Old Crow Medicine Show

It was my freshman year of high school. We'd just moved into a new two-story house which afforded me many opportunities that our single story ranch house didn't. First and foremost was the ability to stay awake to all hours of the night in the bonus room, which would later be dubbed "The Man Cave." On one such night, I was up until about 3 a.m. desperately trying to beat Red Dead Revolver on the Playstation 2. After failing to beat the boss of the twelfth level (the half bear half man one) for about the twentieth time, I angrily turned off the console. I then proceeded to retreat into the warm cocoon of teenage angst known as MTV.

Now, this was MTV back in the day when they actually played music for about a half hour every other day or so, and usually the music came on once advertisers no longer found it profitable to inundate my generation with Pepsi, Coke and Dorito commercials. I got lucky that night and found a program that covered up and coming bands in the independent music scene. The featured band that night just happened to be Old Crow Medicine Show.

This is the point where every college student in America starts to have the opening guitar riff of "Wagon Wheel" running through their heads. Yes, that is by far the most popular and commercially successful song that OCMS has ever written. It's the song that has become a staple at tailgates, parties and southern college life in general. As a fan of shagging (state dance of SC for those of you with your head in the gutter), I'm a huge fan of Wagon Wheel. If I had a dollar for every time me and Emily Adams danced to this song, I'd be a rich man. However, it's only one song in a large catalog of songs written by an incredibly talented string band. In fact, Wagon Wheel earned OCMS the ire of the entire string band community who's hallmark for years has been heritage. Radio play is not part of the heritage of string band music.

Wagon Wheel is not completely indicative of the style of Old Crow Medicine Show. If you take the time to listen to entire albums of their work, you'll find that they are very much rooted in traditional string band music. Songs like "Big Time in the Jungle" and "James River Blues" whose lyrics are melancholy recollections of monumental events in American history, show that the band is not out solely for commercial success. They're musicians in the truest since of the world. A group of guys who've come together to take a very traditional form of music and imbue it with a certain je ne sais quoi that makes you want to delve deeper into the music and lyrics to find what makes it tick.

When I decided to write about Old Crow Medicine Show this week, I sat down and listened to the album "Big Iron World" in its entirety. I've pulled out my favorite song of that album for y'all to listen to.

Hymn for Her

We'll start off this music blogging project with a band I serendipitously stumbled upon this summer. It was a Friday night, I'd just gotten payed, and I wanted some wings from Luke's. Unfortunately I had forgotten that the clientele at Luke's is, aside from me and few others, made up exclusively of Gamecock fans. Normally this isn't a problem. A few jokes and a couple jeers between friends is about all you'd expect on a Friday night. However, on this Friday night the Gamecocks were playing in the College World Series. On nights like that it's best to avoid Luke's if you're not wearing garnet or black.

So we were faced with a monumental decision; a decision that could affect the entire outcome of the next four hours of our lives

We decided to go to McHale's Irish Pub which is known for two things: awesome burgers and terrible bands. We walked into the bar and saw the night's lineup written in a whimsical cursive script on the chalkboard which also informed us that kid's grilled cheese was on sale. When the band on this particular night began to set up I was expecting the worst. At first glance, I didn't like their look. They seemed like the kind of band that tried to win on gimmicks. I expected some sort of Belle and Sebastian knock off with trite attempts at irony and shoddy showmanship.

Boy, was I wrong.

The front man, clad in the attire you'd expect to find at a Nascar race, was simultaneously playing the guitar, drums, and harmonica. His bandmate, an interesting looking women, was strumming what appeared to be a homemade guitar made from a cereal box. It shouldn't have worked, but it did. They had a singularly unique sound, but if I had to describe it I'd call it a mix between Old Crow Medicine Show (circa "Big Iron World") and Beirut. With simply worded, yet poignant and very witty lyricism and some really solid technical instrumentals, the band really caught and kept my attention for the entire night. I actually bought their CD, The Amairican Stream and keep it in my car. It's become one of my favorite albums. What's really cool about this album is that it was recorded in the band's Airstream camper as they traveled across the country. It actually makes the lyric sheet in the album a really interesting read.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite songs.

And now I pretend to be a music blogger...

To all of the faithful readers of "The Thrilling Life" (Emily, Hayley , and Paige) please don't hate me for what I'm about to do...

I'm going to attempt to be a music blogger. For my English 304 class I have to keep a blog with a unified theme going for the remainder of the semester. While sitting and pondering what I could write about for week and week without driving myself insane, I decided on music. There aren't many things in the world that I enjoy more than music. If I had to choose between television and music, I'd have to choose the latter. It's an artistic medium that leaves the interpretation up to the listener, and that's pretty neat.

I think anyone who's met me knows that I'm not the world's biggest fan of the hipster, however, I'm taking a page from his book. For the next couple months I'm going to find a new band, listen to an album or so worth of music, then write about it. I hope that you'll enjoy it at least a little bit. If any of you have any suggestions for bands for me to listen to, I'd love to hear them. I feel as though I've gotten stuck in a bit of a musical rut as of late and, though I feel like a damned dirty hipster, I think this project has the potential to expand my horizons and introduce me to some great new music.