A Conversation With Ketch Secor: Old Crow Medicine Show are the Truth

‘Modern Rock’ isn’t a term included in Ketch Secor’s impressive lexicon. In fact, while Secor’s band, Old Crow Medicine Show, is a part of an underground music scene only growing in size today, his music is far from modern.

And yet as the string quintet hits Homestead tonight, the immediacy and power of Old Crow’s take on classic American folk and bluegrass speaks to modern times perfectly.

The band, which released the record Tennessee Pusher last fall, has been purveying traditional tunes and like-minded original songs for almost a dozen years. Secor, Old Crow’s fiddler, banjoist and harmonica player, called from Nashville to talk shop about keeping America’s musical traditions fresh.

Gravity Rides Everything: So the new record came out last fall. How have fans reacted?

Ketch Secor: It’s been a really positive feeling out there in all the towns we’re playing. We got people singing along to all the new material. Just got back from Texas. It’s been going great — we did a lot of growing with the record.

GRE: How do you feel the band’s style has evolved over the years?

KS: We’ve sharpened that feel we had all along. It’s been refined. We’ve been playing together for 11 years. At that point, you don’t really get a new sound, you just get better at the sound you’ve always had.

GRE: What was different about Tennessee Pusher than previous records?

KS: Well, we included a full drum kit and an organ on this record. But the biggest difference is that this album is all original material. In years past, we’ve always had a majority of traditional music on the album.

GRE: Looking at the album half a year later, is there anything you would’ve done differently?

KS: No, it really felt like it was the best it could’ve been. I must say I feel that way about all our records. Generally, in live shows you have the regret. ‘Oh, I should’ve said this. I forgot to say we were in Steubenville.’ But when it comes to making a record, you get the chance to make it right. You don’t get a second take onstage.



GRE: Do you feel the same kind of personal connection to the traditional songs as your originals?

KS: Yea, definitely. When you make your mark on a song, or that song on you, you can form a bond with a song. It’s like if you found out your brother was adopted — but you never treated him like he was. You loved him all along. I mean, we’re in a string band. The music I love is rooted in those traditions. The feeling you get playing traditional music, it’s not like a cover tune.

GRE: What’s a record in your collection that might surprise me?

KS: I have a lot of music from Mexico and the folk music of South Texas. But then I also really like Cyndi Lauper.

GRE: Do you feel the band is playing an important role by exposing traditional American songs to a new audience?

KS: To turn on young people to American music traditions is no small feat, considering how removed today’s young people are from the oral traditions and cultural events that lead to the passing on of this knowledge. If your parents aren’t telling you about singing and dancing, then who is? The radio and television media, of course, is just homogenous and disconnected from that source too.

I mean the radio is so homogenous and we’re all guilty of falling into it, myself included. But it’s hard to get through to people who’ve been exposed to that much bad music.

Some people out there, they hear us play and they know that it’s right. They feel that whatever they heard before is somehow not pleasing enough. We’re fairly lovable — we get all your senses. We have a musical force that’s so much more than ourselves. We’re carrying on the torch of a genre that is the root of so much of what people like about pop music.

If you like Chuck Berry, you’ll like us. If you like Little Richard, you’ll like us. But also if you like Kurt Cobain, you’ll like us.

GRE: How would you describe the atmosphere at an Old Crow show?

KS: It’s pretty fired up. There’s a lot of excitement. But it depends where you are. We just played a lot of Texas venues that were dancehalls, so they had their belt buckles properly postured and they were swingin’ their gals around. There are hearts being broken and some promises being made.

-Fin-

Please, if you will. Enjoy this music. It's the truth.

Blast from the Past: Third Eye Blind come to town

When a band that had its heyday about 10 years ago rolls into town, sells out a decent sized club and draws booming applause for nearly every song, there’s one question that should shoot into any discerning fan’s mind — are we actually enjoying the music or just bathing in soothing nostalgia?


Well, judging from Third Eye Blind’s set in Greensburg’s Palace Theater last night, the answer is a complicated one.


Sure, the crowd of mostly drunk late-twenties bros (many of whom refused to stop screaming for the band to play “Jumper” even after the song was played) seemed genuinely wet-their-pants excited when the San Francisco band busted out late 90s hits like “Graduate,” “Never Let You Go” and, of course, “Semi-Charmed Life,” but the tracks from the upcoming Ursa Major album only saw lukewarm responses.


Is that because the crowd really came just for the hits and not to hear something new? Probably, as could be expected, but only time and the records’ release will tell. My guess is that, as has been Third Eye Blind’s album trend, Ursa Major will go largely unnoticed, forcing the band to continue touring behind decade-old hits for at least another half a decade.


And yet, while all this sounds like Blind bashing, the truth is the band busted out a seriously rousing set — post-grunge rock god pandering of front man Stephen Jenkins aside — of familiar, comfortable radio rock staples and the requisite non-single crowd favorites. Nostalgia or not, the sold-out crowd, this reviewer included, belted out every note.


After a reverb-drowned walk-on, Third Eye Blind launched “Wounded,” one of the band’s better, bigger choruses from its second album and the kicking “Graduate,” one of the five hit singles off the band’s eponymous debut. So far so good.

But when Jenkins led the band in a string of unreleased tracks from the new album, the sing-along, ‘I remember this song!’ sentiment of the crowd was lost — especially among the dudes who could barely stand, let alone get into the groove of an unfamiliar jam.


Jenkins didn’t seem to notice.


“This place is filled with bats and ghosts. I feel like a vampire ready for fresh blood,” he said of both the gothic Palace Theater and the crowd’s energy — both of which were impressive, and matched, in earnest, by the band’s performance.


Third Eye Blind were always one of the more serious late 90s alt-rock bands (and so much better than, say, The Verve Pipe) and, a decade later, the group is still chugging along like it wants to save the world. Or at least wax poetic about doing so. And for the most part, Jenkins and crew pull it off. Quotable tunes like the haunting “God of Wine” and “Motorcycle Drive-By” were played as the mini-epics that they are; the slinky, mostly-acoustic “I Want You” was even sexier than on record.


But barefoot with painted toenails and prone to outstretched-arms crowd-embracing, Jenkins remains in the Ed Kowalczyk (Live) school of spiritual-via-lyrics-about-sex-and-drugs front men. And somehow, his stage character is passable. But it’s when the band’s music tries to match Jenkins’ sprawl that things suffer.


Was a three-minute drum solo in the middle of “Jumper” necessary? Definitely not.


We dig Third Eye Blind for tight, four or five minute packages of sincere (and sincerely affecting) rock gems with glistening choruses, not faux psychedelic guitar and drum meandering. When the band stuck to its core of emotional pop rock, it hit all the right spots — especially for the college bros who know every word of “Semi-Charmed Life” and have no idea it’s about drug addiction.


And when those bros all joined in a group hug during “Slow Motion,” nostalgia or not, Third Eye Blind was doing exactly what it came to do.