June 2024 Edition
Photo: Eli Spotts
Howdy, Friends!
Hope all is well out where you are! Answering some of your tour questions you added on social media. Here we go...
The band’s name has always intrigued me. Old birds are quite special to observe. Crows being wise, trickers and magical it’s a great pairing with the term medicine show. Ketch, did you come up with the name or was it a collaboration with other band members?
In my journal from the winter of 1997 I wrote in the middle of a page “new plan: start a band called the Old Crow Medicine Show, head for Manitoba."
As I recall I came up with the name coming out of a dishwashing job one cold night in the Empire State. I had followed my girlfriend there, to the finger lakes, and less than a year in, I started thinking I'd better move on. Yes, Ithaca was a great town, full of musicians and artists and thinkers and interesting people, but it was also a strange place where I knew I didn’t feel I belonged. I was reading a lot of American Indian stories then, some of which I mentioned in my last newsletter, and another thing I read a lot of were roadmaps. I had a Canadian Atlas I’d read cover to cover as religiously as some folks might read the Bible. That's where I discovered Old Crow, a town above the Arctic Circle. What I knew about medicine shows I’d learned from playing in an old-time string band called Sissy T and the Grownups my first year out of high school in Greensboro, North Carolina. I shared an apartment with the banjo and bass players and they had a really stellar record collection. The first time I heard the words "medicine show" were probably on a record by Chris Bouchillon, the wise-cracking father of the talking blues who hailed from Yemassee, SC and recorded extensively in the 1920’s. Also, somewhere in my mind I think I was looking for a band name that could get me on A Praire Home Companion, and Old Crow Medicine Show may have been a poetic appeal to Garrison Keillor. All in all, the Old Crow band name was something I came up with as a calling card for the travels I dreamed of taking. I knew we needed a name that was sonorous and sing-song and rolled off the tongue if we were going to shout it from all the street corners I longed to busk on. All these years later I think I finally like it.
How long does it take to mentally & physically wind down after a performance?
Back in the days before we had a bus and a driver, winding down after the show was something I usually did behind the wheel of a van, pickup, SUV, or station wagon rolling 70 mph to the next town, or halfway, or to a rest area, or—if the gig had paid well—a motel. In the first 10 years of this band there just wasn’t a lot of time to “come down” after a set. But even when it's by jet plane or a shiny Prevost – coming down has always been a challenge. One of the songs I wrote that explores this difficult part of being a pro picker is called “Homecoming Party” on our Volunteer record. In it, the picker gets home late at night while everyone is still asleep, brings his guitar and suitcase in, pets his dog, peeks in at his kid, then gets into bed with his wife and feels completely at odds with his life. It’s kind of a tear-jerker so we don’t play it much in our big energy show, but I played it recently at an in-the-round event and remembered how fond of that song I am.
For more than 25 years I've been treating and mistreating this aspect of my life in music, this illness born of the simple nature that the road messes with your mind. Sometimes after a long run I'll think of Neil Armstrong coming back to earth and feel a little braver. Or of a soldier coming home from deployment to feel more grateful. More often my road malaise bares a better similarity to the feeling I imagine a ball player gets after a road trip of away games. Old Crow might be more Triple-A than the majors. But either way it’s not an easy way to make a living, especially on a Monday morning after 11 shows out west and coming home to your kids, but, hey, that’s what it’s seemed to take to bring this old crow medicine show to the people for the past quarter century. The show must go on. And it's enriched my life in countless ways even though it’s made my Monday morning metamorphosis to an East Nashville Dad who needs to get some groceries in the fridge and mow the yard a little more of a harried transformation.
What is your most Favorite song to Play ...Even if it's Not on Your Set List ?
Most often my favorite song to play is the one we add in nearly every town, one that we’ve worked up that very afternoon to present to you, the audience, as a tip of the hat to the local scene. This is usually a cover song or a folksong, but sometimes can be a song composed on the spot. Two such recent favorites of mine:
Woody Guthrie’s “Oregon Trail” performed one night only in Bend, OR and our recent version of the song “Cool Water” by the Sons of the Pioneers, which we worked up in the Sonoran Desert and played just about everywhere else in the West where it was hot and dry, which was basically everywhere. I like songs that feel like folks in the audience haven’t heard ‘em in a while, if ever, but that hearing them now might remind them that our memories can be collective not just individualistic. A special challenge is when you can’t think of a local tune, write one. Some places just don't have a lot of songs written about them. While I may have personally contributed more than a dozen songs to add to the cannon of states material in Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama, there are some states that just don't have much of a songbook. In Rhode Island or Cape Cod for example, the local tune we play might be about what the region is known for, in which case we might do a song by the late Delores O’Riordon and her band The Cranberries. In The Netherlands looking for a local song we discovered that the pioneering psychedelic song (I'm Your) "Venus" was recorded by a Dutch rock back in 1969 called Shocking Blue. In Knoxville we covered Ronnie Milsap’s "Smoky Mountain Rain." In a few cases the mood strikes to write a new local song. Some of these are more ditties, like an a cappella Doo Wop song we sketched before a show we performed once in Wilmington called “Delaware.”
Ketch’s top five favorite venues???
My top five favorite venues:
The Ryman is definitely number 1. None others really compare, it’s just so special. I’ve played Bonnaroo in front of 40,000 and the Macy’s Day Parade with a million people on my left and another million on my right, so, contrary to popular belief size does NOT matter. The 2,200 seats at the Ryman are all I endeavored to accomplish in music, the rest is just gravy.
