Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, today we're featuring a chat with two
Speaker 1: members of the Nashville based string band Old Crow Medicine Show.
Speaker 1: We've got lead singer Catch scor and drummer Jerry Pentecost.
Speaker 1: Since Foreman in nineteen ninety eight, Old Crow has helped
Speaker 1: to preserve folk and blues songs that often pre date
Speaker 1: even World War Two. Of course, in the best of
Speaker 1: the folk tradition, they put their own spin on those
Speaker 1: songs and also have written a number of their own tunes.
Speaker 1: Old Crow's most successful song to date, the platinum certified
Speaker 1: wagon Wheel, was written around a Bob Dylan course catch
Speaker 1: Herd on an Old Dylan bootleg. In twenty thirteen, Darius
Speaker 1: Rucker of Hooting the Blowfish covered that song, making it
Speaker 1: a contemporary country music hit and even earned a Grammy.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, Bruce Sellem talks to Catch Scorps and
Speaker 1: Jerry Pentecost about Old Crow's latest album, Paint This Town.
Speaker 1: They share how the raising awareness around the major contributions
Speaker 1: black musicians like Ray Charles and d Ford Bailey have
Speaker 1: made to country music, and then Ketch recalls Old Crow's
Speaker 1: early days when they went through what he calls hill
Speaker 1: Billy Bootcamp learning how to make whiskey farm tobacco and
Speaker 1: also shoot groundhogs. This is broken record liner notes for
Speaker 1: the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Adlam with
Speaker 1: Ketch C Corps and Jerry Pentecost of Old Crow Medicine Show.
Speaker 1: So we're welcoming one third of the Old Crow Medicine Show,
Speaker 1: catch S Corp and Jerry Pentecost. Welcome, Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for doing this, Thanks for having us. It's wonderful
Speaker 1: to be here. You have a new album out on
Speaker 1: Ato Records, Is that right? That's right, and it's called
Speaker 1: Paint This Town and it is a very ambitious, sprawling
Speaker 1: album with a lot of different styles. And I'm much
Speaker 1: heavier sound even than your last album, which people said
Speaker 1: had a very heavy sound. Can you tell me just
Speaker 1: a little bit about making this record, how it all
Speaker 1: came together? Well, sure, thanks for that introduction of it.
Speaker 1: I like anything that sounds ambitious sounds cool to me,
Speaker 1: especially here in New York City. Well, so, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: just trying to keep up with the times. Man. There's
Speaker 1: a lot to sing about and talk about in times
Speaker 1: like these, and this was the record that we made
Speaker 1: in face masks from a six foot distance in an
Speaker 1: unvaccinated space because they weren't available yet, just waiting for
Speaker 1: the final green light to go down to the Walmart
Speaker 1: and Franklin and get our first shot. I said before,
Speaker 1: it is very ambitious. It's a very rocking record for
Speaker 1: you guys, more electric guitar. It sort of reminds me
Speaker 1: that there's more rock and roll in country right now
Speaker 1: than there is on the pop charts. I think it
Speaker 1: has to do with the Americano music scene being such
Speaker 1: a wide open platform to know that spectrum of sound.
Speaker 1: Ever since that term was coined, it was I've thought
Speaker 1: of it as sort of the lint trap in the
Speaker 1: spin cycle of the country music dryer. You know, everything
Speaker 1: that isn't keeping up on the charts gets collected, and
Speaker 1: that includes Loretta Lynn, you know, some of the you know,
Speaker 1: mainstay performers, anybody who hasn't had a hit since nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties suddenly Americana and then also a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: new fresh faces or folks like us that have been
Speaker 1: around since before Americana, or like Gillian Welch who predates
Speaker 1: some Americana by ten years when it was called old
Speaker 1: country and you know, like Gillian and David, we always
Speaker 1: wanted to rock, even though we set a course with
Speaker 1: acoustic instruments, and that's the pathway Old Crow picked, was
Speaker 1: to be an acoustic rock band. But that doesn't prohibit
Speaker 1: us from plugging in every now and then. Well you
Speaker 1: do on this album. Can you tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about Reasons to Run? I just thought it was
Speaker 1: such a beautiful song. Sure. Well. I started this band
Speaker 1: with my best friend and boy we had We've had
Speaker 1: a long road together. We met in the seventh grade
Speaker 1: in the Shennanoah Valley of Virginia and both found this
Speaker 1: calling to go to Nashville. Really, we wanted to go
Speaker 1: to Nashville when we were in the eighth grade. What
Speaker 1: we really wanted to do was to get somebody to
Speaker 1: go into the corner store and buy us some beer
Speaker 1: and some cigarettes, and then we'd go to Nashville. We
Speaker 1: wanted to hitchhike the whole way. We were writing songs together.
Speaker 1: This is my pal Critter few Quay and Critter has
Speaker 1: spent in and out, you know, fifteen twenty years in
Speaker 1: this twenty three year old band, but was always a
Speaker 1: little bit in, a little bit out because of the
Speaker 1: things that Kritter needed to do to you know, find
Speaker 1: stability and you know, solid ground on his own, which
Speaker 1: he's found beautifully but has found largely outside of this
Speaker 1: professional workscape. So what I mean the truth is that's
Speaker 1: a song about saying goodbye to your you know, your collaborator,
Speaker 1: your your sidekick. M It's also is it from his
Speaker 1: point of view? Because of course the lines are you know,
Speaker 1: running out of reasons to run, which is great great line.
Speaker 1: Is that something that comes from you as well that
Speaker 1: you were wondering how long can I keep doing this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: For me, I had this one chance encounter with Merrell
Speaker 1: Haggard and we did We did a tour together. You know.
