Old Crow Medicine Show

Their Website



For over ten years now Old Crow Medicine Show (OCMS) have been together touring relentlessly and projecting their unique mix of old-timey string music with a rock n’ roll attitude. The band met in New York in 1998 and, to use words from their website, “hit the road, traveling city to city in a van busking (playing for money) in the streets.” The band eventually ended up in NC where they were fortunate enough to be playing in front of a local pharmacy when legend Doc Watson walked by and immediately recognized their talent. While the band attributes this as their big break, I’d like to think that talent like theirs would have found its way to the top one way or another. Today, three studio albums and hundreds of live shows later, OCMS is headlining their own shows at respectively sized venues. They are frequent visitors of Bonnaroo, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, the New Orleans Jazz Festival, and have played the Grand Ole Opry.

I often have a hard time gauging the stretch of how far a folk/Americana/string band’s music has spread into American mainstream. I think that OCMS is probably one of the bands at the forefront. For those of you who are into this sort of music, I think you will probably have been lucky enough to have had their tunes grace your eardrums. For those of you who aren’t into the stringband/Americana end of things, I think OCMS is a band that that really transcends the label of the genre. Their youthful and almost punk-like attitudes allow them to reach a larger listening demographic.

Looking at their touring schedule for the summer I see that they are opening for Dave Matthews Band. This adds them to a growing list of musicians that I really like who have opened for DMB. So if you are into DMB, then you’ve got an added incentive to attend a show. To those of you asking yourselves, “Are they good enough to go see despite DMB”....well that’s a tough question. I have seen them once at the Barrymore Theatre in Madison and was blown away, that’s the best I can do for you.

Enjoy

- Ben



***Thanks to Jake Stroup for this one, I still remember you telling me about these guys. Must have been @ least 5 or 6 years ago.