September 2024 Edition

Howdy Friend,

As I write this on a crisp late September morning I’m looking at a dry cleaning bag hanging by the front door from McPherson’s of Gallatin Road in Nashville. Inside is a two-piece grey gabardine getup with black piping, maroon patches, all emblazoned with silvery rhinestone wagon wheels hand-stitched by the legendary Manuel Cuevas, who, at 91 years old, is Country Music’s most famous living fashion designer. Born in Michoacan Mexico in 1933, Manuel started making prom dresses on his mother’s sewing table before immigrating to Los Angeles where he tailored suits for Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and the rest of the Rat Pack. Pretty soon Manuel made the acquaintance of one Nuta Kotlyarenko, better known as Nudie Cohn, the creator of the Nudie Suit. After an apprenticeship with Cohn, Manuel moved to Nashville where, for decades, he has reigned supreme, dressing presidents, movie stars, country singers, and, more recently, the members of America’s most beloved old-time string band the Old Crow Medicine Show. It was Marty Stuart who first introduced me to Manuel at the old Victorian house off Music Row where for years he kept shop. We hit it off. He liked our band’s rockabilly leanings, and we proudly counted ourselves among the scores of musicians who Manuel kept up with.  A decade ago I was with Manuel backstage at the Americana Music Awards when a fan walked up and asked him about his signature custom, a flowing black duster-meets-matador coat bearing a gothic cross on the back. The fan asked if the cross was part of Manuel's religious upbringing and Manuel confirmed it was. “Oh, are you a man of the cloth?” the guy asked. Manuel nodded to the fan and turned to me and whispered, “Am I a man of the cloth? You better fucking believe it.”  

 If you’ve ever seen Old Crow on the Grand Ole Opry stage chances are good you saw me wearing my Manuel suit. Like the rockabilly singer Unknown Hinson, known for his hillbilly-couture, would call it: it’s my show-date. And the reason I’m staring up from my computer right now at the garment bag by the door is because I’ve got to remember to grab my show date cause we’re on the Opry tonight and I gotta dressed up in my Opry best. The first time I ever saw one of Manuel’s suits, or Nudie’s for that matter, was on that famous stage where folks have been tuning in since to 1925 to hear America’s longest running live radio show. It’s amazing to think of the folks who listened before the advent of television, who would have had no idea the splendor and opulence with which Opry stars began to dress once the Nudie Suit appeared on the country music scene. The first one I ever saw, a multi toned green where diamond sparkling Gators stalked with mouths agape, was so dazzling I had to squint. This particular show date belonged to the Alligator Man, Jimmie C. Neuman, the Cajun crooner who I was lucky enough to befriend in his later years. But the Country fashion icon we shared a stage with in our early years who seemed to boast the gaudiest bling would have to be "Mr. Grand Ole Opry” himself, the one and only Porter Wagoner. I joked during an Old Crow set at the Station Inn in 2000 that when we met the great Wagonmaster in the hallowed halls of the Opry backstage, he’d been dressed in purple, and that he looked like a Spanish onion. It got such a good crowd response that I quipped about Porter Wagoner as a Spanish onion for several years after that. It would take me another decade and a half before I ever got anything to rival his suit though. Back then the style that really caught the eye of a young Old Crow Medicine Show were the show dates worn by our honky tonk heroes in BR-549. We emulated Chuck, Gary, Donny, and Jay who packed the dance floor at Robert’s Western World and played traditional country music with a punk rock swagger. BR549 had everything Old Crow wanted. Fans, a bus, a tour, and records. We covered their signature hit “Cherokee Boogie” and tried to copy their style, combing up greasy pompadours for our Opry debut at the Ryman in early January of ’01. But high fashion seemed to elude most of us in OCMS. I may have been the least well-dressed of the early OCMS lineup, preferring to wear my father’s oversized suit and pants and a floppy fedora of my grandfather’s that never fit. Critter preferred the Mexican wedding shirts of his native San Antonio. Kevin went through dozens of styles in his 20 years in the band but one of my favorites was his cotton candy pink mohawk look and bike lock necklace look. It was Morgan who entered the lineup with arguably the best fashion sense. Morgan, in his crisp white t-shirt and cuffed jeans, was a rockabilly kid down to his Murray’s pomade. Morgan shopped at the famed Katy K’s Ranch Dressing on 12th Ave S, long before that street became better known as the depot for Nashville’s bachelorette trains. However it was Willie Watson who brought the higher style consciousness to the band, because he was actually making clothes. By the early 2000’s Willie Watson, whose handmade overalls now go for over $1,000 a pair and have a year long waiting list, was already designing stage wear. He would come home with a bag from the Goodwill on Charlotte Ave and go straight upstairs to his room in our Dickerson Road flophouse, remerging a few hours later with something shiny or sleek that fit his small frame perfectly. Jackets, pants, rhinestones, suits, he made it all. I wonder how much of his passion for fashion started with the simple necessity of not finding anything that fit him. This month marks another milestone for original-Old Crow Willie Watson, the launch of his new self titled album; we are all thrilled for him, and if you haven’t heard it yer be sure and get a copy because it’s a brilliant record. My favorite song is "Slim and the Devil."

Yes, tonight Old Crow is on the Opry but last night we were back at one of the legendary haunts where we first stuck our pin in the map of Hillbilly, USA: Robert’s Western World. When we first came to town Robert’s was known as the most authentic honky tonk on Lower Broad. As buskers sweating it out on the corner all summer long we dreamed of someday getting in off the curb and up on the stage at the world famous Robert’s where the AC was cold and the beer was colder. It was where the swing dance girls gathered, and I remember well looking into the windows longingly from out on the pavement and seeing those rockabilly beauties in their Betty Page hairdos and swishing swing dresses, bandanas, tattoos, and combat boots. Well, last night Morgan, Cory, Mike, and I, together with Willie Watson, turned back the clock a few years playing a fiery acoustic set for a packed out house of revelers, celebrating 25 years of two Nashville institutions-- Old Crow and Roberts Western World--by slamming back a few 25 cent PBR’s and setting the dance floor on fire. We played a set that could easily have been scribbled 25 years prior, full of those early Old Crow songs that first made our street corner performances so exciting. We played Uncle Dave songs like “Tell Her to Come Back Home” and the national anthem of Galax, VA "Sally Ann”. We sang Hank Williams’ “I Told a Lie to My Heart” and a song we learned from the great Memphis banjo picker Gus Cannon, “Raise A Ruckus”. Looking around the stage--Cory in a Nascar shirt, Mike --a Steal Your Face, Morgan in Wolf Trap swag, Willie in clothes he hand stitched, and me in a vest as old as the band  held together with safety pins—it was easy to see that despite Old Crow’s ever changing fashion style and ever changing lineup we had yet to change the most important aspect of the band, something stitched with love into the very fabric of our act, string band music. It's the fiddles and banjos, the harmonicas and dog bass, those are the hallmarks of the Old Crow style for the first 25 years and probably the next. 

Well, thanks for reading, y’all! Im sending you glad tidings for fall, my favorite season. Soak it up. Listen to crackle. Feel the wind.

And be sure and come out and hear Old Crow Medicine Show play some tunes in your town!

Ketch Secor