July 2024 Edition

Route 11 Boys Poster from the Archives

Howdy, Friends!

I am writing to you from a park bench out in front of the State Theater in Portland, Maine, catching a few rays and enjoying the eclectic streetscape before soundcheck starts for another fun night of live music and merriment on this Jubilee 25th anniversary tour. I first came to the State Theatre in the mid 90s to see Bob Dylan in concert. I had just written what felt like my first really good song, cobbled together with a Dylan castoff and I remember shouting “Rock Me Mama” during the concert in the hopes that Bob would miraculously play his version of the 38 second song fragment that I had wrestled back from obscurity. He apparently didn’t hear me. A couple years after that I briefly rented an apartment in Portland with my hometown band the Route Eleven Boys. Critter and the boys and I looked a little out of place busking a snowy curb in the Old Port that winter of ’97, a motley crew of Virginia boys trying to beat out the new tune I had just written “Eight Dogs Eight Banjos” with frozen fingers on fiddle, washboard, and banjo; it was a short-lived dream of starting a southern music resurgence in the Pine Tree State, maybe we shouldn’t have picked January to launch.

Most everywhere I’ve been on this Jubilee tour so far is a familiar place where I have fond memories, for such is the joy of being a lifelong trans-American traveler. In a few special spots out on these highways I can actually pinpoint a coming-of-age moment, like shouting at Bob Dylan to play the song I was gong to spend the next three decades of my life singing. But some places take on new meanings, and one of those towns for me is Spokane, Washington. We had somehow skipped this formidable Eastern WA metropolis on the way out west on Old Crow’s first tour. I had been reading the book Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose’s tale of Meriweather Lewis, George Rogers Clark and their intrepid crew including Sacagawea and a slave named York on their epic exploration after the Louisiana Purchase. The legend helped us decide the route we took along the Missouri River and out to the Pacific and sometimes it seemed we may have followed it a bit too closely, skipping bigger towns along the interstate where our tip jars would have been a little fuller. For example instead of going to Spokane where we would have made a killing that fall of 1998, and probably gotten on the 6 o’clock news, I steered our convoy of mostly teenage Old Crows to Lewiston, Idaho and Clarkston, Washington, twin cities of belching lumber mills with a state line running through the middle that offered little in the way of musical opportunities (but it was pretty cool to sleep in the same spot along the Snake River where America’s first great explorers had camped in October of 1805). Years later I went to the grave of Meriwether Lewis, who, some 90 miles down the Natchez Trace south of Nashville in Lewis County Tennessee, took his own life at age 35. I brought a little soil I had dug up in Albemarle County, Virginia, his birthplace, and sprinkled it over the graveside. His story always resonated with me, but the mental anguish he faced really struck a chord. I was thinking about him when Willie Watson and I were writing a mournful dirge called “My Next Go Round,” where the singer hopes he won’t make the same mistakes in his next life.

I was writing some new songs this spring, some about that first trans-American trip, when Critter decided late in the Spring that he was ready to come back to Old Crow Medicine Show. Our shared love of history had been a pivotal part of our decision to first head west. When we moved to Appalachia he helped pick a part of Johnson County, Tennessee where General George Stoneman’s cavalry had watered their horses on the Watauga River. Critter’s knowledge of the Civil War inspired me to write my antiwar song “Carry Me Back to Virginia,” which I dedicated to him the year he left Old Crow to move into an inpatient rehab facility in the Texas Hill Country. When Critter rejoined Old Crow after Willie’s departure in 2012, he was often headed to a Civil War reenactment as soon as the bus got back from tour. He always looked like the real deal in his 9th Kentucky Volunteer Calvary blue coat. What a trooper. When it comes to addiction and mental health Critter has always been soldiering on. I’ve seen him through high times and low, as anyone who loves a recovered alcoholic knows, and this summer I celebrated with him his 14th year of sobriety. A couple years ago it made me so proud to read his testament to the strength and resilience of Nashville’s addiction recovery community in an Op Ed piece he wrote for The Tennessean. Though Critter’s challenges, along with other band members who’ve struggled with addiction and mental health, have at times, been a burden for Old Crow to bare, they’ve also been an important proving ground for our band, teaching us how to love each other through hardship, and how to persevere.

This spring Critter decided it was the right time to come back to Old Crow. With Mason Via leaving to expand his solo career, we were pretty excited one of our founding members was getting back on the bus. We played Merlefest together, along with Willie, Ben Gould, and buck dancer Arthur Grimes, having a 25-year reunion of the very entertainers who by chance met famed guitar picker Doc Watson on a Boone, North Carolina street corner. We played DelFest, and Critter and I were so touched to be back amongst some of our first real mentors, the members of the Del McCoury band who were such a huge influence to us in our early days in Nashville. But with every turn of those bus wheels Critter seemed more and more strained. By the time we got to Spokane last month it was becoming clear that Critter wasn’t going to stay long. Anxiety, claustrophobia, and worry had begun to set in on him and I watched as the bright lights of his spirit grew dimmer as the tour rattled on from the Sonoran Desert to sunny SoCal and onwards to Oregon. Mental health is something that Critter has been struggling with most of his life, and it has just always been part of our journey as Old Crow Medicine Show. This summer in Spokane a seven piece band turned into a six piece overnight. We simply rolled on to Montana and Critter stayed behind. The rest of the story is Critter’s to tell, but I’ll say that we’ve all sent him a lot of love and prayers, and he’s actually doing pretty well considering everything. Maybe you love someone who has wrestled with addiction and mental health challenges. If you do, well, I know how you feel. ‘Cause the guy I started OCMS with 25 years back fits that description. He’s one of my most favorite pickers. More than that, he is my best friend. A couple years ago my pal Drew Holcomb and I wrote a song that I often start humming anytime things aren’t going my way. It’s called “Gratitude.” I love the sentiment of the Beatles “All You Need is Love” as much as the next guy. But if I’m being honest, it’s gratitude that I feel is all you really need. I’m grateful for the many miles, microphones, Waffle House breakfasts, and concert stages I’ve shared with Chris “Critter” Fuqua. And my gratitude is unwavering. I’ll be missing you, Critter.

Sincerely,

Ketch