(bright piano music plays) (people conversing) - From busking on the street corner on King Street in Boone, North Carolina to the stage of the "Grand Ole Opry" in Nashville, Tennessee.

"Old Crow medicine Show" has made old time music, hip.

Front and center is Ketch Secor, a founding member, a songwriter and author, Secor is as comfortable with Bob Dylan as he is with Dolly Parton.

He is a well-spoken intellectual who has an intelligent but simple approach to his writing and music.

"Old Crow Medicine Show" has a message in their music, but not an agenda.

They are good at what they do and to prove it, their Grammy awards and the prestige of being members of the "Grand Ole Opry".

Vocalist, fiddle, harmonica, banjo, and guitar player from "Old Crow Medicine Show".

We welcome Ketch Secor to the "Conversations".

Thanks for being with us.

- Hey, thanks for having me.

I'm thrilled you invited me.

(Jeff laughs) - Well, we are looking forward to our conversation with you.

Tell me how, what age did you just really get interested in music?

- Well, it all happened for me when I was in the fourth grade and I took a field trip to Monticello, you know, Thomas Jefferson's joint.

- [Jeff] Yeah, yeah.

- And anyway, I grew up in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, so that was only about 40 miles away from the school.

We got off the bus and my dad had given me $5.

He said, you know, get something from the gift shop.

- [Jeff] Right.

- And all the kids wanted to get the quill pen, you know, he invented a lot of amazing things.

And one of the things that he invented, and we saw it, was the double quill pen, the original mimeograph machine.

- [Jeff] Okay.

- Anyway, $5 doesn't go very far at the gift shop at Monticello, but I used my $5 to buy a Jew's harp.

(Ketch clicks his tongue) Have you ever seen one of these instruments?

- Uh-huh I think so - So the Jew's Harp, or Jaw harp or mouth harp.

- Right.

It's an instrument that was really a, an instrument used by slaves in the American South around, you know, the campfire at night kind of thing.

And I learned to play this instrument in a matter of seconds and suddenly I was into folk music.

- Okay, Okay very good.

Tell me about your first song.

I heard your first song.

We were about what, 12 years old first song you learned?

- Yeah.

And it had to do with the, the civil rights era, right?

- Oh, yeah.

Well, you know, I was 12 and I had a paper route, so that meant I got to get an alarm clock, 'cause I had to get up at five in the morning.

But the thing that was so amazing was having my alarm clock had an AM radio, it had an FM too, and FM was cool, but at night I could hear all these stations in from so far away.

And, you know, I, in that regard, being mesmerized by radio wasn't really a 1980's childhood experience.

- Right, right.

- It was more of a 1950s childhood experience.

- Right, right, right.

- But man, when I could dial in Toronto in my little hometown in Virginia, and or I could hear 'em speaking French up in Montreal, or I could listen to the traffic in Cincinnati or what was going on in Texas.

- Yeah.

- It was so great.

I just felt like the world was moving all around me.

- Right.

And that's when I started calling in to call in radio shows like Talknet and making up problems that could only be solved by late night radio.

(Jeff laughs) - Okay, so, okay, I get, I totally get that 'cause you're talking about the Sally Jesse Raphael's - Totally - or the Bruce, of all this sort of stuff.

- I've got this burning question and I (Jeff laughs) - only a public forum, - Right.

- on broadcast, - can I air my grievances - That's right.

So when did you start playing and singing, and that kind of stuff?

- Well, I got my Jew's harp.

And I was twanging away but she really messes up your teeth.

- [Jeff] Yeah, yeah.

- So then I got me a harmonica.

(Ketch honks) And that was such a great instrument.

Then I got one of these penny whistles.

But I ran over it with my bicycle.

Then I, then the most wonderful thing happened.

My uncle got a teaching job in Manila and he moved to the Philippines, but he had to leave his junk somewhere.

So he chose our attic.

- [Jeff] Okay.

And all of a sudden the attic became the most treasured place of my childhood because there were boxes after boxes of my grand, my uncle's junk.

And he had such good junk.

