It’s a band that has had well over a dozen members. Some have been around since the beginning while others have joined the band, kicked around for a few years and split, only to come back. It’s safe to say Old Crow Medicine Show is as much of a music collective with forever come and go members as it is a core-band of players.
However it’s described and whoever is playing, they remain a group that has put a solid stamp on the roots music scene, a fiery string band playing traditional and original music with the ferocity of a punk band. Like a rock band with old-time acoustic instruments, when they formed they put a shot of rock ’n’ roll energy into the acoustic music and festival world.
If you go
WHAT: Tico Time Bluegrass with multiple bands
WHEN: Friday to Sunday
WHERE: 20 Road 2050, Aztec
TICKETS: Tickets vary from full weekend pass to single day, camping and parking extra.
MORE INFORMATION: www.ticotimebluegrass.com
Old Crow Medicine Show is one of many bands performing at this weekend’s Tico Time Bluegrass Festival, which kicks off Friday and runs through the weekend. Old Crow Medicine Show will close out the festival Saturday Night.
Each member can bring something a bit different to the band.
“I’d love to see a running total everybody who’s been in this band over the last, honestly, nearly 30 years. And right now we’ve had some former members return. We’ve got Chance McCoy back. Joe Andrew’s back in the band,” said bass player Morgan Jahnig, who has been with Old Crow since 2000. “So, you know, every time that we have somebody go and somebody come back, there’s always that little moment of like, ‘OK, well, now we’ve got this guy, and I know he does this really good. So let’s do this instead.’ And over the years trying to create a set and trying to play music for people to really enjoy and for us to enjoy as well, every time we get a chance to mix things up, it’s always invigorating.”
The booking of Old Crow Medicine Show to the Tico Time Bluegrass Festival is why Tico Time is becoming one of the top summer festivals in the West. Booking some of the best talent in the world of blue and jam-grass, this year’s festival will also feature Keller and the Keels, The Yonder Mountain String Band, Big Richard, Magoo, Liver Down the River, and just about every local or regional band that hangs their hat in the Southwest.
The world has become quite familiar with their hit “Wagon Wheel,” a tune pieced together by founding member and frontman Ketch Secor, after adding verses he heard from a Bob Dylan bootleg, who pulled them from an early blues tune. Both Secor and Dylan share co-writing credits on the song, which arguably has been overplayed for years, so much that it’s banned from karaoke and open mic nights nationwide.
They are so much more than that one song, however, as the band’s catalog is ripe with bouncy rhythms, hooks and heavy lyrics that take on everything from methamphetamine abuse to war veterans’ PTSD.
Put the heaviness of the lyrics aside and you’ve got a good-time band that continues to bring forth some musical rowdiness when they hit the stage.
The fun is not lost on Jahnig.
“That time that we get to spend on stage, interacting with the crowd and playing all the songs that we love to play and the people love to hear with the people that we love playing them with, it’s catching lightning in the bottle and we’ve had that bottle lit up for a long time,” he said. “And I never get tired of going out and doing it.”
Old Crow Medicine Show will drop their latest release, “Union Made,” on June 5.
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
