February 2024 Edition

Howdy, Friends!

Ketch here, writing from my home in rainswept Nashville where, after a surprising snowstorm and a week of rain, folks are beginning to ponder if the promise of spring is around the corner or not. I heard a rumor that we get more rain in the winter than Seattle or Portland; don’t know if that's true but today feels comparably soggy to Old Crow’s early busking days at Pike's Place Market in Seattle or beside the Burnside Bridge in Portland. 

You wanna talk about a deluge, though, how ‘bout the 2024 Grammy Awards? Wow! I found myself typing A-t-m-o-s-p-h-e-r-i-c R-i-v-e-r into my phone waiting for the crush of post-award show attendees to spill out into the flooded streets of LA. There was something baptismal about getting soaked to the bone after spending the day with the best musical minds on the planet. Oh, and Jubilee losing Folk Album of the Year to the legendary Joni Mitchell was as beautiful, honorable, and disappointing as any Olympian feels who comes up short of the bronze (like, Lord, just to be in the running!). It was like nailing the floor routine right before Mary Lou Retton comes up. 

Speaking of cutting backflips alongside your musical heroes, what a joy it was last week to bring Bob Dylan’s drummer, our fellow nominee Jerry Pentecost out to LA with us for the Grammys. Even better was having him back onstage at the Grand Ole Opry this weekend. As he sang his signature "DeFord Rides Again" with the Opry legend's grandson, Carlos Bailey, chugging along on harmonica, I looked around and thought, “My God, if it weren’t for Old Crow the Grand Ole Opry would be spending another February with no mention of Black History Month.” If there’s one thing Old Crow has accomplished in these 25 years, it's been to help remind Nashville of the twisted roots and branches in Country music’s Tree of Life. That Country music is black music from the first banjo strummed in the 19th century to the banjo I just heard today - Rhiannon Gidden’s soulful claw hammering on Beyoncé’s new country track “Texas Hold ‘Em” - comes as no surprise to many. If you’ve seen my Ted Talk, you know it ends with this Ray Charles quote, “You take Country music, you take black music, you got the same goddamn thing altogether.” Another reminder of Country music’s African American origins is deeply embedded into our signature song, one which just happens to be celebrating a birthday this week. 

In case you missed it, it’s the 20th anniversary of the release of Wagon Wheel! You’ve probably heard some of this story before: I was 17. I was a senior in high school at a New England boarding school and very homesick for the South. I had a job waiting for me in Greensboro, NC upon graduation, playing in an old-time string band. I could hardly wait. I was flunking most subjects in school, but when it came to my study of the music of Bob Dylan, I was a straight-A student. I first heard his 1973 outtake song scrap “Rock Me Mama” in October of 1995. By November I had scribbled three verses, updated the chorus and music, and performed it in a school concert on banjo with my friends Anand Desai, Bob Kim, and Jesse Klein. After the applause died down, I thought, “Wow, I'm going to be singing this song until the day I die.” Songwriting teachers often say, “write what you know about,” and, if there ever was a poster child for such a song, here it is. The guy in the song is me. The trucker I flagged down I had listened to growing up on CB radio. Dogwood is the Virginia state tree - I had a poster of one tacked up in my room at home. I filled the song with a bunch of place names that sounded cool, of which I had a faint understanding. On the line I drew in my mind between New Hampshire and North Carolina, Roanoke was right along the way, plus I had just played an open mic night there at the Mill Mountain Coffeehouse. Critter had seen Bob Dylan play the Roanoke Civic Center that year (as the show ended, Bob said to the sellout crowd, “Goodnight, Jackson”) and a plus was that it rhymed with “toke.” Though I had never been to Raleigh I had read about Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony, and it was the capital of the state I was moving to. Kingsport, Tennessee, was a little closer to my heart because I knew a girl from there, but I had been through Johnson City on a Greyhound the summer before, and the town had a better ring to it. I knew it was somewhere near the Cumberland Gap, a place I recalled from my 4th grade Virginia history class. I had taken an Amtrak to Philadelphia in the 6th grade to spend a couple weeks in a Quaker school. I knew it was the city of brotherly love, but the place name motto I really loved was New Hampshire's “Live Free or Die,” a phrase I borrowed for the song’s last line. 

The rest of the story is that I sat on it for nearly 10 years, preferring to focus on traditional music, and then dusted it off in the early 2000s when we started working out of Nashville, a town that preferred there being a copyright next to whatever you were singing. Getting that copyright proved elusive, because it meant going to Bob Dylan’s management and asking them to grant us permission to use a 30-year-old unreleased song fragment. Right away the music execs expressed concern that getting written permission from the mercurial Bob would prove difficult. What a surprise it was when Dylan’s people responded not only with a clearance, but also a cryptic note that even now, over 20 years later, still delights me. It said something like, “Bob agrees to split the song 50/50 with Ketch. Oh, and Bob says it's just an old folk song. He didn’t write it. Says he learned it from Arthur Crudup.” 

Whaaat?? Amazing!!

Bob said “Rock Me Mama” was inspired by R&B innovator “Big Boy” Crudup, the same artist who Elvis covered when he recorded “That’s Alright” Mama. The story got even richer when I learned that Big Boy credited his song “Rock Me Mama” to the 1920s blues pioneer Big Bill Broonzy. So, if you follow the map, “Wagon Wheel” traveled from Big Bill to Big Boy to Bob before it got to me, which means that 20-year anniversary is more like 100. Nowadays, it’s sung around the world, from campfires to open mic nights, church picnics, and school assemblies. In fact, years before his version, Darius Rucker first heard it performed at a student concert in his child's school. It’s the many fingerprints on this song that make it so unique among other Country hits. Roy Acuff once opined from the Grand Ole Opry stage that instead of being a learned art form, Country music is an inherited one. This weekend at the Opry, Jerry Pentecost announced, “Black history is American history.” I can’t think of a better illustration of these two important concepts than “Wagon Wheel,” a song on Country music's Tree of Life which definitely draws deeply from many different roots. 

Well, until we meet again, thanks for your continued love and support of Old Crow Medicine Show. Have a beautiful Valentine’s week with the one(s) you love. Or if you’re flying solo this year, give yourself a big hug. We need all the love we can get. Music is love, so if you’re ever looking for a quick heart-fix just turn on some OCMS music; I’ve put my heart into every song and every performance.

Love Always,