Old Crow Medicine Show preview

Old Crow Medicine Show
Riviera, Chicago
Saturday, October 18, 2008

If it ain’t broke . . . Certain clichés sound best in a Southern accent, which makes it disappointing when a Nashville-based string band forgets them.

Old Crow Medicine Show’s Tennessee Pusher (Nettwerk) glides along with can’t-see-the-danger-’round-the-bend abandon, yukking it up about last summer’s parties and some ill-advised forays into meth. The music, for the most part, holds up its end of the hootenanny in swampy, bluegrass-based glee and makes prominent use of the guitjo, a guitar/banjo bastardization. Willie Watson, Ketch Secor, Kevin Hayes, and Gill Landry seamlessly share the mic, causing only minor mishaps when the subject gets too nostalgic or vacantly philosophical (“Highway Halo,” “Next Go ‘Round”). It’s precisely when they bid for your serious attention do we learn what OCMS cannot do. “Motel In Memphis,” specifically the Lorraine Motel where an assassin killed Martin Luther King Jr., is the cops busting in, someone puking on the rug, and a pimp called Guido nicking your mom’s crystal egg.

If they want to write more songs like it, fine: here’s to album No. 7. But dropping it in the middle of Appalachian frat rock is plain insulting.

— Steve Forstneger

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly