January 2025 Edition

Hello There!

Or like John Prine would say Hello In There (Prine)!  Happy 2025, ya’ll. I’m writing you from my home in Nashville hoping that you’re off to a good start in the new year. This is one of my most favorite months of the year because, historically, January means a respite from playing in a Traveling Band. Back in my 20’s January was when I added a few more shifts working day labor with Critter at Manpower or the Nashville Auto Auction. In my 30’s it meant an uninterrupted month at home with the kids, baking bread, brewing beer. Even now that I'm halfway through my 40’s, January still means being home in Nashville. We get about 1 big snow a year down here and it usually shuts the city down for a week (although this year we seemed to have acquired more snow plows, thanks Mayor Freddie!) Well, that’s when I get to have even more quiet time and maybe start writing some new material while socked in at home. 

Stocking up for the storm I saw Chuck Mead at the Eastland Kroger (ironically enough it was in the freezer section). I teased him I was gonna start singing "Cherokee Boogie" over the loudspeaker to get his attention. My band always considered BR-549 as a kind of a pole star. Their successful push through the clatter of Nashville in The 90’s marked a trail for other Neo-traditional acts like us to follow. Our talk ranged across a lot of musical territory, like it usually does. First we discussed the overlooked roll Arkansans play in the invention of rock n roll, which meant I had this Ronnie Hawkins song in my head all day: "Who Do You Love." Then we moved on to the loss of Opry Legend Buck White, the iconic Texan who played with Ernest Tubb and Hank Snow before starting his own family band The Whites, whose song "There’s a Big Wheel" is one of our Opry favorites. Chuck brought up another amazing musician who took his final bow and headed for the green room in the sky, the king of the folkie’s Peter Yarrow. One of the first songs I learned to play on guitar was "Puff The Magic Dragon." Then Chuck asked me about last week's Ringo concerts at the Ryman. On two spectacular nights last week musicians from across the Music City tonal spectrum gathered at the Mother Church to celebrate Ringo Starr’s first country album since 1970, the amazing “Look Up." I reminded Chuck how the onset of a New Year makes Ringo’s call for peace and love sound even more essential, and urgent.  And then we got to talking about the LA Fires and how terrifying it's been to watch one of America’s most important and iconic places experience such loss and devastation. Ya’ll, this tragedy has hit people in my line of work particularly hard, as so many of the homes affected by the Palisades and Altadena fires belonged to musicians. Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith from Dawes are two such musician friends who’ve been hit hardest by the fires, both losing their homes. We first started working with Dawes at the Newport Folk Festival about 15 years ago and ever since then we’ve been brothers of the road. I love their latest record; check out "Still Strangers Sometimes" and while you’re at it, please consider making a donation to their Go Fund Me.

All across Los Angeles January has been a shocking start to the new year, with more than 12,000 buildings destroyed. Whether they're homes, businesses, schools, houses of worship, recording studios, or restaurants they’re all contributors to that greatest of human endeavors: community. Here in Nashville, after the 2020 tornadoes touched down, we saw firsthand the community-wide effort of pitching in together to help recovery efforts and stepped forward to show the unique roll music has to play after a natural disaster with our song "Nashville Rising." This January Old Crow Medicine Show  begins its 27th year of playing music across this great land we share. Building community is as much a part of our act as songs about corn whiskey. When we look out into the crowd and see jubilant faces, revelry, a little craziness, dancing, we see the America we love. All types of humanity, young and old, left right and center, folks from all walks of life getting down. This year we hope you’ll join us on our Circle The Wagons Tour to take a place in this beautiful, albeit imperfect American choir. We love all ya’ll. And we hope your safe and sound in 2025. 

See ya soon! 

Best Wishes,

Ketch