- Old Crow Medicine Show
O. C. M. S.
Nettwerk Records
By Al Kunz
 In
life you're moving either forward or backward. Experience makes
you better while aging sometimes dulls your edge. Nothing stays
the same. Revisiting what I'd written about Eutaw, Old Crow Medicine Show's last
studio disc, I realized we'd both evolved in the intervening
years. I had an overwhelming desire to give the Eutaw
review a massive editing job. At minimum tighten it up a bit.
Hopefully I won't feel the same way about this review next week.
O.C.M.S has definitely sharpened up their act. The vocals are
clearer. The music is tighter. And their musical repertoire
has evolved a bit too.
The essence of the Old Crow experience is the same. Traditional
or public domain old-timey string and jug band music played with
controlled abandon. But O. C. M. S. expands on this core
by including more original songs (half the tracks on this disc
compared to a single cut on Eutaw) subtly enlarging their
musical domain to include compatible blues tunes and adding more
variation in song tempos. In the past the traditional songs
selected were obscure enough that most listeners were probably
unfamiliar with them. That's still the case with the majority
of the traditional tunes here. How many of you have heard "Tell
it to Me" (possibly the version by the New York City Ramblers
recorded at the Newport Folk Festival in the early '60s) or "Hard
to Love" (recently recorded by New York bluegrasser James
Reams, a transplanted-Kentuckian known in some circles as the
"The Father of Brooklyn Bluegrass")? But in a major
departure from the obscure Old Crow takes on the folk-blues standard
"CC Rider," a tune recorded by everyone from Ray Charles
to the Grateful Dead.
Banjoist Critter Fuqua's writing contribution includes "Take
'em Away," sung from the viewpoint of a farm laborer praying
in the chorus for release ("take 'em away / take 'em away
lord / take away these chains from me / my heart is broken 'cus
my sprits not free / lord take away these chains from me). This
tune fits easily amongst Old Crow's traditional tunes and could
easily be mistaken for one of them. Not so with Fuqua's second
contribution, "Big Time in the Jungle," which, at least
on the surface, tells of the war experiences of "Flukie
Fluker." (A real life resident of Eutaw, Alabama who befriended
the band and kept their bellies full of catfish after a vehicle
breakdown stranded them in Eutaw for a few days). But through
the politically safe setting of a bygone conflict Fuqua illustrates
the price of war while avoiding both overt moralizing and the
jingoistic.
Oh the drop point was dusty
And the drill sergeant was loud
And he could not see the corpses
For the raging dust cloud
Grab your duffel bags
Head to the check point
Welcome to Vietnam boys, you're in for a hell of fight
Take it from the ones who know
The army moved slow
Hurry up and wait
Don't sleep late
Learn to hate your brother before you hate your foe
"Trials and Troubles" and "We're All in This
Together" (both co-written by band members Ketch Secor and
Willie Watson) also fit well within what we've come to expect
from Old Crow in that they sound old-timey enough to be culled
from the public domain. But they also expand their range, coming
from a more introspective place than prior Old Crow fare. The
later could be interpreted as the band's anthem, or, putting
it on the more spiritual plane it demands, imagine it being sung
in a small backwoods southern church on Sunday morning after
a Saturday night spent dodging Yankee revenue agents.
We're all in this thing together
Walking the line between faith and fear
This life don't last forever
When you cry, taste the salt in your tears
"Wagon Wheel," the catchiest tune on O.C.M.S.
is also intriguing for other reasons. Credited in the liner
notes as being written by Bob Dylan with "additional lyrics
and melody," "Wagon Wheel" started with two stanzas
of chorus from "Rock Me Mama," an unreleased Bob Dylan
song. Ketch Secor then added what are at least partially autobiographical
verses ("Running from the cold up in New England / I was
born to be a fiddler in an old-time string band / my baby plays
the guitar / I pick the banjo now"). The consensus appears
to be the song was recorded by Dylan for the Pat Garrett and
Billy the Kid soundtrack without making the final cut. One
internet site (http://www.searchingforagem.com/BobUnrelR.htm
) says the song wasn't written by Dylan. Instead claiming it
was written and recorded by bluesman Arthur "Big Boy"
Crudup (who wrote Elvis Presley's hit "It's Alright Mama").
Listening to a sample of Crudup's song at Amazon.com doesn't
support this contention. But even in the big wide world of the
internet with its overabundance of information about everything
(especially Dylan) information about the song is sketchy. The
few sites that have lyrics for Dylan's original (http://dylanlyrics.50g.com/sg-RockMeMama.htm
) have a disclaimer. After all, transcribing lyrics from
a Dylan bootleg is a difficult proposition. Although OCMS's
"Wagon Wheel" is the most contemporary of the non-originals
on O.C.M.S. it illustrates a longstanding tradition in
folk and gospel music of taking part of a song and adding your
own lyrics, transforming it into something completely different.
(The more academically oriented can read all about this process
in Steve Turner's excellent book Amazing Grace The Story of America's Most
Beloved Song ).
Evolution isn't always good (consider either two-headed frogs
or Rascal Flatts). However in Old Crow's situation, aided by
producer David Rawlings (with his frequent musical cohort Gillian
Welch sitting in on drums for two tracks) the evolution has served
to make a good band even better. Visit www.crowmedicine.com for the latest Old Crow
news.
Contact Al Kunz at kunz-at-rockzilla.net
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