(soft mellow music playing) - [Becky] Sometimes life gives you an opportunity to reflect on what you would do with a clean slate.

Our guest on this episode is the multi-talented Ketch Secor, leader of "Old Crow Medicine Show".

♪ I'm throwing away my compass ♪ ♪ Done with the chart ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around ♪ ♪ Looking for direction ♪ ♪ Northern Star ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around ♪ ♪ I'll just step out ♪ ♪ Throw my doubt into the sea ♪ ♪ Oh what's meant to be will be ♪ - [Becky] For 25 years, Ketch Secor is best known as the founder and front man of Old Crow Medicine Show.

A two-time, Grammy award-winning, American roots band, whose triumphs include, induction into the Grand Ole Opry, and double platinum certification, (country music playing) of their iconic hit single "Wagon Wheel".

♪ So rock me mama like a wagon wheel ♪ ♪ Rock me mama anyway you feel ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Mama rock me ♪ - [Becky] Ketch has been aptly described as the consummate entertainer, a merry ringmaster, mischievous busker and unassuming virtuoso.

He is in many ways our folk prophet, cut from old cloth, you know, the likes of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, bridging old time fiddle music to today's country.

In fact, he was that very voice in Ken Burns' PBS documentary series, "Country Music".

Always innovative, relevant, and looking for ways to connect with people, Ketch illuminates and elevates voices, often bringing much needed attention to heartfelt issues.

Like in his 2019 "TEDx Nashville" talk.

- You heard the saying "The blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll?"

Well, I say the fiddle and the banjo had a baby, generations earlier.

A biracial child.

and they called her the "Mother of All American song".

(harmonica playing) - [Becky] Just the scope and potency of Ketch's work has long since spilled over to include even more than music.

There's documentaries, a children's book "Lorraine", a musical "Hootin Holler", which premiered in 2022 at Virginia's legendary Barter Theatre.

And he even co-founded a school, the Episcopal School of Nashville.

When the world shut down in 2020, Ketch and Old Crow, launched "Hartland Hootenanny", an entertaining and thought-provoking variety series, hosted and live-streamed from their East Nashville Hartland Studio.

♪ Admission is free ♪ ♪ Y'all pay at the door ♪ ♪ Pull up a chair and sit on the floor ♪ ♪ It's time to give a hand ♪ ♪ For the world famous Hartland Hootenanny ♪ - [Becky] Coming off an amazing year in the release of Old Crow's critically acclaimed seventh Studio album "Paint This Town", we were able to join Ketch at his Hartland studio.

Wow, Ketch What an exciting opportunity this is for me.

I feel like you're an old friend and - We met at in the wee hours of the morning, didn't we?

(Becky laughs) - We did!

On a bus, traveling with Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan on that History of Country Music Tour.

- Yeah.

- You were, you were just such an amazing figure in that documentary series.

What was that like, by the way?

- Well, it was a dream come true to get to work on with Florentine films on something, you know, and particularly with the country music story being something that I knew more about than they had asked me to talk about the Civil War or, you know, the National Parks.

I mean, I could have said some things in any of any of his films, and that's the feeling I have for Ken Burns.

It's everything that he puts into a movie, it's things that I'm already interested in and want to know more about.

So it's almost like he knows my demographic better than any other filmmaker out there.

- Well, he is like America's storyteller, I think.

And you're like America's every man musician.

- Well.

- I think people feel like you're their next door neighbor.

- There's an approachability to folk music.

And the reason why, I mean, it should be apparent.

It's the people's music.

It's, this is our jam.

So the challenge is, is getting, you know country music has had a bit of a wayward path here and hasn't been the champion for every man.

And so what can we do?

That's a, that's a challenge moving forward.

But I think we can do it.

- Yeah.

I do too.

And, I think you're, you're the leader.

You're the leader of the pack, and we're behind you, Ketch, the American people are behind you.

- I appreciate that, Becky.

(Becky laughs) I'd like to get the American people behind each other.

- Yes.

- In a great big line, - Yeah.

- That leads down to, I don't know, some sort of Valhalla of unity, and if I could "Pied Piper" that line any way I can, I'll be, I'll be whistling.

- So Ketch, Old Crow Medicine Show, it's, you guys are celebrating like your 25th anniversary.