Speaker 1: It was some most amazing tour. It kicked off in
Speaker 1: Sierra Vista, Arizona, which I had never been to before
Speaker 1: and probably won't ever go back to because it's hard
Speaker 1: to sell tickets without the hag In Sierra Vista, it's
Speaker 1: way down south, it's right by No Gallus, it's a
Speaker 1: military base. And when we we've opened up for him
Speaker 1: and the governor came out and he had this like
Speaker 1: sixty or one hundred pound bag onions which he presented
Speaker 1: to Merle Haggard and said, this is the new crop
Speaker 1: of the season, you know, and just that confluence of ag,
Speaker 1: the hag and the military, the proximity to Mexico, everything
Speaker 1: about it was just beautiful and so country music. You know.
Speaker 1: We'd met that night and he whispered in my ear
Speaker 1: it was so beautiful. And a couple of years later
Speaker 1: I heard a quote in which they asked him about,
Speaker 1: you know, reflecting on his career, and he said, the
Speaker 1: part I didn't realize was that I was signing up
Speaker 1: for a fifty year bus ride. And there's something about
Speaker 1: it that just gave me chills and hurt. You know,
Speaker 1: it hurts to think about that, because a fifty year
Speaker 1: bus ride sounds real lonesome. I know, it's what she
Speaker 1: gotta do to live this way and make shows and
Speaker 1: make the make the date and put on the gig
Speaker 1: and make everybody dance and cavort and clap and applaud
Speaker 1: and maybe make love afterwards. But the toll it takes
Speaker 1: on you, It hurts, and it'll run you down. What
Speaker 1: was it like being around Merle Haggard. Did he talk
Speaker 1: about his writing or songs or or was it all business?
Speaker 1: He's he gets the bag of onion, sings and songs
Speaker 1: and keeps going. A very soulful person, just like a
Speaker 1: mother Teresa kind of vibe, seemed to float, had a
Speaker 1: like a ben Kenobi kind of vibe. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to be close to him. The one time that we
Speaker 1: actually talked, I could feel he can't really close up
Speaker 1: to my ears, and I could feel his whiskers touch
Speaker 1: me so great and he whispered sounds good son, that's fabulous.
Speaker 1: I do want to talk mainly about the new album
Speaker 1: because it's a great album, but for people who don't
Speaker 1: know your whole history, there are some pretty amazing twists
Speaker 1: and turns along the way. But first of all, for
Speaker 1: both of you, did you grow up with music in
Speaker 1: your house? How did you come to this? I told
Speaker 1: a story the other day about how it is hitch
Speaker 1: hiking in Tallahassee and the bus picked me up and
Speaker 1: that's how I joined the band. And Mason Steele thinks
Speaker 1: that's how I got in the band, But ultimately I
Speaker 1: my real dad, which I didn't really grow up with.
Speaker 1: He was a drummer and so I remember him having
Speaker 1: this big red drum set around the house. So from
Speaker 1: early ages. I always wanted to play drums, couldn't afford
Speaker 1: one until I was fifteen, started gigging as soon as
Speaker 1: I graduated. Became a drummer for hire in my mid twenties,
Speaker 1: and randomly met Ketch backstage at the Rheman after one
Speaker 1: of the fabulous New Year's Eve shows, so a few
Speaker 1: years ago, and I thought, who is that drummer? I'd
Speaker 1: always wanted to have a real drummer in the band.
Speaker 1: We always kind of flirted with drummers, and there were
Speaker 1: enough percussionists in Old Crow because we're always been a
Speaker 1: multi instrumentalist band. Critter could play drums. Corey was a
Speaker 1: good drummer. But I didn't actually get together with Jerry
Speaker 1: because I thought we would he would join Old Crow.
Speaker 1: We got together talk about Ray Charles, Yeah, and about
Speaker 1: working on a project together, celebrating Charles and kind of
Speaker 1: unpacking the story and legacy and looking through the closet
Speaker 1: as we talked about the story of black country music
Speaker 1: in Nashville, kind of its wayward path and maybe that
Speaker 1: record will come out. One of the things that's happened
Speaker 1: since this conversation, which was four years ago, and ongoing
Speaker 1: conversations as we talked and met, you know, several times labels.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's come about is that finally
Speaker 1: the Country Music Hall of Fame has made Ray Charles
Speaker 1: a member. He wasn't a member. No, he wasn't, shocking right, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the woman that accepted the award, she said that
Speaker 1: the modern sounds and country and Western was it's still
Speaker 1: to this day, the biggest crossover country record of all time.
Speaker 1: More people who didn't listen to country started to listen
Speaker 1: to the country because of that record than ever. I
Speaker 1: think it's amazing to think about and here we are,
Speaker 1: you know, like I don't know, fifty semi years later
Speaker 1: after that record, even more that you know, like now
Speaker 1: it was sixty sixty one, sixty one, Yeah, and your
Speaker 1: dad would what was he a jazz drummer? Was he
Speaker 1: a rock drum now? I honestly, I'm gonna venture to
Speaker 1: say r and b um, you know, like we've had
Speaker 1: some some contact over the years, but like we're you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's not what you would expect slash hope for
Speaker 1: so um. I grew up in a in a household.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a typical low income nineties household,
Speaker 1: you know, like I kind of listened everything. My friends
Speaker 1: played rock music and so they needed a drummer. When
Speaker 1: I got my drum set, couldn't wait. So I started
Speaker 1: off playing rock and punk rock and you know, anything
Speaker 1: that I could get my hands on at that time.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until I think, um, I got in
Speaker 1: my like early twenties that I discovered led Zeppelin and
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd and all of that stuff. And then the
Speaker 1: early twenties was country because those were the gigs that
Speaker 1: were happening around Nashville. I decided that, like, if I
Speaker 1: wanted to be being blessed and privileged to be from
Speaker 1: Nashville and like wanted to be a member of this scene,
Speaker 1: I probably should learn how to play country. And actually
Speaker 1: the way that happened, I got a gig that I
Speaker 1: was forced to have to learn how to play country. Shuffles,
Speaker 1: trade beat, straight eights, you know, all the stuff that
Speaker 1: will require you to play, and it's deceptively difficult. It
Speaker 1: requires a lot of patients and listening. So your ears,
Speaker 1: I think, become your biggest assets. So I just dove in.
