May 2025 Edition
Hello, Ketch here!
I’m glad to be back in touch. I hope you got my last letter alright. This one’s hot on its heels because I've got an important and timely message to share. Now, usually this space is reserved for Old Crow news, but today I want to write about something a bit off topic but not too tangental, Ok, let me see now...how many years have I been in this band? Well, I’ve been here from the beginning and we started in September of 1998, so I’m pretty sure it's something like 28 years?? Oh my goodness. I’m agasp to think I've been doing this job since I was 19 years old. Well, no matter because I'm shaking it up this year as i proudly announce a new forthcoming project. Yes, come July 7th I’ll be barking up a new tree with the release of my first ever solo record, Ketch Secor “Story The Crow Told Me”. Yup, I finally went and made me a solo record, can you believe it? The last time I recorded without Old Crow was for a 10 song tape I made in Critter’s mom and dads' basement in Harrisonburg, Virginia in 1995. Wait, was that 30 years ago?
Solo records by Old Crow band members are not all that uncommon. Kevin “Humdinger" Hayes made his, called “Loosen Up” around 2012 and more recently put out the expansive “Specter of the Brocken”. Gil Landry also released two solo records during his decade or more with OCMS, 2007’s "The Ballad of Lawless Soirez" and 2011’s "Piety and Desire” (be sure and check out the title track from his latest record "Cinnamon Canyon Blues" ). Newly returned to the OCMS lineup, West Virginia’s Chance McCoy’s solo album “Chance McCoy and the Appalachian String Band" was often featured on the Old Crow merch table (which our dear friend the late great Monica Mauk so lovingly purveyed.) Be sure and hear his great rendition of "Gospel Plow”. And of course there’s Willie Watson’s great new self-titled album, one of three beautiful solo works he’s made since departing the band in 2011. Be sure and check out my favorite track "Slim and The Devil". And congrats too to former Old Crow's Mason Via whose self-titled solo record just dropped last week. "Oh Lordy Me" is a great cut you wont want to miss.
Well, seeing as my Old Crow compatriots were no strangers to sole proprietorship why then has it been since the last millennium that I bothered to make a solo album?
I guess that’s partly due to the fact that, as the only continuous original member of Old Crow Medicine Show (though Morgan may as well be) any time I could have carved out to try my hand at a solo project was already slated for recording an Old Crow project. Also, I’ve always considered myself a “band guy”. I like bands, prefer them actually. I think bands are the real bedrock of music, that music is a collective force, and it’s this gregariousness which makes our medium such a transcendent one. So in all my years of Old Crow I can hostly say i never really thought too hard about making a solo record. But hey, like Trump told Canadian PM Carney last week “Never say never...” (I'm kidding here. Me making a solo record is about a million times more likely than the president's ridiculous and insulting suggestion of Canadian annexation…don't even get me started on Greenland! )
My foray into going solo started about a year ago when I was coming home from LA after the 2024 Grammy Awards in which the band was nominated for Best Folk Album for “Jubilee”. If you haven't heard it yet be sure and check out “Allegheny Lullabye”, one of our starkest recordings, about life in those rugged hills west of the Blue Ridge. Anyway, coming home I started thinking about making a spoken word record. Not just any spoken word record but one in which I told the story of the early years of OCMS. You see, a couple years back, during Old Crow’s 25th anniversary, I began to reflect on this epic, quixotic journey I first embarked on when I decided to live my life in a band. And not just any band, a band that by all accounts never should have made it. A band forged in a kind of "Bound For Glory” determination, steeped in American roots music. I would make a spoken word record that celebrated the first three years of OCMS, and our unlikely rise from the Fingerlakes of New York, to a shack with no running water in East Tennessee, to the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.
I first started by listening to some of my favorite spoken word tracks like Amiri Baraka’s 1972 classic, “It’s Nation Time” and Moondog’s 1955 “found sounds” classic “Big Cat“. Telling stories on an album is something I first heard around age 12 with greats like Pete Seeger’s “Abiyoyo”I. But comedy records inspired me too especially George Carlin’s “Class Clown” and Steve Martin’s “Let's Get Small”. When I got off the plane from LAX in Nashville I started recording this series of spoken word recitations I’d dreamed up about those early years of OCMS. I told about being 6 hungry young buskers, traveling cross country in a Volvo station wagon. I wrote about the Ojibwe communities we visited in Northern Ontario, and seeing Vancouver Island for the first time. I explored our move to the hills of Western North Carolina and meeting music legend Doc Watson before heading down the mountain to try our luck in Nashville. Well, as things do, evolution took hold and pretty soon the poems started sounding more and more like songs. That’s when I called up Jody Stevens, a friend, songwriter, producer, and a fan of the band from the early 2000’s on; together we wrote and recorded these 12 tracks last spring. What started as spoken word soon bloomed into a very musical song cycle. Founding Old Crow members Critter and Willie lended their voices to the project as well as the legendary Marty Stuart who first beckoned us to Nashville. Molly Tuttle’s vocal helped round out the mix and we got some additional help from the Cadillac Three and Eddy Dunlap the amazing pedal steel virtuoso from Vince Gill’s band.
All told I found a surprising amount of joy making this record that explores quarter century-old memories of the highs and lows, pressures and achievements of being a string band precariously bound for the big time. During the writing process I viewed old letters, pictures, and visited many of the places that first set my heart ablaze for Tennessee’s capital city. I called old friends, went to old houses I’d once rented and sat in the yard, even called up my parole officer just to say hello again. Through and through, the process of making a solo record so closely tied to the first steps of my own wayward journey brought me closure, peace, and comfort. It wasn’t easy doing what we did, and my list of coulda/shoulda/wouldas goes on and on. But making this recording allowed me to tell the story the way I lived it, and I know some of you are really going to like it. So here’s a sneak peak of the first single from Story The Crow Told Me which drops this month, a swashbuckling tale of bravery and bravado called "Dickerson Road". Crank it up!
Wherever this spring time finds you I hope you’re healthy well and in good spirits. May is our month! I turn 47 on the 14th. Our Tour Manager Katie Snyder celebrates hers on May 12th and Chance McCoy just celebrated his May 1st. And don’t forget my favorite May birthday boy, the inimitable Bob Dylan who turns 84 on the 24th. Maybe this is the year I’ll finally get to meet him! Well, we certainly hope you’re making plans to come out an see OCMS on the road this month or next. Our Circle The Wagons Tour is into its 2nd month now and we’re having a ton of fun out there (thanks to all of you for showing up and bringing the spirit). I’ll be adding some solo tour dates this summer as well so stay tuned for more on that. And thanks again for keeping an eye out for my new (and first ever!) solo album Story The Crow Told Me. I know you’re gonna love it. See you on the road this spring!
Blessings to ya!