(Jeff laughs) And one of the things that he had a lot of were these wonderful records.

And I heard these records that were just so informative to me.

It's like my ears got this education that all the other 12 year old kids in 1987, '89, they didn't get this kind of education.

You couldn't get this kind of education on FM radio or even AM radio.

I listened to Motown, I listened to a a 14 year old Stevie Wonder sing "Blowing In The Wind".

And I wondered, what does that even mean?

What does, you know, it's like, you know, ♪ How many roads must a man walk down ♪ When you're a kid and you hear that question, "how many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man"?

I mean, that was better than anything I was getting outta seventh grade English class, let me tell you.

- [Interviewer]} Right, right.

- Those sorts of primal questions that caused you to wanna reinvestigate everything around you.

Nothing felt secret at all.

It was like friendships in school, what was on TV.

It, you know, it was all fair game.

Once I heard this music really the, especially the music of the folk revival, this period of time in which people were picking up instruments that they had put down, you know, the post-war generation, Rock and Roll, all this popular music, when the folk music came back around again in the 60's, it really meant a lot.

And it was applied into the Civil Rights Movement in a powerful way.

You know, I was just talking with my friend here in Pensacola earlier this week.

He said, you know, that they were singing "We Shall Overcome" when they brought down the Berlin Wall?

I mean, that's a song from the American South.

The power of music like this, it really transcends race, religion, and region.

- Mm-hmm, absolutely.

Tell me, how did "Old Crow Medicine Show' get started?

- Well, after I could play the, you know, guitar pretty good and then I got the banjo going, and then I learned to play the mandolin and the fiddle, well, I was just full of music, and I needed to find ways in which I could take it out into the world.

And, you know, I wanted to be a traveler.

I wanted to see the world.

You know, my grandfather was in the Navy and my other grandfather was in the Army.

And, you know, their old steamer trunk man.

Man, I had quite the attic, man, - (Interviewer Laughs) - this attic was so cool.

Mom's guitar was up there and I brought it down and I took a little sea-shell right.

And I used my sea shell as a pick.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

- And I put my fingers, I'd put my thumbs over like this.

(Ketch plays guitar music) And then I started playing, you know, what any good 14, 15 year old plays, punk rock, Nirvana, you know?

- Right, right, right.

- Stuff that really cooks.

And so I was able to kind of rectify, what is it to be like a partial garage band rocker.

And, but I'm really into the kind of social message of folk music.

And that's when I discovered this Appalachian old time music that really felt to me at 17, 18, like a kind of root of punk rock.

You know, it's not bluegrass, and so it's not full of solo's.

It's instead this like all on the one, everybody plays together, there's no hierarchy to it.

- [Jeff] Right.

- Everybody plays together there's no hierarchy to it.

- Everybody plays it once.

So there's this sort of collectivity to it.

And you know, bands like The Ramones or Iggy Pop and the Stooges are bands that seem to share from that same kind of common ethos that music is gregarious, there's no leader.

Everybody plays it once.

So I really wanted to put together a band that could sort of prove these things.

- [Jeff] Right.

What would it be like if we all got together and we pooled our money all together, and we went up into Canada, and we just saw what would happen.

- [Jeff] Right.

- We'll go play street corners, we'll play on Indian reservations.

We'll pick up hitchhikers and see where they take us.

And it worked.

- I mentioned, so you were like busking in Boone, North Carolina, correct?

And how did that, did I understand there was a story behind that kind of, someone discovered you or heard about you that helped?

- Sure, well, we were real buskers, you know, and when I was a kid, I lived in New Orleans and I would see the tap dancers out there on the quarter, you know, and I was like, I wanna drop out of fourth grade and become a tap dancer too.

- [Interviewer] Right, right.

- Man, there's a future in this.

I always loved playing music on the street.

For me it was kind of like the equalizer, you know, you could, it wasn't like, well, like here in the TV scape.

And I mean, you know, I do want to mention my very first TV debut was in public television.

- Okay, okay great.

(Jeff laughs) - Telethon.

- Okay, you got that.