Speaker 1: I went into the history and in this past Sunday
Speaker 1: also Eddie Bears was inducted, who probably will go down
Speaker 1: as the greatest country drummer of all time. So you know,
Speaker 1: you have recordings from all these greats that you listen to,
Speaker 1: you do the homework, and but like whether you stay
Speaker 1: in the scene, you know, because I have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends that kind of jump in and out. So
Speaker 1: so I feel very fortunate to be in this band
Speaker 1: playing real country music. I don't know Eddie Bears, who
Speaker 1: did he play with, what was his style? So he's
Speaker 1: currently the drummer, one of the house drummers for the
Speaker 1: but he's a descendant of Larry London was the main guy,
Speaker 1: which was another major session drummer. I think it was
Speaker 1: like a third of the songs that were in the
Speaker 1: top forty one country and ninety he played drums on Wow,
Speaker 1: everything from Brooks and Done to Nce. I mean, you
Speaker 1: name it, any new or and by new I mean
Speaker 1: nineties you know, like country artist Garth, like all those guys,
Speaker 1: Like he's played on a track with just about everybody.
Speaker 1: So it would probably go down as the most recorded
Speaker 1: country drummer ball time. And I loved all that nineties
Speaker 1: country stuff too growing up in the Chendel Valley because
Speaker 1: that's all I heard. Yeah, country radio was the only thing.
Speaker 1: It was. Out of that or pop radio. There wasn't
Speaker 1: any anything else to listen to. And I love that
Speaker 1: kind of music, but it wasn't doing that much. It
Speaker 1: didn't make me want to go out and play those songs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And for me, it was the discovery of the folk
Speaker 1: music of the nineteen sixties that just pulled me in.
Speaker 1: It was like a magnet to my soul man. And
Speaker 1: what was that? What was the first song you've heard
Speaker 1: that you can remember? It happened for me that my
Speaker 1: uncle went away to the Philippines to teach, and he
Speaker 1: left us all of the stuff. And among all of
Speaker 1: this stuff all these records. And I heard all these
Speaker 1: records when I was twelve, and I remember saying to
Speaker 1: my mom, Okay, it's time to take all my toys out.
Speaker 1: I found the records. Now I don't need toys anymore,
Speaker 1: and my mom cried like boxing them all up. The
Speaker 1: records were so great. It was a lot of motown,
Speaker 1: mostly motown. I heard so many great songs. Its twelve
Speaker 1: years old. But then I heard this record called Live
Speaker 1: at Newport Broadside, and that's when I learned to play
Speaker 1: my first song. I was twelve years old. I want
Speaker 1: to sing a little bit of it for you. In
Speaker 1: the state of Mississippi, many years ago, a boy of
Speaker 1: fourteen years got a taste of Southern law. He saw
Speaker 1: his friend of hanging. His color was his crime. The
Speaker 1: blood upon his jacket left a brand upon his mind.
Speaker 1: Too many martyrs and too many dead, too many lies,
Speaker 1: too many empty words were said, too many times for
Speaker 1: too many angry men. Oh let it never be again.
Speaker 1: It's called the ballot of Medgar Evers by phil Oakes.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know who Medgar Evers was, but I
Speaker 1: knew that he was worth marching for. Was it? That?
Speaker 1: Was it? The militancy of the song that you loved.
Speaker 1: It was a feeling that, like that civil rights mattered,
Speaker 1: and that for some reason it spoke to me. My
Speaker 1: first job was working in a barber shop. I shine shoes,
Speaker 1: and I would hear all the old men talk. They
Speaker 1: were all biggots, like really bigoted dudes, old men. You know.
Speaker 1: I lived in this in a town that had a
Speaker 1: sidewalk preacher. You know. It was nineteen eighty six and
Speaker 1: I was, you know, nine or something, and I'd walk
Speaker 1: to work and carry my little box, and I got
Speaker 1: a dollar a shine, and the big at Barber's would
Speaker 1: just talk all we had a We had the first
Speaker 1: African American governor of any state. His name was Douglas Wilder, great,
Speaker 1: great leader. And I felt like, well, that's what phil
Speaker 1: Oakes is singing about. Phil Oakes is making sure everybody
Speaker 1: knows that we have to stand up and make sure
Speaker 1: that equality gets hammered out, and you can only do
Speaker 1: it with a hammer. And that's when I heard Pete
Speaker 1: Seeger sing about having a hammer, and heard Pete sing
Speaker 1: about getting waist deep in the big muddy, and all
Speaker 1: of these songs all got me ready to hear Bob Dylan.
