Old Crow Medicine Show set to bring unique brand of roots, string music to Spartanburg

Old Crow Medicine Show founding member Ketch Secor had no shortage of topics he was ready to discuss when he phoned in for an interview from a tour stop in Tulsa in late March.

There was, of course, the tour that was just starting, a new Old Crow album that’s on the way and a pair of new band members that have come on board in time for this year’s tour. But perhaps what was most top of mind for Secor was the tragic shooting that had just happened at Nashville’s Covenant School that left three nine-year-old children and three adults dead.

“Right now, I’m just thinking so much about my beloved Nashville, where I have two school-age children. My kids are the same age as the three children who were murdered in their classrooms at Covenant School,” Secor said. “My children both did active shooter training this week in their schools. And my daughter, I said ‘How was it?’ And she said, ‘Well, it was pretty scary, especially because when I got behind the desk, my butt was sticking out. So there wasn’t enough room for me. I just got an unlucky number. I probably would have been killed.’

“The fact that this is a generation of children that is reeling with questions about the world in these terms, and the fact that the adults, if you can call them that, are doing nothing about it is a shame, is a black mark on society,” he continued.

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For now, Secor, the lead singer, fiddle and banjo player and chief songwriter in Old Crow, has to shift at least some of his attention away from that tragedy to music and the endeavors at hand for his band.

And when it comes to that, Secor has many reasons to feel good about where things stand for his band 25 years into a career that has seen Old Crow Medicine Show become an influential force in roots music and a leader in the resurgence of string bands on the music scene.

Old Crow Medicine Show performs Thursday night, April 13, at Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium. Thomas Rowland, a senior at Wofford College, is scheduled to open for the Nashville-based Americana band. Tickets can be purchased here.

The band returned from the pandemic with a reshuffled lineup – Mike Harris (banjo/guitar), Mason Via (guitar) and drummer Jerry Pentecost replaced Chance McCoy, Joe Andrews and Charlie Worsham ― and their own newly outfitted studio located just north of Nashville. That’s where the latest edition of Old Crow made their critically acclaimed 2022 album, “Paint This Town,” and have completed a new album that’s ready for release.

Those accomplishments, and most significantly, the ability to tour again, have re-energized Old Crow Medicine Show, he said.

“I just think it (the new energy) had more to do with COVID and being able to work again,” he said. “And then the new lineup, a new producer (Matt Ross-Spang), the studio we were in, that we’re working out of now, that’s something that we own, that’s been a big factor in the kind of collective spirit of the band. There’s a lot of renewal that happened out of the COVID experience.”

The lineup changes are nothing new for Secor, who has seen the band through 17 different members, seven albums, a signature song, “Wagon Wheel,” that was later covered by Darius Rucker, who turned it into a chart-topping country hit, raising Old Crow’s profile in the process.

“Paint This Town,” meanwhile, has been lauded in many reviews as the band’s best effort yet. Leaning strongly toward frisky and catchy material (“Bombs Away” and “Deford Rides Again” lean bluegrass, while “Lord Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise” and the title song show the band’s rock influence), the album topped the Americana and Bluegrass charts. And now the band has another album set for release in August or September.

Secor said the next album finds today’s edition of Old Crow finding their stride.

“Mike and Mason and Jerry are all writers on the new album in ways they weren’t as much on the first album,” Secor said. “And it’s again produced by ourselves along with Matt Ross-Spang. So it is a little bit more acoustic, a little less of a rocking record for Old Crow, a few more banjos on it.”

Since finishing the next album, Old Crow has gone through yet another rejiggering of the band lineup. Pentecost has moved on and been replaced by Dante Pope, while multi-instrumentalist P.J. George III has joined to create a seven-man lineup that also includes Secor, Morgan Jahnig (bass), Cory Younts (keyboards), Harris and Via.

The latest version of the band will still sound like Old Crow live, Secor said he and his bandmates plan to stock their shows with everything from new and old original songs to covers to sometimes even a song or two related to whatever city the band is playing in on a given night.

“As long as the canon of song is Old Crow music and I’m up there to continue the through line for the past 25 years, it’s Old Crow Medicine Show,” Secor said. “Whoever else is in the Old Crow Medicine Show is up there, and (if) there’s bones playing and there are mandolins and harmony singing and a whole bunch of smiling faces in front of you, then you’ve got yourself a Medicine show.”

This article originally appeared on Herald-Journal: Old Crow Medicine Show set to bring roots, string music to Spartanburg