- Answering those phones, man.

- I got you.

- Y'all need to be calling in supporting the station.

(Jeff laughs) - Absolutely.

- Well, we were busking in Boone, North Carolina when flat picking guitar legend Doc Watson, along with his daughter, walked across the street and Doc's blind.

This was in the year 1998.

And Doc listened to us play on the curb and he's got ears, like satellite dishes, this guy, you know, like the kind of ears that can drink like ears that can consume.

- Right, right.

- These ears could chug probably a 12 pack these ears.

(Jeff laughs) Doc Watson drank us in with these ears and after we played, he gave us a gig on the spot and it was like the shot heard around the world.

- And that's when the career took off.

- Yeah, that's how we got our big break was on the curb.

- Awesome, awesome.

Tell me about becoming a member of the Grand Ole Opry.

I mean, you having grown up and listened to all the music and the, so, and I'm sure when you were listening to that AM radio station, you were probably listening to the Grand Ole Opry on WSM radio - [Ketch] Oh sure.

So what was it like when you guys became members of the Grand Ole Opry?

- Well, it was really the high cotton, you know, the sum, the what we had all worked for all those years.

I first went to the Grand Ole Opry when I was a kid on a road trip from New Orleans, you know, living along Highway 90 as you do and as I did as a kid.

- [Interviewer] Right.

Puts you in this sort of Gulf Coast orientation that means like you're sort of, you think of yourself as the shoulders of the nation.

- Right.

- You know, they, you know, it just 'cause you sort of holding them all up, you know?

- Right, right, right.

- And I remember going up north for one of the first times we went up to Nashville, we went to the Opry and I just thought that Minnie Pearl was the most enchanting woman I'd ever seen.

- Right.

- Still do.

- Yeah, I'm actually sort of looking for a gal like Minnie.

- For like, yeah.

- And the love affair for the Opry began there and shortly after we met Doc Watson up in Boone, North Carolina and got this great gig playing at his, his signature music festival, which is called Merle-Fest, - Mm-hmm.

- up in Wilkes, North Carolina, Well, some people from the Opry were there scouting talent and they brought us to Nashville.

And so in the year 2000 we started making trips down to Nashville to do our street corner set in front of the Opry.

And it only took about a year before they said, " Well would you like to play on the stage Ketch"?

And of course we did.

- Yeah.

And the rest is history as they say.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Tell me about the song Wagon Wheel and how tied in with Bob Dylan and how you worked with him on that.

- Well this is a really, has become a really popular in signature tune for "Old Crow Medicine Show".

But not only that Wagon Wheel has become one of the most successful country songs of all time.

Recently, there was, well there's an, a new classification of songs in the post streaming era that has sort of like added 'em all up, and on the list are the top five country songs of all time.

And it's a little bit weird for me 'cause I love traditional music and I love, you know, The Roots and the songs that are the top five of all time are songs that are kind of questionably country anyway.

- Right.

- Like Little Nas X's "Old Town Road" is one of the five most successful country songs of all time.

- Okay.

- And "I Fall to Pieces" is not, and "On The Road Again" is not, and "Ring of Fire" is not, but a Lady Antabellum song is.

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- So that's just kind of like the, I live in Nashville and yet I'm, I'm sort of think of myself as like precariously perched here on the left side of the, of mainstream country and judgment, (Jeff laughs) because you know, we did a show with the Opry recently in which we're celebrating some accolade.

There's always a birthday at the Opry.

- [Interviewer] Sure.

- And we're singing the "Wabash Cannonball" and I'm the only guy who knows the lyrics.

- You, by the way, I saw you doing that for a big Opry show and you're really good at it.

You should do a little bit.

- Let's hear a little - Let's do a little - bit of it.

- bit of Wabash Cannonball.

- I love.

♪ From the green ♪ ♪ Atlantic ocean to the wide Pacific shore ♪ ♪ From the queen of the glowing mountains ♪ ♪ To the South down by the shore ♪ ♪ She's mighty tall and handsome known quite well by all ♪ ♪ She's the combination of the Wabash Cannonball.

♪ ♪ Now listen to the jingle to the rumble and the roar ♪ ♪ As she glides along the woodlands ♪ ♪ O'er the hills and by the shore ♪ ♪ Hear the mighty rush of the engine ♪ ♪ Hear the lonesome hobos call ♪ ♪ No changes can be taken on the Wabash Cannonball.

♪ - Great, you guys should record that.

- We have.

(interviewer laughs) - I mean, put it, is it out on an album?

- Or - Yeah, I think you can find it on our Spotify.

- [Jeff] Okay, okay, good deal, good deal.

Tell me about working with Bob Dylan.

- Well, I was telling you my long-winded Wagon Wheel story, but I kind of got derailed at Lil Nas X, let me get back to it now.

- Yeah.

- Where was I?

Oh, Darius Rucker.

- [Jeff] Yes.

- My pal Darius Rucker, whose poster hung on my sister's wall in the seventh grade.

And I looked up at him right next to Bobby Brown.

He had just had a big hit "My Prerogative".

But then it was all about "Cracked Rear view" and, and "Hootie & the Blowfish", you know?

- Right, right, right.

- So my sister had taste in pop music.

And I never thought that that this person was gonna have such a powerful effect on my life when, and I, you know, I liked Hootie, like the next guy I was cool.

It was like, kind of a Pensacola sound, honestly.

Kinda like, get your zema's up, y'all.

This is way pre-White Claws.

- Right, right, right, right.

- Anyway, so low and behold, Darius is a major country music fan.

Grew up loving country music 'cause of his mom who just played it all the time.

And then Hootie had their run and then he goes to have this next career and my song "Rock Me Mama Like a Wagon Wheel" I wrote when I was in high school when I was 17.

I was like, wow, this is gonna be a hit.

I'll probably be playing this thing till I'm dead.

(Jeff laughs) And but it took a really long time for it to get started.

And you see earlier when I was telling you about how I was really into traditional music, I was so into traditional music that I didn't wanna play original songs.

- Okay.

- I was like, if it's not from about 1930, it's not no good.

(Jeff laughs) I wanted all, everything I did to be really authentic.

- [Jeff] Right.

- True Vine, I considered it, so I wrote a lot of songs, but I didn't play them very much because for me, I was just more interested in exploring this other side of things, and yet I knew I was sitting on this hit.

- [Jeff] Right.

- It all started when I got this Bob Dylan's scrap.

It was about 30 seconds long and you know, it's a song that's in which Bob Dylan's like.

♪ Rock me mama any way you feel.

♪ And then it goes back into the mumbling, it was hard to decipher what Bob was even saying in this unreleased 25 year old Bob Dylan recording from a film called "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid".

This was a movie in which Bob Dylan is an extra or slash kind of a bit part.

- [Interviewer] Gotcha.

- He plays a man named Alias, who's a knife wielding kind of a bad man.

It includes a line, a monologue in which Bob Dylan simply reads the contents of cans on the wall, beans, corn, beans.

(Jeff laughs) - It's yeah, you really gotta see this film.

- Check it out, huh?

- Yeah, it's great.

And then he stabs the guy in the back.

Anyway, there's this song that didn't make it, I'm convinced that after Bob messed around with the song "Wagon Wheel", he found himself writing a much better song.

One that goes, ♪ Mama put my guns in the ground.

♪ ♪ I can't shoot them anymore.

♪ You know, "Knocking On Heaven's Door".

Right, - Right, right.

I think that after Bob put away shells with Rock Me Mama, he started writing "Knocking On Heaven's Door" because there's a cadence to him that's, that's similar.

Anyway, years pass, I got this song, I put all the words to it except for the parts I could decipher that Bob wrote.

- [Jeff] Right.

- And I'm thinking about, well, we're in Nashville now boys, we gotta start recording some original music.

What about that song that we never played that I'm convinced is gonna be a hit?

Well we recorded and it was, and it was, and it was popular in our circle, it really helped us grow.

Got a little bit of radio play when our song came out in '03 or '04.

And then it just grew steadily, I think like campfire at a time.

People were just playing it really, it's not like it was selling a ton of records, but it got popular through summer camps, open mic nights, you know, amateur nights.

These ways in which somebody just needs a song.

There's not a lot of chords in "Rock Me Mama Like a Wagon Wheel".

It's a pretty easy song, kind of like, you know, I don't know how many actual albums, "Country Roads Take Me Home" Sold.

But it sure gets played a lot.

- [Jeff] Yeah, yeah.

- And I realized then, oh wait a minute, it is a folk song.

I don't have to go back to 1928 to find the true vine.

I'm here putting a new, a new branch on the tree.

- [Jeff] Right.

- Right here.

- Do a little bit of it.

- Sure.

- Do a little bit of it.

♪ Headed down south to the land of the pine ♪ ♪ coming my way to North Caroline ♪ ♪ Staring up the road ♪ ♪ Pray to God I see headlights ♪ - See that part's true 'cause I used to do a lot of hitchhiking, as you could probably tell.

(Jeff laughs) ♪ Made it down the coast ♪ ♪ In 17 hours ♪ ♪ Picking me a bouquet of dogwood flowers ♪ I put that line in there 'cause I grew up in Virginia.

It's all about Dogwoods there.

♪ Open for Raleigh I could see my baby tonight ♪ All I ever knew about Raleigh was Sir Walter Raleigh because I was fascinated with Roanoke Island.

Remember what they wrote into that tree?

- No.

- Do you remember?

- No.

They wrote "Croatan".

- [Jeff] Okay.

Just last year I got the chance to play on Roanoke Island for the very first time.

Sometimes I think about the ways that I was so fascinated with place.

And the way that music is always putting a new town in your, lexicon, you know?

- [Jeff] Right.

I could see that.

- I was recently trying to write a song with the word 'winnemucca' in it.

Try and rhyme something with 'winnemucca'.

That's a challenge, Pensacola too I mean just the the names on this land are so sing song.

- [Jeff] Right.

- You know, "Oh Shenandoah I long to hear you" could have just as easily been "Oh Pensacola".

- Well, you know, hey give it a shot.

- Oh, I was almost at the chorus.

- Yeah, go for it.

♪ So rock me mama like a wagon wheel ♪ ♪ Rock me mama any way you feel ♪ ♪ Hey mama rock me ♪ - Well then it was starting to get popular, you know, and then, and then Darius heard it, but he didn't hear it on the radio and he didn't hear it on an Old Crow record.

He heard his daughter singing it at a talent show at her school, when she was about 15.

And so he called his producer and so he is like, man, I just heard this awesome song.

I really think I should record it.

And the song and the producer's like, you mean "Wagon Wheel"?

You've never heard that before, you wanna record that?

And you know, I, when I think of all of the country singers who coulda had a big hit with that song, I'm just so glad it was Darius Rucker.

He is my brother, he is my fellow member of the Grand Ole Opry family.

And yeah, it just makes me really happy that he was the guy.

Because it could have been anybody, but instead it was somebody who came into country music from another place.

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- And continues aside from Charlie Pride to be the, you know, most important African American singer in the genre, which is a torch that must be carried on and forth and propagated.

- Yeah, yeah.

I agree with you, he's a huge talent too, I love his music.

Tell me a little bit, I mean I'm getting a little short on time, have about five minutes here, but tell me about your book.

You wrote a children's book.

- Oh yeah, sure.

- So tell me about it.

- Well I was kind of around that same time that I was up there in North Carolina playing on the street corner and meeting those old men with ears like satellite dishes.

(Jeff giggles) Well, right around then I was also hanging around with a lot of people who were living in kind of traditional life pathways, I think of this time in my life as hillbilly bootcamp.

- Okay.

- You see, what does it take for a guy born in the 80's whose only real touch stone to the past would be having an AM radio or his uncle's record collection?

How's he really gonna be able to authenticate a kind of music that's a lot about mine and coal?

Like I didn't ever get in no coal mine, did you?

- [Jeff] No, I haven't.

- No.

