Story The Crow Told Me – Ketch Secor (Equal Housing Records)
This is no ordinary country album. But we should expect nothing less from Ketch Secor: writer, archivist, public speaker, multi-instrumentalist and founder of Old Crow Medicine Show.
The ‘crow’ in the title may reference the band he still fronts, but Story The Crow Told Me also suggests the mystical bird, that symbolically connects the earthly and spiritual realms (think Joni Mitchell’s Black Crow). These realms are criss-crossed through the album’s songs as Secor traverses his past as well as the American landscape, arriving back in the city he’s made home: Nashville. The Vatican City of country music, with its holy places of pilgrimage like the Ryman Auditorium.
But the glitz of contemporary country and its mega-stars who fill stadiums (here included, such as Jason Aldean, Chris Stapleton) is not the thematic. Rather Secor charts the origins and emotional landscape traversed by he and his band from the now-legendary moment they were discovered by bluegrass luminary Doc Watson (busking outside a pharmacy in Boone, Tennessee).
And when you’ve crafted the fifth best-selling country song of all time (Wagon Wheel) its no wonder Secor seeks to craft something creative and a little different. That song, stitched together from a shard of an all-but forgotten Bob Dylan lyric has rolled on ( Dylan recorded the chorus in 1973; Secor added verses 25 years later). Who hasn’t been to a gig and have some drunk yell out Wagon Wheel?
This is Secor’s first full-length solo release, recorded at Hartland Studios in Nashville. Tracks laid down in the epicentre of it all by one who has variously been called a “roots-music ringleader” and a “torchbearer of twang”.
Here he brings back two comrades from earlier lineups of Old Crow (Willie Watson and Critter Fuqua) along with a host of other talented collaborators to craft intricate soundscapes around his journey through the past. He’s delivered a gem: twelve distinctive tracks replete with the storied landscape that chart both origins and destination. A nuanced paean of praise for America’s music city.
The songs are vignettes from a journey. Buskers Spell opens with the haunting hoots of an Amtrack train and a fast recitation of the stops along the way. Places being honoured at the outset. My case swung open like the doors of hell/Trying to cast me a busker’s spell. ….But the best tip of all was from a man named Doc.
A narrative of tentative beginnings as a band. On On the wall, he sings After busted strings … we had the gaul/ For to hang our crooked poster on the wall. An endearing country ditty celebrating the banal: the affirmation of seeing one’s gig poster pasted up there. There’s a poster so therefore we exist.
The collection is a platform for Secor’s writing as much as his playing and singing (and he does a lot of the former – organ, bass, spoons, electric guitar and more).
In Holes in the Wall a fast-talking Ketch salutes the taverns and roadhouses that have hosted him over the years. Junkin has the monologue of an auctioneer and musical gems discovered in back alleys. Then Catch Me If You Can speaks to the frayed relationships in the wake of relentless touring (hold on till the break of day babe/Cause I’m about to fly away).
Dickerson Road could be a Steve Earle circuitous yarn and Thanks Again offers a banjo-driven song of gratitude for everything under the sun, including the plywood stages that supported early performances. A lyricism that digs deeper than most country music. Then in Old Man River there’s that age old baptismal theme, anchored in the American South (Went down to the river to get myself clean) and played with by so many, including our own Don McGlashan (Bathe in the River).
The song cycle ends with What Nashville Was. Parts are rapped almost. A homage to place and times before commodification and overtourism. Thematically reminiscent of the place-love and name-checking in Van Morrison’s Tiburon and Summertime in England. Yet here, the Dylan presence in Wagon Wheel returns in a sampled duet with Johnny Cash (Girl From The North Country.) And, of course, the song was on …. Nashville Skyline. Ground zero for Americana and country. And then it folds into Will the Circle Be Unbroken, with its links to the Carter family. A song cycle that goes full circle.
Story The Crow Told Me is both about and not about Ketch Secor. He celebrates landscape, connections, and identity with rare gusto. And we are all invited. Simply wonderful.
Robin Kearns
Story The Crow Told Me is out now on Equal Housing Opportunity Records
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