Raising the Dead: Ketch Secor Talks Old Crow Medicine Show’s Live at The Ryman, Ken Burns’ ‘Country Music’ and Playing with Bob Weir – jambands.com

This Friday, Oct. 4, Old Crow Medicine Show will release their new album, Live at The Ryman, which captures various cuts from the country-folk stalwarts many performances at the famed Ryman Auditorium in Nashville over the past half-decade. Ever the torchbearers of down-home, old-timey, harmony-filled music, Old Crow have ridden the wave of the 21st-century folk-revival to awards and accolades over the years, but the groups founders havent forgotten the musical and geographical roots that spawned their success.

Old Crow co-founder Ketch Secor recently helped with the creation of Ken Burns newest documentary, Country Music, which chronicles the myriad storiesboth well-known and nearly forgottenthat have shaped the history of the genre for over a century. Here, Secor talks about keeping the memory of country, folk and bluegrass music alive through the documentary and in his own music and actions, plus his recent experience with playing alongside Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir at LOCKN Festival in Old Crows home state of Virginia (where they collaborated on Mexicali Blues, Cumberland Blues and Will the Circle Be Unbroken?) and why Old Crow Medicine Show might have a bit more jamband in them than they previously thought.

Letsstart with this years LOCKNFestival, specifically your set and the Bob Weir sit inhow did that cometogether?

Bobspeople reached out a few days ahead of our tour and let it be known that he wasinterested in sitting in with us, asking what we would play. So we sent himback a list of tunes, and he picked the ones that we played from that list.Then we warmed up in the trailer and we hit the stage together. There are justa few moments like that in the life of a musician, where it seems that somesort of spiritual butterfly will land on the headstock of your guitar and justflap its wings. It reminds you of where you came from, where the music camefrom, and lets you know youre not alone and that your dreams are coming true,all at the very moment of your singing.

Didyou grow up with the Dead? How would a younger version of Ketch have viewedthat experience, being onstage with Bob Weir?

Well,it would have been unfathomable to me as a younger personthat the person I waslooking at, with eyes strained through an LSD hit, was going to be, like, afriend on the stage, years later. I saw the Grateful Dead at Giants Stadium thesummer that Jerry died. It was mid-June, in the burning-hot Meadowlands of NewJersey. I think that, if I wasnt 16 in 1994, I probably would have been to alot more Dead showsbut I just got to go to the one. I loved the music, and Ivealways felt that our band was part of the same familywe were just a littlefurther down the line. Also, so much of our influence tended toward the earlierside of the Grateful Dead, so it sort of felt like, well, maybe its more of ahorseshoe shape?

Hadyou played with any of the members of the Dead before?

Well,we worked some shows with Phil [Lesh] this summer, but in the capacity ofWillie Nelson [on the Outlaw Music Festival Tour], so I dont think Phil knewus, but he did watch our sets most nightsjust awesome to have him there. Andthen there was some correspondence a long time ago with Billy Kreutzmann thatnothing ever came of.

Butthe thing is, when someone is your hero, they take on a life in your life thatis not their life, but something related to your own imagination anddreamscape. And then theres this positively charged sonic landscape in whichJerry lives forever, and Pigpen never died, and theyre taking their firstbanjo lessons, and theyre learning to sing folk songs in the early 1960s, allin the same breath as singing Cats Under The Stars, and death and beyond. Thatsthe kinship that I think the Grateful Dead embodies better than any other musicmaker. The immortality piece.

Andthe relationship of the music to a spiritual plane doesnt need to be aparticular spirit; you can put any deity you want in that picture. That partsnot very important to me. Chuck Berry did the same thinghe lives foreverbuthe didnt talk about living forever, and he didnt dance about livingforever. If he did, he did it in subtle ways. The Dead invited you into a worldthat very much was stated as a spiritual plane. The music undulates andmoves like the soul.

Doyou aim at something like that with your own music?

No,man, Im a revivalist. Im just trying to raise the deadIm not trying to coexistwith them.

Howdid you pick what songs you wanted to play with Bobby?

Well,I hope to check the list again sometime and get to pick again, because theresa lot on that list. Our band has always played Grateful Dead music; we grew upon Grateful Dead music. I polled the band, because were all such big fans, soit was so easy to get a list of twenty tunes together. Most of them we had notplayed before, but we had a few regular songs in our rotation, and certainly alot of common ground. Whats interesting, I think, for our collaboration isthat were really from the roots-music world, like the Dead, but were not atall from the jamband world, so our crossroads happens in a veryless-than-obvious place, in a really deep and soulful place. I think that, whenwe started singing together with Bobby, it instantly felt locked in.

Theresso many people [at festivals] you might want to meet, but these [onstage]encounters, I think, go so much deeper than someones email address. I mean,they certainly require that, and Bob gets to play with all kinds of peopleandyoud have to ask Bob what he feltbut, for us, the man has loomed so large inmythology, in our arts, and in our music, that I still see Steal Your Faceseverywhere. I can close my eyes and still see the Dancing Bears dancing to Cumberland Blues. So it was just a real homecoming to get to play with him.

