Busking
The group owes much of their success to busking—performing in public for the money they throw. They essentially started with busking, gathered new members through busking, developed their sound (and chops) busking, had their biggest break into the music business while busking, and remain committed to busking. As Secor puts it:
"People are fickle, and people have short attention spans. Especially in 2012. So if you can get 'em to stop, if you can get 'em to think about something, if you can get 'em to listen with a song, then you've got yourself a keeper. And that's the street-corner test."
Ketch Secor "I learned a lot about making music on the street corner, because we just played there so much. It was a great place to get started. One of the reasons that I played the kind of music that I played is that the street was so inviting to a fiddler. You almost felt like you were onstage, being a fiddler on the street... And there's just something about playing acoustic music as loud as you can and using your energy and excitement to get people to stop and to form a little horseshoe around you."It was their first extended trip together, the Trans Canada Highway Tour in 1998, that originally defined the group as they "busked their buns off for the folks at the Farmers Market in Ottawa and the Fork's Market in Winnipeg." It might be said "if it weren't for music fans in Ladysmith, British Columbia and Wawa, Ontario there might not be an Old Crow Medicine Show." Their experiences in Wawa actually inspired their first record "Greetings from Wawa". At one point the band was making almost seven hundred dollars a day busking. As Secor explains: "We lived like KINGS in Ottawa! We all had girlfriends and thought we were going to live there." One fateful afternoon, while busking in front of Boone Drug in downtown Boone, North Carolina "a middle-aged woman stopped to listen." Leaving, she said "she wanted to bring her father over to hear them." She returned with Doc Watson, blind. They "struck up 'Oh My Little Darling,' a well-known old-time song they thought Doc would like." Watson said: "Boys, that was some of the most authentic old-time music I've heard in a long while. You almost got me crying." He asked them to play at Merlefest, "a four-day festival held every year at Wilkes Community College in honor of Watson's late son and collaborator Merle, who died in a tractor accident." This big break led the group to Nashville and on to major success.
Group bassist Morgan Jahnig joined the group as a result of a "random" encounter with early Old Crow busking on the streets of Nashville with his father in 2000. Guitarist Gill Landry also first met the group busking in 2000—both were street performing during Mardi Gras in New Orleans—and later joined the group full-time in 2007. The earliest beginnings of the group involved busking in the Northeast of the U.S., and in that way attracting fresh talent. Guitjo player Kevin Hayes—originally from Haverhill, Massachusetts—was in Bar Harbor, Maine raking blueberries when he encountered Secor "on the street in front of a jewelry store playing the banjo."
To promote Carry Me Back Home, in Summer of 2012, the group did a series of "guerilla" shows around Nashville, including a busking stint in front of the Ryman Auditorium where they performed "Sewanee Mountain Catfight" for an "unsuspecting crowd of tourists." They remain committed to busking as a way to stay connected to the people they're trying to reach. As Secor states:
"We like playing for big crowds, and the goal all along has been for people to pay a little to come and see us. But it all started on street corners, and that is still very connected to what we do. It’s such a validating musical experience. Busking is a very humble and brave act that takes courage to do well. It’s also about the energy of music being alive outside in a city . . You can walk right by it right in front of you. Sure, to some people you’re just another guy with his hand out, so sometimes busking can be great social barometer. You’re able to gauge who you live with on earth.""It’s always been our heart and soul" sums up Secor. "Our performance comes out of all those years spent cutting our teeth on the street corner."
Read more about this topic: Old Crow Medicine Show