- Yeah.

- How crazy is that?

- It's the Silver Jubilee, y'all.

I looked it up.

- Did ya?

- Yeah.

I don't know what you're supposed to give someone for a Silver Jubilee, but that's what it is.

25 years.

I think if you could give old Crow anything for a Silver Jubilee, it would be a, a slice of pizza from that sparrow downtown on Commerce and and Second Avenue, because that was the place where I first played music on the curb.

It was 1996.

I was 18 years old, and I had come to Nashville to make it big.

- Wow.

- On the street corner by the Sparrow.

- Well, but you didn't start in Nashville.

You went to a prep school, you went to Exeter right?

- Yeah.

- On scholarship.

- Yeah.

- And is it true that you got, you wrote an essay saying that you watched the Ken Burns' Civil War series and that kinda, - Yeah.

I remember that!

- Got ya leg in.

Yeah, you do remember that!

- Yeah.

I impressed the academic board about being this kid from Virginia, grew up with the Civil War in our backyard.

You know, I grew up in a Shenandoah Valley, where so many of the battles were fought, and you know, of course things have changed a lot, but Robert E. Lee High School was the big high school, now that's called Staunton High.

Stonewall Jackson High just changed their names.

These things have all happened, you know, really recently in the, you know, when the Ken Burns Civil War series came out in I guess about 89, 90, 91 or something, when I was impressionable, about 10 years old.

The war in the backyards of our small town in the Shendandoah Valley was like, it was like it was yesterday.

- Well, you know, here's the thing.

You didn't learn to play banjo there though, did ya?

- When I grew up Harrisonburg and participated in the W V P T telethon, and took a lot of calls from Hurricane West Virginia.

We were right by the border.

That was when I could play the harmonica about 12.

My first instrument was the juice harp.

I got a juice harp at the, my Dad gave me $5 to go to use at the gift shop when I went on a field trip to Thomas Jefferson's place, you know, Monticello, - Yep.

(Becky laughs) - And I got up there and I, and $5 doesn't go very far in the gift shop there, let me tell you.

- Right.

- But I got a Jew's harp!

All the other kids wanted, you know, like the scroll of the Declaration of Independence or you know, I I saw a musical instrument that I could buy for $5.

I came home with that Jew's harp and I still have a part in my teeth from that time.

(Becky laughs) - You chipped - Yeah.

But since then, I, anyway, I was in the fourth grade I could play the Jew's harp and then I got the harmonica, and then I started acting in community theater.

- I imagine that.

I'm so surprised.

- Yeah, right?

(Becky laughs) - So then the banjo came at Exeter?

- No, no, - Did you start playing?

- I went up to, I got this scholarship basically like you were saying, by impressing all them that I was this like young scholar, even though, I mean, I don't know, I wrote poems, I was really into writing as a kid.

I lived in five towns by the fifth grade.

- Wow.

- Cuz my parents were itinerant educators.

- Okay.

- And Dad, by the time we moved to Virginia from South Carolina, from Aiken, which is another part of my Minnie Pearl story, I grew up in a town that said, Minnie bought her hat in that town.

So the mythology of Minnie was like really concurrent with a lot of places I had lived.

I thought a lot about Minnie Pearl.

You know, I think there must be a town, all, in every southern state where they said, "Son, you see that old place, that Haberdashery down there?"

"That's where Minnie done bought her hat.

(Becky laughing) - You know, in like Fulton, Kentucky.

- Right.

- "She bought her there", you know, in Tuscaloosa, "that's where she bought it!"

- Yeah.

It's the myth.

So, you learned to play banjo and, you know, wont you play us something?

You wanna play somethin'?

- Well, yeah, I mean I'm not like a famous banjo player, you know, I just like, - It got something started for you.

- Yeah.

I mostly play the fiddle now and I blow a lot of harmonica, but the banjo always was the fork in the road for me.

So I got to high school when I was 14, I went away to to prep school in New Hampshire.

I had the scholarship from the Reader's Digest magazine.

- Hmm.

- And I got up there and I think being a kid, from the South represented a kind of diversity to them.

But when I got there, God, it was the most diverse environment I'd ever been in.

You know, so many international kids, kids from all over the United States and very few kids from the south.

