Ketch Secor knows what it’s like to pass through your town. The frontman for the platinum-selling band Old Crow Medicine Show has been doing it now for a quarter-century. Yes, Secor has long been on the road, bringing his rollicking blend of old-time and rock ‘n’ roll music to fans all around the country and beyond.
Videos by American Songwriter
Old Crow, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2023, released its latest LP, Jubilee, on August 25. With so much time and experience, Secor knows what it feels like to travel down those same roads, and see those same tall mountains or rushing streams. Yet he’s older now. The country is older, too. So Secor muses on all of this, and inevitably it seeps into the songs and his musical mission.
“The layers of time start peeling back,” the thoughtful Secor says, “when you have been a quixotic traveler for long enough. You feel the first time, the second time, the fifth time all concurrently running with the 26th time, the 30th time, the 100th time.”
Considering the idea of this musical time-and-space loop, the 45-year-old Secor recalls going back to New Orleans on several occasions, how even on recent trips to the Big Easy he can channel that feeling of being a kid there for the first time, opening up his guitar case on the street about to busk. Or when he first played the iconic Fais Do-Do Stage, that rush of emotion and possibility. “It’s like touring and singing has this stop-time quality,” Secor says. And the style of music he often participates in—old-time music—carries with it a nostalgic quality.
“When you play country music,” Secor says, “you’re a purveyor in the nostalgic arts. You’re constantly singing about Mother in her grave. When you sing ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken,’ it’s a question. I don’t know if you ever learn the answer in this life. But we keep on singing and keep on trusting that the circle remains unbroken.”
Traveling, Secor notes, puts one in touch with a nomadic understanding. Life itself is transient, of course. Secor has one foot in modern times and one foot in the morgue that is traditional music. He calls himself a “ghost dancer.”
“I feel really close to the dead,” he says, “because I sing their songs all the live-long day. I hear their voices.” But while all of this is true, Secor and his crew are not dirge singers only. They are lively. Robust and rambunctious. As much rock ‘n’ roll as old-time. Some of Secor’s musical heroes were as much pioneers as students of history, from Bob Dylan to Merle Haggard. And some are present in his new album.
“After 25 years of making music, you really get to meet a lot of your heroes,” Secor says. “The list goes on and on of people that I grew up listening to and dreaming about, who in some future scape would become singing partners or traveling companions.”
On the kaleidoscopic Jubilee, Secor is joined by the icon Mavis Staples on the album’s final song, “One Drop.” The track is all about doing that one thing that might make a difference. Secor’s elastic voice dances like a fiddle bow on the music, while Staples’ voice sounds like a classic piano. Secor calls Staples an “architect” of the music he participates in, and on the song, he feels like her “kin.” The LP also includes the mournful song “Miles Away,” which is co-written by the 30-year-old standout bluegrass player and friend of the band Molly Tuttle and features the 43-year-old Willie Watson, an original co-founder of Old Crow.
“New friends and old friends coming together on one recording,” Secor says. “Those bookends are a constant for a 25-year-old band.”
Old Crow, which was founded in 1998 as more of a “circus” than a music project, Secor says, has gone on to release 10 records, including Jubilee. Their newest is a “companion” album to the band’s 2022 release, Paint This Town, Secor says. Old Crow, which features several new members compared to its original lineup, wrote and released the 2022 LP amidst COVID shutdowns. Now, after touring on the back of it, the band wanted to get in the studio again to show what they’d learned on the road together. “It became obvious that we should get back into the studio,” Secor says.
With the new album out and plenty of highway behind and in front of him, Secor’s thoughts today often land on the fate of his homeland. He says he hopes today’s turbulent times are the beginning of a new era in which people recommit to shared humanity. And one way he hopes to achieve that—city by city—is through music.
“I’m doing everything I can,” Secor says. “I’ll keep throwing rocks into that rippling pond, hoping with each toss to make a big fucking wave.”
