April 2025 Edition
Hello There!
It’s Ketch writing to you from on the road in Oklahoma. After a week’s worth of Old Crow shows across Florida and the Gulf Coast I’ve been out here moonlighting for a couple days with one of my favorite Sooner State bands, Turnpike Troubadours. Guest fiddling with them, Molly Tuttle, and Wyatt Flores over 2 nights of their epic Boys From Oklahoma run at T. Boone Pickens Stadium brought together three of my songwriting collaborators onto one stage. Molly Tuttle’s "Evergreen, OK" Turnpike Troubadours "On The Red River" and Wyatt Flores’ "Welcome to the Plains" are three songs I’ve recently co-written with deep roots sunk into the Red Dirt tradition.
I love how one state can be so different than the rest when it comes to sound and musical legacy. From Florida to Illinois to California, place really matters in music. Ever since I was young those regional musical distinctions inspired me to learn more, to listen deeply and to travel in search of greater understanding. This is partly due to a phenomenon that occurred to me during my childhood more than a few times. It was usually in April that my parents, both lifelong teachers, would gather my sisters and I and tell us that they were taking a new job in a different school and a different state. In the Secor family during the 1980’s this spring time summit happened 5 times by the time I reached 4th grade. In each case Mom and Dad would be there smiling with an ever present handkerchief to wipe away the tears, and with the promise that this next town would be full of newness, adventure, and fulfillment. Besides birthdays and holidays, moving days were nearly as frequent. My belongings beared stickers from 5 different moving companies. Just like the Easter Bunny, moving day signified spring. (Just an aside have you ever heard Charlie Poole’s playful song by the same title? “Moving Day”). And, after living the first 10 years of of my life in Louisiana, Virginia, Missouri, New Jersey, and South Carolina, it should come as no surprise that a song I often get stuck in my head is Hank Snow’s roadside masterpiece “I’ve Been Everywhere”.
Although I loved my transplanted youth in towns across the the southland it was only later in life I understood what a secret weapon such transamerican comings and goings had instilled in me. I could walk the walk and talk the talk no matter where I was. I felt at home anywhere. And I wanted to go anywhere so I could learn how to feel at home everywhere. Some of you may have picked up on my use of this secret weapon at an Old Crow show when you heard me mention from the stage a particular local school/industry/craft, river/watershed/name of dam, famous person/ infamous person, tradition or local delicacy and thought, “Oh, that guy with the fiddle must have grown up around here.” Well, I didn’t. I am no more from the Land of Lincoln than I am from Lincoln, Nebraska, from Abraham, Utah, or from Emancipation Park, TX. So how did I learn to sound like I was? Well it wasn’t because I had Wikipedia. Remember, here in my mid 40’s I grew up in the last America generation to use paper maps and hand written direction. No, despite the obvious convenience of punching your town into a smartphone I wasn’t ever looking to impress an audience with facts and figures, researching places for some kind of Americana trivia game. Instead, because of the many towns I lived in, and because of a heartfelt passion for place, I learned to evoke a kind of spatial, rooted in love of geography, and topped with a sense of wonder about just how unique America’s places really are. Look out Ricky Nelson. "Travelin’ Man” coming’ through! And if your started your band in the 90’s like I did you’d probably have a lot of stickers on your luggage too. What I mean is that, by the time I was 18 years old I went basically everywhere in North America. From Climax, Pa to Truth Or Consequences, NM to Hell, MI, I saw it all. And let me tell you: it was beautiful! By the time my band had been together for a year we’d been coast to coast and to 6 Canadian providences. By the time we’d been a band two years we’d seen the sunrise on every state in the Lower 48. As much as we were building a band, a brand, a sound, a canon, we were building an understanding of just what made the magic in all these unique little places of the continent. And wherever we’d go there was certainly a song to follow. In Albuquerque we sang Neil Young's Albuquerque. In the Wild Rose Country of Alberta we sang Ian and Sylvia’s Four Strong Winds. And because I already had a head start in this so-called American Studies program I was alert as an owl to all the variations I began to see around me. What was different about North Dakota and South Dakota was as different in North and South Carolina. Each of the New England states and each of the Pacific Northwest states had a thousand differences and just as many similarities. With each transcontinental mile a key to the map of America was forming in my heart. All these years later that compass rose continues to bloom.
Well, wherever you call home we want to invite you out to circle the wagons with us in 2025. Despite our divisions, we the members of Old Crow believe with our whole hearts that music is a unifying force. And maybe even more important than that, it's just good medicine. We’re curious about you and your town. What do they do there, what do they believe? Come inform us. We all have something to learn. Come join in this mighty American circle altogether, and let's teach one another.
See ya’ll out on the road!
K.S.