On the way to the show I kept thinking that I needed to keep my wits about me. This was the first show for which I had acquired the tickets through Creative Loafing, and it would be nice to impress them with lucid recollections on our first shot at this show review thing. Kind of like dating, you know, give them the angelic version of Autopsy for the first few weeks, let them get attached a little and then show them the rambling, incoherent “What? I saw a show tonight? Did I like it?” version. Everything was going according to plan. I was stone sober (mostly), we were on schedule to get to the venue and we walked in just in time for Old Crow to start. Then everything went to hell. When we got to the Tampa Theater we heard that Old Crow was a little over an hour from playing. A professional would have gone in and watched the opening act, but Creative Loafing fired all of their professionals and now they’re stuck with a lush like me….so I headed to The Hub and the rest, as they say, is history…With a head wet with whiskey and about 10 people in front of me in the beer line, I heard the show start. 1 1/2 songs later I took my seat and this is my story:

The last time Old Crow Medicine Show came through Tampa they played to a sold-out crowd at the legendary Skipperdome. This time through the band switched it up and took the stage at the historic Tampa Theater. Going to the show I knew two things for certain; one, this would be a much mellower crowd and two, it would be an almost perfect show, sound wise.

The show was broken up into two sets with a 20 minute break in between. The first set was enjoyable enough but it was lacking some energy, as I had feared it might. The crowd was flat and the band, both in song selection as well as stage performance, was mellow. I was dead on about the sound though. The Tampa Theater never disappoints on that front, unless you’re there to see a movie. I’m not saying the first set was bad…just a little lackluster. Had the entire show gone at that pace I would have probably gotten bored before the end.

This was a stark contrast from their previous show at Skipper’s, and as the band walked off the stage after the first set I was worried that the more formal venue was dictating a more stuffy performance. Maybe I just needed more whiskey to help me find their groove and fortunately, due to state smoking laws, the Tampa Theater now allows reentry and The Hub is a mere 20 (yes, I counted) steps away.

“Bartender! Quick! 1 shot of Beam and 1 Beam and Ginger…make ‘em strong and make ‘em quick…I’m a fucking professional after all.”
“A professional drunk maybe.”
“Fuck you pal. I’m aligned with Creative Loafing now. You treat me with respect or I’ll have their lawyers so far up your ass they’ll know what you’re eating before you do.”
“Shut up. Finish your drinks and get the fuck out of here.”
“That’s what I thought. Tell you what, shot jockey, just put those drinks on CL’s tab.”
“They don’t run a tab.”
“What kind of cut-rate fish wrap am I working for?”
“The kind that allows schmucks like you to cover shows for them instead of paying real professionals.”
“Fuck you. Tomorrow, Eric Snider and I are coming down here to beat your ass. Now, pour me another shot and gimme my tab. I gotta get back over there.”

Oh what a difference a set makes. The Old Crow show would prove to be like a wave in the Gulf. It started out slow and unnoticed, barely even a ripple. Then as it moved into the second set the ripple grew into a wave before crashing in a glorious high-energy show, complete with 10 performing musicians on stage when the opening act, The Felice Brothers, joined Old Crow for the last half of the second set.

A great way to describe the two sets would be to say the first set was Saturday afternoon and the second set was Saturday-freaking-night. It was everything I remembered from the Skipper’s show. It was fantastic. Even saying it was great isn’t an exaggeration.

The second set ended with an utterly fantastic and unbelievably awesome version of “Tell It To Me” that should have ended the show.

I should have skipped the encore. I knew it. I asked the wife if she wanted to go. “No!” was her reply.
I said, “That was the perfect ending to a great show! Let’s get out of here.”
Condescendingly, she said, “You just wanna drink more at the Hub.”
While true, I knew that was happening regardless and I was standing by my opinion that we’d seen the perfect ending, and I was right.

