Old Crow Medicine Show to play the F.M. Kirby Center

Jan. 12—WILKES-BARRE — Americana string band Old Crow Medicine Show performs at the F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts Thursday, April 11. The show will begin at 7:30 p.m. with special guest Willie Watson opening.

Tickets go on sale to the public on Friday, January 12 at 10:00 a.m. Tickets can be purchased online at kirbycenter.org, ticketmaster.com, and at F.M. Kirby Center Box Office during regular business hours.

Since getting their start busking on street corners back in 1998, Old Crow Medicine Show have emerged as one of the most potent and influential forces in American roots music.

Over the last quarter-century, the two-time Grammy Award-winning band has brought their sublimely raucous live show to rapturous audiences around the world and toured with the likes of Willie Nelson and John Prine, all while amassing an acclaimed catalog that includes such standouts as their double platinum hit single "Wagon Wheel."

Arriving as the Nashville-based six-piece gears up to celebrate their 25th anniversary, Jubilee finds Old Crow doubling down on their commitment to creating roots music that bears an undeniable urgency.

Old Crow Medicine Show's current lineup consists of Ketch Secor (vocals, guitar, guitjo, fiddle, banjo, harmonica, jug), Morgan Jahnig (bass, vocals), Cory Younts (guitar, keys, banjo, mandolin, vocals), Jerry Pentecost (percussion, mandolin, vocals), Mike Harris (banjo, bass, dobro, guitar, guitjo, vocals), and Mason Via (guitar, mandolin, vocals).

"In a lot of people's minds folk music seems to be relegated to a place of supposed purity, but we've always wanted our folk music to be the soundtrack to real living rather than something stuck behind the glass in a museum," says frontman Ketch Secor. "We'd much prefer to smash that glass and take those instruments back to the street corners, maybe break some strings and bleed on them a bit. To us music works best when you sing it loud and hard and lusty until your throat gets sore—it's meant to hurt when it comes out right."

Old Crow's eighth studio LP, Jubilee serves as something of a companion piece to Paint This Town — a 2022 release that marked their first time cutting an album with band members Jerry Pentecost, Mike Harris, and Mason Via.

"We made Paint This Town before we'd even played any shows with this lineup, so it felt right to get back into the studio with our new partners-in-crime after we'd been out on the road and felt all greased-up," says Secor.

After kicking off with "Ballad of Jubilee Jones" (a soul-stirring anthem of resilience for the working people of the world), Jubilee slips into tender reminiscence on "Miles Away"—a sweetly reflective track graced with guest vocals from Old Crow co-founder Willie Watson. who will also be the special opening guest at the Kirby Center show.

"We hadn't recorded with Willie in 12 years, and it made sense to bring him back for a song that has to do with seeing old friends again," says Secor. "It's about looking back on the past and accepting that people sometimes part ways, and yet time can mend things. There could be a scar in the earth, then a few years go by and now it's a Walmart parking lot or a garden."

While songs like "Miles Away" embody a bittersweet gravity, much of Jubilee harnesses the unruly exuberance that Old Crow unfailingly channel into their live show. On "Keel Over And Die," for instance, the band delivers a frenetic and freewheeling love song whose lyrics endlessly tilt from ecstatic to macabre.

"It's one of those just-getting-over-divorce songs where you've finally found someone you're crazy about but nothing else is right in your life, so you can only express joy in death metaphors," says Secor.

Later, on "I Want It Now," Old Crow unleash a gloriously sordid and dance-ready party song spotlighting their knack for fantastically unhinged wordplay (e.g., "Freight-train-hopping, purple-pill-popping, bluegrass-bopping/You know what I need, I want it now").

"On every album we ever make, Old Crow tends to put revelers, corn whiskey, and the cops all together in a stretch of woods somewhere," says Secor. "'I Want It Now' is the latest offering in that 25-year batch of debauchery; it's your typical story of a hillbilly love triangle and a party that just won't quit."

As Secor reveals, Old Crow's boundless passion for imbuing a timely vitality into traditional music has played a major part in the band's longevity.

"Being the type of songwriters and performers that we've always been, we tend toward the topical material and what's going on right now—the issues currently faced by our species, our country, our beloved Southlands," he says.

"I think the artist's job is to dip their quill into the reservoir of the now, and for Old Crow that reservoir is deep: we might end up pulling up some Lead Belly colors, some Gene Austin colors or some Paul Robeson. So as long as these things keep happening in our world, and as long as banjos are around to be plucked and fiddles are there for us to drag a bow across, you can bet we'll still be interested in making this kind of music. At this point it's just our second nature."

See Old Crow Medicine Show come to Wilkes-Barre's F.M. Kirby Center in spring 2024.