Speaker 1: I was primed. I had heard the other sounds, but
Speaker 1: then when I heard Bob, it was like finding, you know,
Speaker 1: Ecclesiastes for the first time. We'll dig into Bob Dylan's
Speaker 1: influence on catch C Corps, but first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break and then we'll be back with more from
Speaker 1: bruce Headlam, Catch C Corp and Jerry Pentecost of Old
Speaker 1: Crow Medicine Show. We're back with more from bruce Headlam,
Speaker 1: Catch C Corps and Jerry Pentecost of Old Crow Medicine Show.
Speaker 1: Was your first instrument of the guitar or were you
Speaker 1: already playing the violin by then? No. I learned the
Speaker 1: fiddle last I learned. My first instrument was the juice harp.
Speaker 1: I learned it in the fourth grade for a school play,
Speaker 1: and I could do it right away. It was so
Speaker 1: I felt like kind of called into folk music. And
Speaker 1: then I learned the harmonica and then the guitar. I
Speaker 1: learned to play the banjo and I was fifteen, and
Speaker 1: that was a really important turn. That's when I was
Speaker 1: up at Exeter and I got a banjo teacher because
Speaker 1: I wanted to play like this guy, Happy Tround, as
Speaker 1: a New York banjo picker, played with Bob Dylan on
Speaker 1: the song call You Win o Nowhere. I thought that
Speaker 1: song was so great. Who we ride High Tomorrow us
Speaker 1: the day that my Bride's gonna come? Oo? Are you
Speaker 1: gonna fly down into the easy chair? Well, Happy Tromp
Speaker 1: plays it like a bluegrass player with a nice gentle role.
Speaker 1: And I petitioned the student affairs counsel to get me
Speaker 1: a banje teacher because they didn't have one at the
Speaker 1: world's most elite preparatory school in New England didn't have
Speaker 1: a banjo teacher. We got three Latin teachers. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I gonna learned Aramaic. But I had to petition to
Speaker 1: get me a damn banjet teacher. Well I did and
Speaker 1: they accepted it. But then they found me a teacher
Speaker 1: who played clawhammer. And that was the big fork in
Speaker 1: the road for me, was learning this primitive ultra American
Speaker 1: of the style that came from Africa. The part of
Speaker 1: the of the African instrument that is the American band
Speaker 1: show that is most from West Africa is when you
Speaker 1: play it like a drum, because that's what it is.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing as what Jerry's got over here,
Speaker 1: except instead of beating on it with stich, you play
Speaker 1: it with your finger. And the revolutionary thing about this
Speaker 1: is that it's both rhythm and melody. It's all about
Speaker 1: this drone string. Drone is always singing, no matter what,
Speaker 1: and it just it fills everything out. When I play
Speaker 1: the fiddle, it's the same way I always like to
Speaker 1: keep a drone string running. It's the same principle behind
Speaker 1: the bagpipes. A lot of folk musics use it. The
Speaker 1: hammer dulcimer, the ood. It's all about the drone. That's
Speaker 1: when you know that you're like calling in the herd.
Speaker 1: It's like out on the step kind of feelings. Now
Speaker 1: you were also when you were a teenager, you wrote
Speaker 1: your first big hit. We should just tell the story
Speaker 1: of Wagonwheel, because I think for a lot of people
Speaker 1: it's like, well the circle be unbroken or something. They
Speaker 1: didn't even know one person wrote it. It's got this
Speaker 1: great history, So just tell me a bit about that song. Well. Sure,
Speaker 1: So following my little chronology here, Once I was ready
Speaker 1: to discover Bob, I was ready to go deep, and
Speaker 1: I was like a Bob scholar in high school. I mean,
Speaker 1: my math teacher was flunking me. They were calling home
Speaker 1: to say, what's wrong with catch? If they busted me
Speaker 1: smoking pot. I was the only kid in the history
Speaker 1: of this high school that didn't get thrown out for
Speaker 1: burning grass, and thankfully I got caught with the kid
Speaker 1: with the highest GPA in the grade. But by the
Speaker 1: time I was about seventeen, I'd listened to every Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan record ever made, and then I was on the bootlegs,
Speaker 1: So that means I was about nineteen ninety four that fall,
Speaker 1: So Dylan had put out Probably World Gone Wrong at
Speaker 1: that point, which was the second of his nineties back
Speaker 1: to folk music albums which were just phenomenal. And it
Speaker 1: was maybe the year before Time out of Mind, which
Speaker 1: was a Grammy Award winning fabulous album that gave him
Speaker 1: a hit to make You Feel My Love, which Garth
Speaker 1: Brooks took to number one, and just a side story here,
Speaker 1: Wagon Wheel when Darius took it to number one, was
Speaker 1: the second time that Bob Dylan had a number one
Speaker 1: country hit as a songwriter and not as a vocalist.
Speaker 1: So tell me more. How did the song come about? Well,
Speaker 1: the aforementioned critter was over at the Virgin Megastore in London,
Speaker 1: England with his mom and dad, and you know, he
Speaker 1: had twenty pound note and he bought this bootleg off
Speaker 1: out in front of the Virgin Megastore where you could
Speaker 1: buy all the good shit. So he bought this thing
Speaker 1: called like the genuine Columbia bootleg series, not made by Columbia,
Speaker 1: and it had some really good stuff on it. Nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, I think Sam Peck and Paul directs this
Speaker 1: film called Pat Garrett and Billy the kid. I'm convinced
Speaker 1: that after he wrote rock Me Mama, he's like, nah,
Speaker 1: this is a very good And then he wrote Knocking
Speaker 1: on Heaven's Store. To me, the songs are sort of
Speaker 1: brother and sister. I think that Knocking on Heaven's Door is,
Speaker 1: of course a far superior tune. But he left this scrap.
