For more than two decades, Old Crow Medicine show has been a bona-fide institution in the traditional music world. But their appeal has expanded well into the mainstream, partially due to their modern-day classic song “Wagon Wheel” that’s been covered the world over. In the latest installment of KNAU’s series Eats and Beats, we hear from Old Crow’s leader Ketch Secor about the unifying power of folk music and its raw, visceral energy that transcends generations.
Old Crow Medicine Show performs Sun, July 23 at the Pepsi Amphitheater in Flagstaff.
Ketch Secor: For me, having had sort of put myself to the test as a young person with all these travels and street corners and farms I worked on, old people I visited with and sat with and talked with, I really tried to kind of undo a more suburban ‘80s/’90s upbringing by having some kind of crash course in the quixotic North American journey in all of its forms. That’s really helped me as a performer to be able to activate. It’s like I can turn a switch and I can kind of hear voices, so to speak. That’s what you do when you play the banjo and the fiddle.
KS: I think that inside everybody, every man, woman and child, anywhere in America, has connective tissues that stretch back to a time in which they themselves were the music. The folk music belongs to the folk. And so, if you play folk music in any of its forms, you’re making a sound that people can harken to in their own lives ‘cause they can remember. It’s got a little time machine in it. Folk music is always going to be relevant because it has a kind of spiritual conjuring effect. You know, it's a turn of melody and phrase that can connect you to a place in your life, when you heard it, and make that moment feel like it’s got an exclamation point behind it.
KS: It just feels like the musician’s realm has a charm to it, and those of us who enter into this space, if we do it with the kind of luck with which I did and Old Crow has managed to do it, it just feels like a little bit more magic than if I had become a stockbroker or something. Not to knock the stockbrokers now! They got their magic too.
KS: I didn’t really think that much past about 29 when I was 19 and started this band. I didn’t know what was on the other side of 29 really. I guess I’ve always kind of anticipated that aging was part of a life devoted to the music of the ages. And so, here I am middle-aged now—right square in the middle, 45 years old—and I feel about 14 because I still feel so rambunctious and excited about making a discovery.
KS: They say this is the closest you get to God when you are an artist. I think that there is some kind of El Dorado, kind of Ponce de Leon thing happening where if you can find the music it’ll just keep regenerating, keep you young, keep you motivated, keep you wanting to give the gift, so that you can go share it with people.