But we gotta sing about it, 'cause we're makers of country music now.

- [Jeff] Right, right.

- Or driving trucks, you ever drive a truck?

- I have, not for a living.

- No, I mean you ever drive an 18 wheeler?

- No, that's what I'm saying, Not for a living, - Yeah, yeah.

- but I've driven one around, on a farm, believe it or not.

- See now you had the farm background.

I had to go find the farm background in order to be an authenticate country music.

- Well, I wasn't exactly a farmer farmer, but anyway that's.

- I don't wanna give the.

- What was your handle?

- I don't remember, but I do remember CB's Breaker one nine.

(Jeff laughs) - You know, we're gonna have to look this one up later.

- Yeah.

- I'm sure there's a photo we could flash, 'cause I really would like to see you in your, in your rig.

- Yeah.

(Jeff laughs) - I can't remember what you were asking me.

- You wanted to know oh, about my book.

So anyway, I had a, I was working the tobacco allotment behind the dilapidated house that I was crashing in because the lady there said I could crash there.

And anyway I was living in a house without running water or electricity for about a year and really learning a lot about, you know, God, we had this garden, it was planted by the lunar signs and we were, you know, just we're hunting ginseng, and shooting Jack Vine out of the tree with a shotgun and coiling it up and selling it to the birdhouse man.

You know, just these plane affairs living that you don't get in college.

- Exactly.

- And which is why I didn't go to college.

I was 18 and I just wanted to learn and learn and grow.

Anyway, I had the, we didn't know there was a tobacco allotment behind the house until this whole hillbilly man came knocking on the door one day and offered us $5 a piece to go work it with him.

And suddenly I found myself in the tobacco business.

It was great, we were cutting it, we were putting him up in the barn, grading it, take it to the auction.

And it was really interesting work.

The woman that that was doing this work with us, Lorraine was her name, told me a story about growing up with a pet crow, a pet crow she called "Pretty Boy".

And she had tamed all kinds of animals.

Like one is wanting to do up there in those hills and hollers, and this is a woman of Cherokee descent, Lorraine Sizemore was her name.

And I'd started thinking about maybe someday I'm gonna tell a story kind of like the one you told me, Lorraine, about a crow that loves shiny things.

So I wrote this book and I got my friend Higgins Bond to do the illustrations.

And Higgins is the first African American woman to design a US postage stamp.

- [Interviewer] Okay yeah.

- And I love to take this instrument, which is my resophonic plectrum out into the school systems.

I've read this book for 10,000 pre-K, and kindergarten age kids because it's so shiny, and our crow in the book shiny things.

And that's kind of what the arc of the story is.

The crow has stolen something very important to Lorraine that she needs.

- [Jeff] Yeah gotcha.

I have about 45 seconds left.

What's, what's on the horizon for you guys?

- Oh man, in 45 seconds, the horizon.

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- Shoot, I mean I, we know what would be really great is if we got a chance to come back to the Florida pan-handle in a big way.

Maybe put on a big show.

Oh wait, we're going to with Hank Junior.

- That's right, you are in South Alabama.

- Yeah, that's right.

- Gonna play with Hank Junior, opening for Bocephus.

- And I'm hoping that they'll book us a big big show at the Sanger theater here in Pensacola.

Or one of the wonderful events that they have here in this region, 'cause man, I was walking down Pensacola Beach today, and this is God's country.

- It's a great place to hang your hat, my friend - Sugar Sand Beaches galore.

(Jeff laughs) - It's a great place.

Love to see you back.

- Thanks.

- Thank you my friend.

- Thanks for the conversation.

- Hey, you bet, you bet.

Ketch Secor's his name, "Old Crow Medicine Show".

That's the band, by the way, you'll be able to see this and many more of our conversations on the PBS Video App as well as the wsre.org/conversations.

I'm Jeff Weeks, thank you so very much for watching.

I hope you enjoyed our program.

Take wonderful care of yourself and we'll see you soon.

Play it away Ketch.

(lighthearted guitar music plays) (everyone laughs) (bright music plays)