I really like playing in the Bay Area and my favorite venue there is probably The Fillmore, but its hard to pick because I love the Warfield too and I’ll never forget playing the Great American Music Hall opening up for The Be Good Tanyas back in ’03. Oh, and I love the outdoor venues too like the towering redwoods of Stern Grove and the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park. One new venue I’m really keen on just opened up in Menlo Park called The Guild. I had the esteemed pleasure of playing with Bob Weir there in 2023.
Red Rocks Amphitheater is the most impressive venue I’ve ever played. It’s a city-managed venue, part of Denver’s concert history for nearly 90 years and it’s so high up it has it’s own weather forecast. The people who work there have been there for eons and they always seemed to hold Old Crow and our unique music styling in their hearts, either that or they just make ALL the artists feel special.
Wherever Dave Mathews is playing and we’re opening. Back in the mid 2000’s my band was a mainstay on the DMB tour, playing in a dozen or more cities together with Dave’s incredible family of musicians. We played Jones Beach (fave venue) once and afterwards went and crashed a Jonas Brothers show at Nassau Pavillion (not fave venue). What made DMB tour so epic was his warm hospitality and kindness. Imagine the headliner of a massive show walking out and introducing the opener every night. Even in our much smaller scale shows I always try to intro the opener, something I first learned from Dave Mathews. Oh, and the catering is the best on earth. I've never had better catering than out with DMB.
Last but not least I’m going to go with my first hometown venue, the Little Grill in Harrisonburg VA. When Critter and I were coming up the Grill was the place to be if you liked Neil Young, smoked cigarettes, and had no money. They’d let you wash dishes in exchange for beans and rice and the coffee never ran out, Ron Copeland, manager/Mennonite/peace activist and picker made sure of that. The open mic nights on Sunday were literally where I learned to play banjo and jaw harp and guitar and mandolin and fiddle and harmonica. It was the stage that I first learned to call home, a tiny 4 by four riser in the corner underneath a velvet painting of Bob Dylan looking over his shoulder at you with a sneer. I last played there in the winter of 2012 on the Ketch and Critter reunion tour, but I’ll be back.
I was wondering if there was any music/bands that you listen to before a show to get you pumped up?
The last time I really listened to psych music before an event was when I was on the high school wrestling team. It was usually AC/DC "Thunderstruck" and it usually caused a pang of fear to blossom like a cancer in my stomach. I was a very average wrestler who just seemed to hang on to the sport out of sheer stubbornness. It was a little like boot camp with Coach Shapiro blowing his whistle and the weight training had me spitting Skittles like a champ, weighing my food, and sleeping in a garbage bag. The wrestling team at Exeter was made more well-rounded by the inclusion of the school chaplin The Reverend Bobby Thompson, a wonderful mountain of a man, who had wrestled for a HBC in his native Bluefield, West Virginia; we just called him Rev. Rev happened to be present during my first ever performance of a brand new song I had composed and sung during Evening Chapel, a weekly event at the nondenominational church on campus. Chapel was one of the only ways you could get put of your dorms to see a girl after 9 pm so my debut performance of Rock Me Mama Like a Wagon Wheel was pretty well attended. As Rev said his closing prayer he ad-libbed “…and Great Spirit let us be rocked like a southbound train” an incantation I always thought put a special charm on my fledgling tune. Wrestling at Exeter also meant the occasional inclusion of a very famous author named John Irving, himself a graduate but more importantly a serious devotee of the sport. On more than a few occasions we would watch form the bench as Mr. Irving make his low-key entrance into the gymnasium and take a bleacher seat closest to the ring. He must have been bad luck for me. I was pinned every time he watched.
What is Ketch’s favorite train station?
Picking a favorite train station is kind of tough so I’m going to have to give you a few:
Ettrick, VA. This is where we got on the Silver Star to go visit my grandparents in Florida. There isn’t much to Ettrick and I always wondered why we didn’t get on in Petersburg which was closer to home, but Amtrak charged less the further from DC you were so I think Ettrick maybe saved my dad a few bucks.
Minot, ND. I got off for a smoke break here in 1994, the summer I turned 16. It was my first time in the Great Plains and I was impressed.
Denmark, SC also Jessup GA, two stops I remember from way back when I was a little kid that helped me see my world was full of interesting places. Denmark station had a Tiger Paw painted on the side for Clemson and Jessup was just kind of lonesome.
Crestline, OH. 4am in winter is what I remember about this station. And the smell of my grandfather Jefferson Davis Robinson’s pipe.
Exeter NH. Amtrak’s Downeaster line didn’t start up until long after I had moved away from the Granite State, but the station was always there even when its only purpose was for smoking beedi cigarettes behind it.
Richmond CA. Never been there but Molly Tuttle and I put it into her song "San Joaquin", my latest composition about an Amtrak. Check it out sometime. Like the smuggler sings in the chorus, “When I get to Richmond I’ll be gold soon as this suitcase is sold.”
What was the first instrument you learned how to play? What inspired you to pick it up? What is your favorite instrument to play on stage?
I bought my first instrument with the money my Dad gave me for a souvenir when my 4th grade class took a field trip to Jefferson’s Monticello sometime around 1987.
The hot item at the gift shop was the quill pen. Seth Weis got the distressed copy of the Declaration of Independence. I went with the jaw harp and it has made all the difference.
Thanks for sending in your questions! Hope to see y'all out on the road soon.
Sincerely,
Ketch