And I, it sort of helped me develop myself as this like, kind of southern boy that I wasn't, you know, that much a one anyway.

(Becky laughs) Mom and Dad were from Toledo.

(Becky laughing) - But you know, I learned to walk in New Orleans.

- Right.

- You know, I learned to, I was a member of Young Singers of Missouri.

- Right.

- And Minnie Pearl bought her hat in my hometown, so I felt like a southern kid.

- Absolutely.

- But anyway, I got me, I got, I wanted to, I was so into Bob Dylan!

- Yeah.

- Just like crazy for Bob Dylan!

You wanna hear the first Bob Dylan song I ever learned to play?

- I do.

♪ A bullet from the back of a bush ♪ ♪ Took Medgar Evers' blood ♪ ♪ A finger-fired the trigger to his name ♪ Oh man I'm 14 years old, and I'm singing about an assassination.

- Yeah.

- Or maybe 12 or 13!

Oh, and I learned another one when I was 12.

♪ Oh, ye playboys and playgirls ♪ ♪ Aint a-gonna run my world ♪ and then ♪ Your Jim Crow ground ♪ ♪ Can't turn me around ♪ ♪ Oh man, you know, he talked about all of these ♪ these great mid-century occurrences that, you know, the Bay of Pigs invasion.

- Yeah.

- And all this stuff that I felt so, like was, it was like I a dream that I could access in my mind as, you know, in bed at night.

I could dream back in time 25 years and know that everything that had happened, that I was in a shadow of, you know and I could look at a still of Beatlemania, at about 11 and think, man things were really hot recently.

- Yeah.

- But then I'd turn on TV and I'd, you know see, you know, like "Star Search".

- Sure.

- And think, well that's not the "Ed Sullivan Show"?

I mean, it's still fun and I liked it, and I liked Michael Jackson so much, but there was a heat to a not too distant memory that wasn't my own, that really is what spoke to me.

And I just wanted to go back in time since the, really since I could walk, I wanted to go back.

- That says a lot about you.

It says a lot just about what you've done with your life.

And I'm gonna throw a, I'm gonna throw a wrench in here.

What if you were given a clean slate?

That's kind of the, the preface of this show, is for us to really reimagine, if you had a chance to either do something over, or maybe if it's even within your environment, What would that be?

What would that look like?

- Well, I, one of the things I think that's important is to think, as an artist is that, I'm kind of gonna be an anomaly on the show, because I have a clean slate and have been given one.

Because I get to do it every time I make a new record, every time I decide " Where do I wanna play this year?"

Now, in the ways that I don't have a clean slate.

It's like, I got a band.

We've been around for 25 years.

We do it this way.

I get up there.

(Ketch's feet shuffles) I'm a song and dance man, but I get to choose what I sing about every new album cycle.

I might think of something else.

And so, as an artist, I really am in the clean slate business.

So when I think about what I would do if I got a, if I was like born in a different body, it would be a clean slate for me.

Because as an artist, I feel like I can kind of go anywhere.

You know, I could, I mean here we are doing some, some great television.

I love TV.

I love "Young and the Restless", (Becky laughs) You know, maybe I'd like to be on Young and the Restless.

(Becky laughs) Don't, can't you see me there?

- I can.

- Like filling up at the water cooler, and like looking suspiciously, (Becky laughing) as like Diana tells me about what the doctor said.

- ( Becky laughing) - I can see it.

- You know, and maybe spilling a little dribble.

- Yeah.

- And then I'd really, if I could do it over again, maybe I would've gone into politics.

- Mmm!

- I'm a pretty politically active person.

- Right.

- Recently I was thinking, oh, I'm gonna go into politics, I'm gonna go into politics in Nashville, Tennessee, this'll be great.

I was, I was going through a divorce.

Life was changing for me.

I had little kids.

I had to move.

Everything was different.

And this was about three years before Covid, and I thought, oh, maybe, Oh, and I had broke up with my longtime manager, and a bunch of people in my band who had always been with me, were now ready to stop, because the lifestyle of the band.

It's just hard.

25 years on the road is really hard.

And I was like, "What'll I do?"

"Oh, I know!

I'll run for Metro Council!"

"I'll go district at large!"