Remember my wave in the Gulf analogy? It still applies. See, after the grand crashing of the wave that was the second set, what’s left? The meek and silent retreat back to the anonymity of the sea, and that’s exactly what the encore was…an inappropriate fart after especially good sex. It was a total fucking bummer cloud to an otherwise exceptional night. They should have ended the second set 4 songs early and played the last 4 songs of it as a great big money shot right in the crowd’s eye.

Oh well. Great show. Shit encore. In the end, it was still a fantastic night.

My buddy took some great pictures and you can see them here.

Old Crow Medicine Show – Tell It To Me
Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel
Old Crow Medicine Show – Minglewood Blues
Old Crow Medicine Show – Tennessee Pusher

I was sitting here during lunch doing my daily blog crawl and when I came to Muzzle of Bees I was greeted by a Gillian Welch & Old Crow Medicine Show cover of The Band’s song The Weight that I’d never seen.

Fucking love it!

The most difficult pieces for me to do are those about my top 5 bands. It would be really easy for me to just devolve into fanatical gushing but I feel that would be slightly irresponsible to you. The flip side of that is that it’s really easy to get overly critical of one of your favorite bands new albums. I mean, new songs are strange and foreign, they’re hard to singalong to and the album just isn’t as comfortable as the last. I can’t count how many albums I’ve not liked on first listen that are in heavy rotation come the next week. In all honesty, the new Old Crow Medicine Show album, Tennessee Pusher, fell into that category.

Tennessee Pusher has a much more restrained feel to it than it’s predecessors. The band had elected to switch from Dave Rawling, who had produced all other OCMS albums, to Don Was. While Don Was may have produced some legends such as Dylan and the Stones I think he was a little too heavy handed with Old Crow. It almost seems like he tried to make them sound like a radio ready country band instead of the string band bluegrass street performers they are. That’s not to allude that it’s a bad cd…it’s just different. My first pass though netted 3 songs I loved, one I hated and nine I was indifferent to. A week later and I’ve really started to warm up to the album. If someone wanted me to sum it up in a sentence I’d say this: Big Iron World is for Saturday night and Tennessee Pusher is for Sunday mornings and both are essential listening in their jobs.

So, go pick the cd up today but with hold judgment until next Tuesday.

Old Crow Medicine Show – Alabama High-Test
Old Crow Medicine Show – Hotel in Memphis
Old Crow Medicine Show – Caroline

Old Crow Medicine Show’s Official Site, Old Crow Medicine Show on myspace, Buy Tennessee Pusher

While I don’t normally do this sort of thing a new OCMS album is worth breaking protocol over. Here is a copy/paste of a promotional email that just landed in my inbox:

As of today, Old Crow will be doing an exclusive digital pre-order of the album on AmieStreet, making it available for just $5.00. Fans can go to Amiestreet.com/OCMS to order the brand new album produced by the legendary Don Was (Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, the Rolling Stones), which they will then be able to download when it is released this Monday on AmieStreet.com.

New OCMS! A mere 5 bucks. Download available on Monday.

No bad news there at all.

Old Crow Medicine Show – Caroline (Lead Single from Tennessee Pusher)

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I first posted this back in May. Since then there has not been a single week pass where someone has not emailed me looking for the songs again. So, I decided to make a repost and include a little more information:

The Old Crow Medicine Show version of this song is available on their Troubles Up and Down the Road EP (currently Out of Print). The Jason Webley/Rev. Peyton version is available on bonus disc of their Two Bottles of Wine album. The Dylan version can be found on the 5 disc collection Genuine Bootleg Series 1 and finally the Against Me! version can be found on the Fat Wreck Records compilation PROTECT.

There you go. Without further a do and by popular demand…I bring you the original (and unedited) Wagon Wheel post:

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When I started typing this post I had no idea but today is Bob Dylan’s 66th Birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOB.

This morning I was sitting here listening to the new cd, Two Bottles Of Wine by Jason Webley and Reverend Peyton. At the end of the cd is a cover song that I instantly recognized as Old Crow Medicine Show’s, Wagon Wheel. Only, it’s labeled as Rock Me Mama (Bob Dylan Cover).

huh?