Speaker 1: It's about you know, thirty six seconds or forty five seconds.
Speaker 1: And I heard it on this tape that critter sent
Speaker 1: me because he dubbed it, and he's sent it up
Speaker 1: to me in New Hampshire at my high school, and
Speaker 1: I Scott, I couldn't get that song out of my head.
Speaker 1: Rock Me Mama, like the wind and the rain. Oh.
Speaker 1: I loved it so much. And then, you know, one afternoon.
Speaker 1: This was like the third or fourth time I tried
Speaker 1: to rewrite a Bob Dylan's song. I remember when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I rewrote The Lord's Prayer into a song.
Speaker 1: I was always taking something and turning it into a
Speaker 1: song or wiggling it around. I'd take leaves of grass.
Speaker 1: I mean, that thing is full of songs or anyway.
Speaker 1: So I got to Rock Me Mama. I wrote penn
Speaker 1: some quick autobiographical verses about getting out of New Hampshire
Speaker 1: and going down south where I felt I belonged. Now,
Speaker 1: I was gonna move to North Carolina. I was gonna
Speaker 1: join an old time string band, be a picker man.
Speaker 1: I was gonna hitchhike the whole way. And I put
Speaker 1: in every place name I could think of, even ones
Speaker 1: that I'd never been to and just imagined. And it's
Speaker 1: funny because I feel like I wrote myself a bus
Speaker 1: ticket back to merle in that fifty year bus ride.
Speaker 1: Like I was, you know, seventeen and just dreaming about
Speaker 1: all the places I want to go. I didn't dream
Speaker 1: that far. It took me not much longer to start
Speaker 1: dreaming about Manitoba. You know. That's when Old Crow started.
Speaker 1: Old Crow was the seed of a dream about the
Speaker 1: Canadian prairie provinces. I was like, what is it gonna
Speaker 1: take to get way out there? Man? But anyway, I
Speaker 1: wrote this song real quick, and then I sang it
Speaker 1: for my friends. I was like, Wow, that thing is good,
Speaker 1: and we called it rock Me Mama, and I played
Speaker 1: it everywhere I went. Was that on your first album? Then? Well?
Speaker 1: Then then Old Crows started and we moved to Nashville,
Speaker 1: and we had then we had a manager, and it
Speaker 1: was time to select our tunes and we played you
Speaker 1: know what we still called rock Me Mama. When we
Speaker 1: were living up in East Tennessee, not far from Johnson City,
Speaker 1: we had this kind of pill popping friend that was
Speaker 1: a Vietnam Vet who had the tobacco allotment behind the
Speaker 1: house we were squatting in. It didn't have running water
Speaker 1: or electric or anything. And he came down. He's like,
Speaker 1: what are Ian's doing here? He's sort of befriended us,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was sort of looking for a
Speaker 1: party himself. One day, we were doing a show in Hickory,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, and we played rock Me Mama like we
Speaker 1: all like we often did, and afterwards he came up
Speaker 1: to me. He's real high in the parking lot and
Speaker 1: he said, you need to play that wagon we about
Speaker 1: every where you go. And it's the first time I'd
Speaker 1: ever heard it called that, and I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's got a ring to it. But at first I
Speaker 1: was like it felt a little weird. It was like two,
Speaker 1: it felt like corny, or really, would anybody like a
Speaker 1: song called wagon Wheel? It's called rock Me Mama? But anyway,
Speaker 1: by the time we got to Nashville, this old Hillbilly
Speaker 1: had definitely renamed it. So we played it for the label,
Speaker 1: and you know, they wanted to cut it. But then
Speaker 1: we had to get it published. So we got really
Speaker 1: lucky because we had this publishing administrator who knew how
Speaker 1: to get a hold of Bob's manager, and Bob's manager
Speaker 1: said wrote back to us a few weeks later saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: Bob approves it. He's going to call it a fifty
Speaker 1: fifty s corp Dylan split. Oh, but he wants you
Speaker 1: to know that Dylan didn't write it, and we're like what,
Speaker 1: and then he says, Dylan says that he got it
Speaker 1: from Arthur crowd Up. Well, I read in the liner
Speaker 1: notes of this song that Bob said he got rock
Speaker 1: Me Mama from called rock Me Baby, which is like
Speaker 1: rock man Baby. There really there's nothing about the wind
Speaker 1: and the rain or a southbound train, but that's what
Speaker 1: Bob said, so I took it for his word. But
Speaker 1: in the liner notes it says, oh, and Arthur Crudup
Speaker 1: wishes to attribute his recording rock Me Baby to the
Speaker 1: late great Big Bill Brunci, So that would have been
Speaker 1: Chicago in the twenties, Big Boy would have been Memphis
Speaker 1: in the fifties. So if you believe the story that
Speaker 1: Bob spun from Big Bill to Big Boy to Bob
Speaker 1: to me an Old Crow to Darius, then in that
Speaker 1: year long century gestation, the song sees the shared authorship
Speaker 1: of all five of us to become this big hit.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about two more people who
Speaker 1: are very important in your career, and the first is
Speaker 1: Doc Watson. Can you tell that story? Sure? We were
Speaker 1: on the street corner. It was the fifth of July
Speaker 1: because on the fourth of July we made whiskey. We
Speaker 1: made it with a water distiller that we got from
Speaker 1: the old Lynnville Hospital because me and Gritter were cutting
Speaker 1: rebar stakes there for manpower job. We did a lot
Speaker 1: of odd jobs back then, and it got us a
Speaker 1: lot of the kind of color that we used to
Speaker 1: write songs later. It was all this period of time
Speaker 1: that I thought of as like a hillbilly boot camp
Speaker 1: for Old Crow, because you know, I mean, I learned
Speaker 1: how to play, and I was from the South, but
Speaker 1: like I went to prep school and I learned to
Speaker 1: play the banjo, I learned to play Southern music in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. I learned to play Southern music in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire from a guy from New Hampshire who went south
Speaker 1: to learn to play Southern music and then went back
Speaker 1: to New Hampshire and then taught it to me, and
Speaker 1: I went back down south, and he learned all the
Speaker 1: good ship from the seventies, back when the Truvon was
Speaker 1: still intact, when you could find players who didn't play bluegrass.
