The high-energy Americana string band Old Crow Medicine Show stopped touring a bit early last year, at the end of August, but they had a great reason: The band was asked to become members of the prestigious Grand Ole Opry, joining the ranks of elite country legends.
“We were in Cleveland, Ohio in August sometime and Marty Stuart showed up onstage and surprised us, asking us to be members,” says founding guitar, accordion and banjo player Critter Fuqua. “We had the Opry induction in September and then all of October we were in the studio. All of the fall and winter we weren’t really touring but we still had some work to do.”
The band recently began its first run of the year, opening for the Avett Brothers in giant venues like Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, and is currently getting back into peak playing form for the coming festival season with a short tour. This Thursday, they’ll headline their own show at the Shubert in New Haven. The new record is already complete and is slated for release on June 1st. There will be no wild musical departures or curveballs this time around.
“It’s definitely an Old Crow record,” says Fuqua. “It’s a big sound. Some swampy stuff, real swingin’. It’s definitely us.”
One song on the album is called “Doc’s Day,” and it pays tribute to tone of the band’s musical heroes, Doc Watson (1923-2012), who is owed much of the credit for breaking Old Crow to the masses. Back around the turn of the millennium, they were busking outside Boone Drug — a pharmacy in Boone, North Carolina, in the area where Watson had honed his chops in the ’50s — when Watson himself came by with his daughter to have a listen. They played the old standard “Oh My Little Darling” for him, and he was impressed enough to offer them a slot at MerleFest in 2000, a traditional music festival in Wilkesboro, North Carolina that he founded.
“That was a memorable experience,” says Fuqua. “It was an honor… a real blessing. We got to meet him and hear him play. That was a real turning point in our career, to be recognized by him and to be invited personally by him to MerleFest, and then that kind of launched our Nashville thing because Sally Williams from the Ryman saw us and invited us to play the Opry Plaza Parties. Yeah, Doc Watson is a real pivotal spirit in our career, and we’ve definitely felt his passing.”
Old Crow is best known for the song “Wagon Wheel,” which was spawned from an unfinished Bob Dylan demo, an outtake from Dylan’s “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” album.
“So rock me mama like a wagon wheel / Rock me mama anyway you feel / Hey mama rock me,” goes the catchy-as-can-be chorus, written and abandoned by Dylan. Dylan had a sketch of the melody for the verses too, but no words.
Fuqua had given Old Crow frontman Ketch Secor a copy of the bootleg (usually referred to as “Rock Me Mama”) when they were still in their teens, and Secor wrote some verses about hitchhiking down the East Coast to fill in the blanks, without thinking too much about it. They played the song live as early as 2001, but to little fanfare. At first. It slowly built in popularity since its official recorded release in 2004 and took on a life of its own. It was covered by the likes of Matt Andersen, Against Me!, Jeremy McComb, Mumford & Sons, Nathan Carter and Darius Rucker, and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America by April 2013. It’s become a late-night singalong staple for campfire strummers around the country, a rare modern addition to the Great American Songbook. Though Secor had never met Bob Dylan, he had unwittingly successfully co-written a hit with him.
But Old Crow is much more than just the band that plays “Wagon Wheel.” And though they are now members of the Opry, they still keep both feet on the ground in their homebase of Nashville, where they are closely embedded with their peers.
“There’s definitely a vibrant music scene and a ton of talent there,” says Fuqua. “A lot of great songwriters and some real community spirit, in East Nashville I think particularly, but all of Nashville”
OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW Perform on Thursday, March 6, at 8 p.m. Shubert Theater, New Haven. 800-745-3000. $39.50-$45. bowerypresents.com, manicproductions.com