I am no Dylan expert but I thought if Wagon Wheel was actually a Dylan cover I would have known by now. This seemed like a job for Google. After a little looking I found this explination from OCMS’s Keith Secor:

“It’d be my pleasure to dispel the myth and rumor about the song Wagon Wheel, or “Rock Me Mama” as Bob Dylan himself called the song when he recorded it down in Mexico in 1972 for the soundtrack of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. This song was not released, and it was not finished either, this is a demo of a practice session of him, Rob Stoner, and a couple of gals doing the chorus over and over again while the bass player learns the bass line. That’s what I heard on a German bootleg about nine years ago in high school. And I wrote the lyrics to the song because I loved the chorus so much and I sung it in my head for maybe a year straight, and then just penned what I penned, which is something of an autobiographical story about just wanting to get outta town, gettin outta school, and just wanting to go play music. It’s sort of autobiographical like that. But yeah, it’s sort of a Bob Dylan co-write with about 25 years inbetween.”

Well there you go. As the late great Chris Thomas used to say, “That’s why you get up in the mornings. You never know what you might learn.”

Does anyone have a copy of that Dylan bootleg? I would really love to hear it. If you do please contact me.

Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel
Jason Webley w/Reverend Peyton – Rock Me Mama

edit: Thanks to the overwhelming response from the folks over on Expecting Rain we can now hear the Dylan bootleg.

Bob Dylan – Rock Me Mama

Finally. Here is another cover I found by the band Against Me!:
Against Me! – Wagon Wheel

When I started typing this post I had no idea but today is Bob Dylan’s 66th Birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOB.

This morning I was sitting here listening to the new cd, Two Bottles Of Wine by Jason Webley and Reverend Peyton. At the end of the cd is a cover song that I instantly recognized as Old Crow Medicine Show’s, Wagon Wheel. Only, it’s labeled as Rock Me Mama (Bob Dylan Cover).

huh?

I am no Dylan expert but I thought if Wagon Wheel was actually a Dylan cover I would have known by now. This seemed like a job for Google. After a little looking I found this explination from OCMS’s Keith Secor:

“It’d be my pleasure to dispel the myth and rumor about the song Wagon Wheel, or “Rock Me Mama” as Bob Dylan himself called the song when he recorded it down in Mexico in 1972 for the soundtrack of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. This song was not released, and it was not finished either, this is a demo of a practice session of him, Rob Stoner, and a couple of gals doing the chorus over and over again while the bass player learns the bass line. That’s what I heard on a German bootleg about nine years ago in high school. And I wrote the lyrics to the song because I loved the chorus so much and I sung it in my head for maybe a year straight, and then just penned what I penned, which is something of an autobiographical story about just wanting to get outta town, gettin outta school, and just wanting to go play music. It’s sort of autobiographical like that. But yeah, it’s sort of a Bob Dylan co-write with about 25 years inbetween.”

Well there you go. As the late great Chris Thomas used to say, “That’s why you get up in the mornings. You never know what you might learn.”

Does anyone have a copy of that Dylan bootleg? I would really love to hear it. If you do please contact me.

Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel
Jason Webley w/Reverend Peyton – Rock Me Mama

edit: Thanks to the overwhelming response from the folks over on Expecting Rain we can now hear the Dylan bootleg.

Bob Dylan – Rock Me Mama 

Finally. Here is another cover I found by the band Against Me!:
Against Me! – Wagon Wheel

The rain stopped as dusk approached after a good couple hours of black skies, heavy rains, thunder, and me sitting in the office cussin’ up a whole other storm all together. The skies were still threatening and a heavy fog was rolling in as I left St. Pete for Skipper’s. Old Crow came to Tampa for the first time ever and we welcomed them with a sell-out crowd that showed up despite the weather. This was billed as “An Evening with Old Crow Medicine Show” and as I’m sure plenty of you know, that means the band is gonna play for a long time. There was no opening act and Old Crow played 2 sets. The first one was much shorter than the last so it was like they just opened up for themselves stopped when the usual opener would stop. Went back stage to get right and came back onstage about 30 minutes later.

