi Do" and "Union Maid." • For ATO Records' 2013 compilation album Divided & United: The Songs of the Civil War, the group contributed the track "Marching Through Georgia." • In 2013, Old Crow contributed a cover of "Dixieland Delight" for the 40th Anniversary tribute album for country group Alabama. • The group contributed the song "Short Life Of Trouble" to the 2015 Ralph Stanley & Friends album Man of Constant Sorrow. • Keb' Mo' and Old Crow Medicine Show teamed up for the song "Medicine Man" in 2021, which was inspired by the pandemic. • In 2020, Old Crow were featured on the new Sara Evans album Copy That for the cover of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." • The group was featured on the song "Big Backyard" on Molly Tuttle's 2022 album Crooked Tree. Music videos == See also ==