Haveyou ever had that kind of experience with any other sit ins?

Youknow, it was like meeting Pete Seeger backstage. In the case of Pete Seeger,the part that was the most like making music with Bob Weir was sitting withPete while he talked. Story craft is just at the heart of Pete. He told thisreally long story that I just wanted to drink in. Weve had such a specialprivilege in our lives as musicians to be able to be there with a lot of peoplewho arent on this earth anymore. Plus making music with Cowboy Jack Clement,or Merle Haggard. These kinds of things are what the newspaper men of thefutureGod willing, if I live to be oldenoughwill be asking me. What was it like to play music with Bob Weir?What did Merle Haggard whisper into your ear?

Didhe whisper something into your ear?

Yeah.

Whatwas it?

Illtell you in 35 years. [Laughs.]

Beforethe festival, I was talking to the talent buyer for LOCKN for the LOCKN Times,and he was saying hed been trying to get Old Crow on the lineup for years, butthe timing never worked out. So Im curious what your thoughts of the festivalwere after your first time.

Ima Virginian, so Im always going to want to play in the Old Dominion. But, asfar as playing in Virginia goes, this was a really new experience, because Ivenever done a big festival here before, with music going on [that late]. What Imused to with playing in Virginia is more like a rock festival or a bluegrassfestival, or its a country thing or an Americana thing. But this was none ofthose, so it was exciting to be in the space of what felt like new, in thelandscape of what felt so old.

Youmentioned Old Crow not being too much in the jambands world, but Ive heardthat youre a pretty big Phish fan. Can you talk about that connection andappreciation?

Ihavent seen Phish quite a few years. I kind of stopped going in my earlytwentiesthats something I really did a lot of in high school, though. A lot ofI mean, there was a minute there when Id seen Phish as much as Id seenBob Dylan. But Joe Andrews and Corey Younts in our band are still very muchPhish concertgoers, along with all the variations of Phish. Theyre reallytuned in to whats happening right now. Im sort of tuned into Junta and Lawn Boy. But Im really tuned into them. [Laughs.]

Anyspecific highlights from your Phish-going days that pop out in your memory?

Oneof my favorites was going to a show in Amherst, Mass., and not having a ticketand figuring we were just going to go hang out in the parking lotbeing 16,having some mushrooms in my pocket and being so excited about just going tohang out in the parking lot. Stopping off on the turnpike on the way there, wego into the glass house [regional name for highway rest stops/service areas]and there was someone handing out Phish tickets to the show we were headed to.Those are the kind of miracles that occur in the lives in 16-year-olds on wildweekends in boarding school. [Laughs.]

Ithink, if we had our chops, Old Crow would be a jamband. But we were just neverthat virtuosic. We were a three-chord band that was really song-driven, and thebest that we could do was with soulnot really the way we played, but thepassion with which we played. But its all very self-taught and rudimentarychord structures. Our biggest influences are probably like the Memphis Jug Bandand Workingmans Dead. You can see, in the Dead, that theres thispathway into the wilderness, from the sound of the Warlocks, or the musicbefore that, the undergirding of the Dead.

OldCrow is really rooted in the folk revival, which I think is one of the mostsignificant times in American music, when the first waves reappeared of aprimal sound that had made American popular music so powerful. That wave was sostrong that there were echoes of it resounding even 30 or 40 years later in theShenandoah Valley, when Critter [Fuqua] and I, in the late 1980s, startedplaying folk music. It was that colossal. What really inspired us was to betrue to it. The ideology of the band was still in its infancy and richlyaffixed to this concept of, Gotta keep the old music strong, or else itll die. And, you know, thats the way a 20-year-old thinks. WhatI would tell that 20-year-old is just to rephrase it a little bityouve gottamake the old time music strong so that you can give it away, again and again,so that itll be worth giving away and wont make a memory, but rathersomething present and fun.

Doyou ever have that fear anymore?

No,I think its in great shape. I think probably more harmonicas, banjos andfiddles have been sold in the past 15 years than at any other time. So yeah, Ithink were doing great, in terms of the cultural preservation of the music ofthe state of Virginia and other places. But, as the band is growing into the21st year of its career, we have been able to change that loyalty considerablyand stretch out into lots of new directions.

HavingBob up there affirmed the feeling and emotion in the band that we couldactually play for a long time if we want. We could jam. And so, we startedplaying a couple of Phish tunes in our setmost of that is because we wereplaying in Vermont, and we always have the tendency to play [regionallyappropriate covers]. When we play in Detroit, we sing The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald; in Seattle, we might do Nirvanas [version of] Mollys Lips or something like that. So, going upto Burlington, were likely to play some Phish. And our audiences down Southarent as appreciative of us doing Phishand weve learned that the hard way. [Laughs.]With the blessing of Bobin all his Bob-nessI feel like we could probably goforth and sew a new roots-music/jam rowand grow some pretty unruly crops.

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Raising the Dead: Ketch Secor Talks Old Crow Medicine Show's Live at The Ryman, Ken Burns' 'Country Music' and Playing with Bob Weir - jambands.com