Old Crow Medicine Show are no strangers to Louisville. The band is returning to town with their show at Paristown Hall (724 Brent St.) this Friday, May 10. The band has played Louisville numerous times to enthusiastic roots music audiences. This show comes in support of their Grammy-nominated album. Jubilee. LEO caught up with the band ahead of their coming show and did a quick check in with frontman Ketch Secor.
LEO: Welcome back to Louisville! You always seem to include a stop in Louisville on your tours, what makes this city attractive for your shows?
Ketch Secor: We love playing music in Louisville Kentucky because the Bluegrass state is the home of so many of the most inspiring characters in the canon of Country.
Every time you bring a fiddle and banjo up there to the edge of the Ohio River, you just feel like it’s a homecoming and over the past quarter century, we sure have gotten to know Louisville like you get to know a friend.
We love the culture of the town. It’s the kind of place that I would like to live if I didn’t have to live in Nashville, Tennessee. I kind of envy all y’all folks up there with your beautiful architecture, your hot browns, and your Louisville sluggers perched on your shoulders. Send me up, man! Somebody tell Casey Stengel to put in the Crows!
Tell me about the new music/new projects the band has been working on.
Old Crow’s always dabbling in new music whether it’s a song that we’re working out in the studio, which has been happening a lot lately, or on the bus trying to get an exciting new cover tune that captures the heart or ethos of a place we’re performing. There’s no telling what that’ll be by the time we cross the Bullitt County line but we’re probably going to have something pretty smoking by the time we get to Jefferson County.
With the rise in diverse acts tackling roots and country music, how do you feel it is shifting the industry?
We’re glad to see the Country Music business take better notice of Black and Brown performers. You know, this music is the byproduct of the bi-racial animacy through song of Black and White America and that didn’t happen very easily. In fact, it happened through the course of a very tragic rub. One that includes terrorism to just straight-up racism so somewhere in between that is a lot of atoning that the Country Music business has to do in order to rectify its past, but it’s good to see that kind of work happening and we can only hope that the future for Country Music will be filled with all of the critters in the choir and not just the folks whose moms and dads had the dough and credit to get em’ a spot on the stage.
Did you listen to Beyoncé’s country record?
Oh yeah! It’s great, it’s fantastic, I love it! In fact, we’ve been singing “Texas Hold Em’” in our set and I just love Beyonce so much. Does anybody have her number?
Probably just Jay-Z but if we get it, we'll let you know. An Old Crow Beyoncé collab would be amazing.
In your genre what is something that you’re looking forward to seeing or bringing to the music?
We brought some horn players with us to the Ryman at the end of 2023 and I’d love to see even more brass in the Old Crow music. Boy, wouldn’t that be cool? Not only that, I’m thinking about Clifford Hayes up there in Louisville, up at Carpet Alley. Y’all know the spot, right? Everybody remembers Carpet Alley right? Well anyhow, some of the best jug blowers in American history came from Louisville. I’d love to get that jug up on the stage.
Originally, Country/Roots music represented a place for people to voice their anger at “the man” or “power” as well as the place to explore tough themes in relationships, Tammy Wynette’s D-I-V-O-R-C-E and the music made by Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn’s, do you still find those ideas being explored? Do you think it has a place in today’s country/roots music?
I think relationships make up the bulk of Country Music. I’d like to hear a song about the relationship between Morgan Wallen and the chair that he threw. That bizarre dance partner of his that he just didn’t know how to cut a rug very well with and sent flying. Seriously, as the people making Country Music get more diverse, I’m looking forward to more diverse topics, more diverse points of view. I’d love to hear Country music return to its infancy and explore broader relationships – like maybe the one between a police officer and a troublemaker. Now that would be great fodder for a Country song that we haven’t heard much of since about 1927.
What is next for Old Crow?
Louisville, I guess! Thank God for that!