Speaker 1: They only played old time, and it had for generations,
Speaker 1: but that died out in the seventies by the time
Speaker 1: that I came around, So we were a new crop,
Speaker 1: and I thought about us like a kind of new
Speaker 1: last city ramblers. We were like the college kids, you
Speaker 1: know with the beards who were like, gonna not go
Speaker 1: to Vietnam. We We're gonna like grow turn ups and
Speaker 1: ship woodstock or like nitty gritty or like nitty gritty
Speaker 1: out in Colorado. Was Yeah, just like that, only you know,
Speaker 1: in the nineties instead of in the seventies, which honestly
Speaker 1: probably wasn't as nearly as much fun up in northwest
Speaker 1: North Carolina in the nineties, where we found ourselves living
Speaker 1: on a six hundred acre thing that we were renting
Speaker 1: and working tobacco and cutting rebar and making whiskey and
Speaker 1: planting by the lunar signs and doing all the zany
Speaker 1: stuff that we were doing out of the box buyer
Speaker 1: book to try and authenticate country music and sort of
Speaker 1: like baptize ourselves and make ourselves worthy to sing songs
Speaker 1: about like pig meat and you know, groundhogs and shooting
Speaker 1: ground hogs and skinning them and making banjos. All the
Speaker 1: crazy stuff that we did that felt like a kind
Speaker 1: of important spiritual ceremony, got us in touch with the
Speaker 1: great Shaman of all these things. And we're busting on
Speaker 1: the street corner. We made whiskey and we were all hungover.
Speaker 1: But on the fifth of j we knew we wanted
Speaker 1: to go out and make a buck because all the
Speaker 1: tourists were in from Charlotte. So we walked down to
Speaker 1: the big corner store and boone the drug store there,
Speaker 1: and we said we bust there before, and this lady said,
Speaker 1: my daddy loves this kind of music. He and it's
Speaker 1: going to be here for a while. And we said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, just come back or tip usa, don't
Speaker 1: we're all hungover. She came back. About an hour later,
Speaker 1: she walked her dad, Doc Watson, across the street, and
Speaker 1: I just remember being dumb struck seeing him walk out
Speaker 1: of a red jeep Cherokee and Jay walk across the street.
Speaker 1: You know, he's blind and as his daughter's leading him,
Speaker 1: as Nancy Watson later became a great friend, and then
Speaker 1: Doc comes up and he just annoints us right there
Speaker 1: on the corner. Man was so beautiful. I can't believe
Speaker 1: it happens. I still can't believe it happened. And as
Speaker 1: it was happening, I thought, oh my god, it's happening.
Speaker 1: All of the things that me and Chritter thought were
Speaker 1: gonna happen are gonna happen. And what did he say
Speaker 1: when you were were playing? When he came playing, we
Speaker 1: were right in the middle of a tune called oh
Speaker 1: My Little Darlin that goes like Jimmy holds the wagon,
Speaker 1: Jimmy holds Little Darlin, you know, like a real old
Speaker 1: time rake and rude and rambling kind of number. He says,
Speaker 1: I was on that's some of the most authentic old
Speaker 1: time music I've heard in a long time. He gave
Speaker 1: like a radio quote. Nice and then and then he
Speaker 1: said I'd like you boys to play my festival that
Speaker 1: I have an honor on my son Merrel and he
Speaker 1: brought us to the moral Fest. Wow. So the other
Speaker 1: person I want to ask about is Marty Stewart. Well,
Speaker 1: after Doc found us at them and brought us to
Speaker 1: morral Fest, the next thing that happened was that the
Speaker 1: Grand Old Opry found us at morral Fest. Like we
Speaker 1: always knew to do, we busked, We did a stage show.
Speaker 1: Doc got us a slot and Alice Girard hosted brought
Speaker 1: us on at the traditional stage. But we sucked. We
Speaker 1: weren't used to playing a microphones, we were all out
Speaker 1: of tune. Everybody was kind of edgy, and we put
Speaker 1: on a terrible set and also nobody was there. And
Speaker 1: so afterwards we licked our wounds and we said, well,
Speaker 1: let's just open up a case right here by this fountain.
Speaker 1: We'll call this a stage of our own, and we
Speaker 1: just started busking. All the people came over us. We
Speaker 1: were the talk of the festival. And afterwards we got
Speaker 1: a phone call from Sally Williams at the Opery said,
Speaker 1: you know, I saw your festival sat at Merlefest at
Speaker 1: the fake stage you made up, I want you to
Speaker 1: come to Nashville and do the same thing out in
Speaker 1: front of the Grand Old Opry. So the summer of
Speaker 1: two thousand, we all came down to Nashville on the
Speaker 1: weekends and we'd stay in a like a twenty six
Speaker 1: dollar crack motel and we'd bust in front of the
Speaker 1: Grand Old Opry and then our shift would end about
Speaker 1: nine o'clock, we'd go downtown. We'd bust on Lower Broadway. God,
Speaker 1: we were making like eight hundred dollars on a Friday night,
Speaker 1: and we'd come back to that crack motel and we'd
Speaker 1: buy two cases of beer and a cart and smokes,
Speaker 1: and we would just just feel like kings and we
Speaker 1: were the high rollers in those motels. And it was
Speaker 1: a different Nashville. Like people weren't clamoring and moved to Nashville.