And I thought this is gonna be my clean slate.

Well I was walking down, downtown with this thought, and I walked on down to Five Points, and I'd been thinking about it and talking to people, cuz I know a lot of, - Sure.

- Political operators, and one of my mentors is this wonderful Senator John Hickenlooper from Colorado, he ran for President.

- Right.

- And then I know wonderful Senator, you know I saw Minnie Pearl's hat at a Lamar Alexander's office - Right.

- Just a couple of years ago.

Anyway, I'm walking down by Five Points, and thinking about my political ambitions, and that's when I met Zulfat Suara.

I saw Zulfat Suara doing, passing out her flyers.

And once I struck up this friendship with Councilwoman Suara, I could see that, my clean slate wasn't about being a Metro Council person.

It was, or any political ambition after that.

Instead, it was about offering a clean slate to Metro Council, so that they can have their clean slate, and have the first Nigerian-born elected woman in the United States in Nashville, Tennessee.

Now that is a clean slate!

- Yeah ♪ Ishay in Nashville, Ashe, Ashe ♪ ♪ Ishay in Nashville, Ashe, Ashe ♪ ♪ Funga Alafia, Ashe, Ashe ♪ ♪ Funga Alafia, Ashe Ashe ♪ (audience cheering) Zulfat Suara represents a clean slate for Nashville, Tennessee.

So maybe my clean slate would be Johnny, would be to Johnny Apple seed, the clean slates.

(Becky laughing) - I love that.

I love that.

So is there a change?

And we're gonna run out of time before I get a chance to really talk to you about everything I wanna talk to you about.

So we're just gonna have to figure out how we keep doing TV.

- Yeah.

- But, what if, what's a change, you know you need to make right now?

- Oh, well, I think that, I mean, I'll probably start crying if we talk about Fentanyl, because you know, it kills you so quick now and, so many people are, so many, the opioid crisis has brought the reality of of our addiction problem in America, home to so many people who before, had had the privilege, of not knowing anybody who overdosed.

- Yeah.

- I'm a professional musician, so I have the privilege of knowing intimately, people who are gone from this earth, because of one minuscule decision.

This or not.

This or this.

- Yeah.

- That was it.

You know?

- Yeah.

- Pick it up, put it down.

Take another drag or don't.

That was the choice.

It wasn't like, well I really want to become a heroin user.

I really want to lose my life and house and wife and family and I really wanna sleep in my car.

You know, I really wanna, I really wanna live under that bridge.

Nobody chooses things like that.

Instead, it's this microsecond.

- Yeah.

- You know, if I could sprinkle some clean slates around Nashville, Tennessee, it would be to freeze the microsecond, and allow somebody to have the clarity to think, no, I'm not gonna buy this Molly on this app right now, and meet this guy in my parents' driveway.

I'm 15 years old, I'm not gonna choose this.

But that's not how it works.

- Yeah.

Wow.

What do you think we can do?

- Well, I guess, I think we just gotta go through it.

You know, I've been singing a lot about painkillers.

I got a new song on our last album called with that title.

And I've been singing about the opioid crisis since, I mean, I think that, you know, some of the mythology of moonshine is related to it.

You know, we were sorta, I used to live up in East Tennessee, way past Putnam County now, (Becky laughing) the kind of East Tennessee where we thought that like the Cumberland Plateau might as well have been West Tennessee.

- Right, right.

- Cause I lived in the Easternmost county in the state.

- Oh wow.

- Called Johnson County, Tennessee.

Anyway, it was so fascinating to live in a place before the opioid epidemic when it was moonshine, dirt weed, Laura tabs, Percocet.

It was the kind of stuff that, you know, you could see the beginnings of a crisis.

- Yeah.

- Just by looking around.

Nobody had a job.

All the young people were gone.

They were still measuring tobacco in lengths and poles on their allotments, and they were gonna be the last generation of English speakers to bring that crop in.

- Yeah.

- So, a real changing time with, you know, in rural America.

I just feel like, I happened to get into the the music of rural America at the right time.

For a guy that always thought I was born too late for when it was hot, and everything was kind of lukewarm, I think in the past couple a years, I think since everything kind of got polarized in America through the Trump years, I have found a new, a clean slate, so to speak, in the importance of being a banjo player, and being a violin player and being a harmonica blower and and raking my fingers across a washboard, for the folks to get entertained by it.