They were wonderful. As usual at Skipper’s, the sound was spot on. Five guys, all playing some form of a stringed instrument save for the occasional harmonica. Ketch Secor was playing the fiddle so hard that at one point rosin was coming off the bow in clumps.  He (ketch) is definitely the showman of the group . His mannerisms on-stage really remind me of JD Wilkes sans the pubic hair tossing, snot rocket shooting and all the other forms of fluid sharing that makes Mr. Wilkes Mr. Wilkes. They played all the crowd favorites and also managed to get in every song I wanted to hear except the “My Good Gal”. Highlights of the night had to be Wagon Wheel, God’s Got It, Cocaine Habit, and Minglewood Blues. Speaking of Minglewood Blues, the harmonica work in that song is even more impressive live than it is on cd. The show ended after a 3 song encore around 11:30.

I wish I would have taken more pictures but I was so into the show I did not wanna be distracted. Hopefully, we’ll get a return visit before another 6 years passes.

Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel
Old Crow Medicine Show – Minglewood Blues
Old Crow Medicine Show – God’s Got It

Visit Old Crow’s Official Site, Buy O.C.M.S. Merchandise

GREAT JOB TAMPA! Man,*this* is how we get bands to venture down this deep into Florida. I expected a descent crowd but not a sell-out. See y’all tomorrow.

O.C.M.S. -  Don’t Ride That Horse

Back in December I found out Old Crow was going to venture down into my neck of the woods, and made a slightly obscene post about it. Needless to say, my excitement has only grown in the weeks following the announcement. So I threw the new Old Crow CD “Big Iron World” into my CD player a few weeks ago to help pass the time. It has barely left my CD player since and never for longer than 2 days. This ever deepening love of the CD got me to wondering what I had written about the CD on the blog. Turns out, I had not really written anything at all.

Big Iron World was released in August of 2006 on Nettwerk Records. O.C.M.S. is a 5 piece string band from Ithaca featuring Willie Watson (vocals, guitar, banjo), Ketch Secor (vocals, fiddle, harmonica, banjo), Critter Fuqua (vocals, banjo, guitar, bottleneck guitar), Kevin Hayes (guit-jo) and Morgan Jahnig (upright bass). While Big Iron World is traditional country/mountain music it maintains a youthful swagger. If the harmonica was guitar you would be required to file the CD under rock proving it’s possible to utilize traditional sounds while maintaining a modern feel. Big Iron World is one helluva good time. From the opening harmonica laden track “Down Home Girl” to the rocking “Minglewood Blues” to the bluesy murder ballad mourn of “My Good Gal” and all the way through the gospel of “God’s Got It” Big Iron World manages to make traditional music without being preservationists. Furthermore, Big Iron World has enough depth to it that not only does it stand up to repeated listen, it gets better with each one.

O.C.M.S. are on tour and will be playing the Tampa area on February 13. While I have never seen them live I have a hard time believing that they could be anything but a fucking blast in person. So if they happen to play your neck of the woods give ‘em a shot. Tampa folk, you really shouldn’t miss this show.

Old Crow Medicine Show – Minglewood Blues
Old Crow Medicine Show – My Good Gal
Old Crow Medicine Show – God’s Got It

Old Crow Medicine Show’s Official Site, Old Crow Medicine Show on myspace, Buy Old Crow Medicine Show CD’s

Panning through Pollstar during lunch today what do I see?

Old Crow Medicine Show is playing Skipper’s Smokehouse in Feb!

OMG! Me and the wife were just talking about pulling a road trip next time they were playing in Atlanta and now all we’ll have to do is drive across the bridge to Tampa.

Excuse the mess, I just got a little excited is all.

If for some reason you have no idea who I am talking about here is a piece I did on them earlier this year.