Speaker 1: There was like the country music thing, and there was healthcare.
Speaker 1: But you know, you could have bought those houses for nothing. Well,
Speaker 1: it was around that time that we stumbled into Marty Stewart.
Speaker 1: When we found that the Uncle Dave making Day's Festival
Speaker 1: had had a five hundred dollar prize. We thought, well,
Speaker 1: let's go down there and win it. And we went
Speaker 1: down to Murfresboro and we were busking there making a
Speaker 1: big hoot, and Marty Stewart walked in. He was the
Speaker 1: grand mason of the festival that year, and he brought
Speaker 1: us into his fold right away and made sure that
Speaker 1: we played the Oprey. He hosted our first Oprey debut
Speaker 1: at the Rhyman, you know, which which came just three
Speaker 1: months after that, and then you know, had us open
Speaker 1: for him, had us out to the house, made us
Speaker 1: know that his Nashville was a place that we were welcome,
Speaker 1: and he what was your first performance like in the Opry?
Speaker 1: It was in January when the Opry would traditionally move
Speaker 1: from its home at the Opry House down to its
Speaker 1: old home at the Rhyman Auditorium. And we all got
Speaker 1: dressed up in suits and we were all so nervous.
Speaker 1: Critter was so nervous he threw up in the trash
Speaker 1: can right there in the wings before we walked on,
Speaker 1: and we were all just sweat and bullets. And we
Speaker 1: came out there and Marty had given us each little
Speaker 1: gee gauze to where it was really helpful honestly to Kevin,
Speaker 1: our get Joe player. He gave a pair of glasses
Speaker 1: that had belonged to some old Hollywood movie star, and
Speaker 1: to me he gave a funny kind of vel vid
Speaker 1: bow tie that had belonged to Slim Whitman. And everybody
Speaker 1: had one little thing to like borrow for the set,
Speaker 1: because Marty's a collector, He's got all this crazy memorabilia.
Speaker 1: And we did some old time Holcomb songs that brought
Speaker 1: the house down, and when they asked for an encore,
Speaker 1: we didn't know what to do, so we just played
Speaker 1: the same song again and then they wanted another encore. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it felt the closest that I've ever felt to feeling
Speaker 1: like Hank Williams must have felt that time that he
Speaker 1: made his opery debut, or just to be Hank Williams.
Speaker 1: It was like there was no nothing digital about the world.
Speaker 1: It was like an analog moment. We were on AM radio,
Speaker 1: we were not on the internet. It was the year
Speaker 1: two thousand. I didn't have a cell phone. I was
Speaker 1: still carrying a spiral notebook in my back pocket. And
Speaker 1: the crowd in a hundred and twenty year old gospel
Speaker 1: union tabernacle all rose to its feet because we were
Speaker 1: playing one hundred year old music that made him feel joy.
Speaker 1: We have to take one last quick break, but after
Speaker 1: that we'll be back with more from Bruce Headlam, Catch
Speaker 1: S Corps, and Jerry Pentecost. We're back with the rest
Speaker 1: of Bruce's interview with Catching Jerry of All the Chrome
Speaker 1: Medicine Show. There's a song on your record I do
Speaker 1: want to talk about, which is de Ford Bailey Rides Again. Well,
Speaker 1: it's de Ford Rides Again, but it's about this incredible
Speaker 1: character to Ford Bailey. Can you talk a bit about that.
Speaker 1: When we were working on songs for the record, Ketch
Speaker 1: reached out to me and he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: like I've been working on this idea of writing a
Speaker 1: song about DeFord Bailey, and so like we got together
Speaker 1: and we just kind of started talking about it, you know,
Speaker 1: like talking about him as an individual, you know, like
Speaker 1: what he stood for, and it kind of actually I
Speaker 1: never told you this, but it made me think back
Speaker 1: to like in my early days of you know, like
Speaker 1: being this drummer for hire, you know, like and when
Speaker 1: I was starting to play country music, people would ask me,
Speaker 1: you know, like like do you want to be in
Speaker 1: country music? And I was like why there's no black
Speaker 1: people in country music, and every so often somebody would say,
Speaker 1: what about Depot Bailey? And I never knew who he was.
Speaker 1: And you know, like we played the Opery for years now,
Speaker 1: they've been members since what twenty twelve, twenty thirteen. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's not a really strong presence of him at the Opery.