Cuz I see us in a, you know, I see myself as a branch on the Pete Seeger tree.

- Yes, yes.

- Or the Woody Guthrie tree.

- Yes.

Or the Bob Dylan tree?

- And we need voices that that bring people together right now, more than ever before.

- In the few minutes we have left, you've you are really passionate about children's content, creating music and you wrote a book, I have a book that you wrote here.

What is in the future for something like this?

And tell us about Lorraine.

How did you do this?

- Well, this was a book about when I was living in Johnson County, you know, up in East Tennessee.

I knew this woman of Cherokee descent, and she told me this story about her pet crow.

You know, everybody up there seemed to have like a squirrel or an opossum.

- Right.

- They broke into song with their hearts all aglow, when "Caw, caw, caw", came the voice of the crow.

(slow country violin music playing) - [Narrator] How their happy eyes shone as they danced to the tune, and they planted a chinkapin seedling to bloom.

Then the clouds parted ways, as the music rose high, and the sunshine sparkled in the Tennessee sky.

(lively country music band playing) ♪ Moonbeam, like a banjo landing on the front porch ♪ ♪ Crickets on the fiddle, ♪ ♪ and oh and the fire, fire glowing like a dosey do.

♪ - When I saw things like that as a kid, you know as an 18 year old, I knew that I was getting a dose of folklore and legend, and a torch was being passed to me in a way that, that just is like a wrecking ball to, this.

- Yes.

- You know, you can do this all day and learn nothing.

So, and then I met this wonderful woman, kind of like Zulfa Suara.

You often find that when you make artistic expressions, you run a kind of gravity field that connects you to other people right when you need 'em.

And these sort of twists of fate happen.

You know, I love this Bob Dylan song.

♪ They sat together in the park ♪ ♪ As the evening sky grew dark ♪ ♪ She looked at him and she felt a spark ♪ ♪ Tingle to her bones ♪ ♪ Twas then she felt alone ♪ ♪ And wished that she gone straight ♪ ♪ And watched out for a simple twist of fate.

♪ I feel like I'm an example of the simple twists of fate that can interconnect us all.

Like the lines are already there.

Like you and me, we met on the bus, you brought me donuts.

(Becky laughs) Who knows what was in the cards there for us to do later down the line.

- Right.

- And it's just that way with people.

This is my illustrator, Barbara Higgins Bond, who went to little Rock High and Central High in Little Rock and she's the first African American woman to design a US postage stamp.

- Wow.

- Just a great person, and I met her just sort of randomly cuz my publisher couldn't find an illustrator.

And I was like, well I can find an illustrator, probably, I guess.

(Becky laughs) And then I did!

- Wow.

So, you know, Ketch, we're out of time, but the future's bright for you, for us, for M-P-T, for the folks who are watching right now.

What what little bit of hope would you leave us with?

- I think music is medicine, y'all.

I think, I mean, I know that I take mine, and it helps with my pain.

And I recommend that you take yours.

It comes in a lot of different forms, and it might just be hearing your kids sing on the way to school.

It might be a jingle you remember from a, you know, an ad from when you were young, it reminds you of your grandmother, stirring up the Ovaltine, whatever.

When you put, when you put melody and intention together, you get a lamentation, you get a kind of, a joyful noise.

And this is prayer.

- Yeah.

- And I think of all music as a form of worship.

You know, I'm just glad to be alive!

(banjo strumming) (Becky laughing) And you know, I mean it helps when you strum a banjo, cuz it's like, it's like the, it's like the, anyway, it makes you feel glad to be alive.

- Strings of the soul.

- Yeah man.

- So thank you.

Thank you.

And what a gift you are!

♪ I'm throwing away my compass ♪ ♪ Done with the chart ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around in one direction.

♪ - Why don't you play us out a little "Wagon Wheel", I understand you took a little bit of that from Bob Dylan, right?

- Yeah.

I did.

(Becky laughing) ♪ Rock me Mama like a Wagon Wheel ♪ ♪ Rock me Mama anyway you feel ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Mama rock me ♪ ♪ Eeee ♪ - Thank you.

(outro music plays)