Speaker 1: So like, as a African American individual, when I'm there,
Speaker 1: you know, like I I'm sensing for you know, like
Speaker 1: a feeling of belonging, you know, and uh and so
Speaker 1: like if you don't see representation, you know, like then
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to figure. So so yeah, so
Speaker 1: like I was really excited about resurrecting this, this legacy,
Speaker 1: this you know, like this wrong doing because that's kind
Speaker 1: of you know, like how how I look at it,
Speaker 1: this fallen soldier or pioneer of the Oprey. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody knows about Roy Cuff and Mini Pearl, but people
Speaker 1: seldom now about Defort Bailey. And he is a member
Speaker 1: of the Country Music Hall of Fame. It only took
Speaker 1: them what twenty some ode years after he died for
Speaker 1: them to do it. And you know, him being on
Speaker 1: the show when the term or the name Grand Old
Speaker 1: Opry was introduced for the first time, being the first
Speaker 1: African American member. You know, like there's just um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot dismissing. So you know, like we wanted to
Speaker 1: tell this this song about the legacy and the life
Speaker 1: of Defour Bailey, and it's it's actually, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of kind of sad. He was the first performer, wasn't
Speaker 1: he on the radio show? Yeah, the Grand Old Opry
Speaker 1: opened with an African American performer. He was a harmonica player,
Speaker 1: a harmonica wizard. They called him the Harmonica Wizard. And
Speaker 1: he would open up the show is on WSM by
Speaker 1: playing the sound of the freight train called the Pan
Speaker 1: American that would blow. That would blow as it went
Speaker 1: by the broadcast tower. And then he would sing his
Speaker 1: songs and he did fox chases in all this mimicry.
Speaker 1: And you know, he was the grandchild of slaves. Born
Speaker 1: in Smith County, Tennessee, eighteen ninety nine. He had polio
Speaker 1: when he was a kid. As an adult, he was
Speaker 1: about four foot nine, and he became the very first
Speaker 1: African American recording artist in Nashville. And he did that
Speaker 1: in the twenties. His albums were released to both a
Speaker 1: white and black audience. His acclaim from the opry. He
Speaker 1: was so popular. He was a national touring act. And
Speaker 1: he would go out on the road with Bill Monroe
Speaker 1: and they would have to put him in a suitcase
Speaker 1: to bring him into some of these hotels where he
Speaker 1: wasn't welcome as a black man in the South. He
Speaker 1: was so small he could ride in a steamer trunk.
Speaker 1: It kind of makes me want to cry when I
Speaker 1: think about that. Did he perform on stage with white performers? Oh? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so when the Opery would go out on the
Speaker 1: tour is during the weeks, because you know, the Opery
Speaker 1: was a weekend show, but all through the weeks, opera
Speaker 1: members could play anywhere that they could get a booking,
Speaker 1: and that's where they could really make money because the
Speaker 1: opera didn't pay. So he would tour with Uncle Dave Machan,
Speaker 1: who was the biggest star of this era in which
Speaker 1: hillbilly music and vaudeville were sort of thick as thieves,
Speaker 1: and before anybody even called it country and Western, it
Speaker 1: was just called hillbilly music. DeFord Bailey was a hillbilly
Speaker 1: star and the first black recording artist in Nashville. So
Speaker 1: we knew we wanted to resurrect the story in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, the early eighties, after DeFord had been kicked
Speaker 1: off the opry, had his name dragged through the mud,
Speaker 1: became a shoeshine operator. Okay, let's back up. Why did
Speaker 1: he get kicked off the opera? Well, the story is
Speaker 1: that in nineteen forty one that BMI and a couple
Speaker 1: other songwriting performance royalty bear agencies determined that you could
Speaker 1: make more money if you did their catalog on the
Speaker 1: radio because of new broadcast a copyright laws that would
Speaker 1: were royalty bearing. And the opera says that they said
Speaker 1: to d Ford, if you're going to stay on the opera,
Speaker 1: you have to do a new catalog of songs, and
Speaker 1: d Ford said, well, I only play the songs I play.
Speaker 1: And then after he was then dismissed, they said that
Speaker 1: he was sullen in his work ethic as attributed to
Speaker 1: men of his color. That was the quote from the
Speaker 1: Honorable Judge D. Hay, who was the longtime radio voice
Speaker 1: of the Grand ol Opry. So they basically, you know,
Speaker 1: they blackballed him and he lived another forty years and
Speaker 1: eventually moved into federal housing he ran a successful shoeshine business,
Speaker 1: and then in the late seventies they started bringing him
Speaker 1: back to the Opry and kind of token rolls, old
Speaker 1: timers show and yeah, there was a folklorist who discovered
Speaker 1: him who's since become a friend of mine named David
Speaker 1: Morton who was working for HUD And he was, you know,
Speaker 1: a college grad, white kid, maybe at Vanderbilt or something,
Speaker 1: new employee that summer for HOOD. And he's going around
Speaker 1: in the housing projects checking in with residents, and somebody
Speaker 1: said he liked music, and some old lady said to him, well,
Speaker 1: if you like music, you need to go up to
Speaker 1: the eighth floor. Well, de Ford Bailey lives there. And
Speaker 1: he comes back home and to his dad in Alabama.
Speaker 1: His dad was born, you know, in the teens or something,
Speaker 1: and he said, oh, yeah, I just met this old
Speaker 1: black gentleman plays a harmonica. Allats his name, d Ford Bailey.
Speaker 1: You met Dvord Bailey. He's still alive because this guy,
Speaker 1: David Morton's father had listened to the Opry in the
Speaker 1: twenties and knew that Dvord was a legend. And so
Speaker 1: d Ford told David that he felt that God had
Speaker 1: called them together so that Dford's story could finally be
Speaker 1: retold and and Dford could finally say his piece. And
Speaker 1: so he wrote a book, he made a record. All
Speaker 1: of these things happen in the nineteen in the year
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty. I think he died in about nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: But I think the most moving thing for the whole
Speaker 1: story about me was I wanted to write a song
Speaker 1: about d Ford ever since I came to Nashville, but
Speaker 1: I never felt like it'd be appropriate for me, as
Speaker 1: a white country guy, to sing that song. And when
Speaker 1: Jerry and I got together, I mean, Jerry can write
Speaker 1: any song Jerry wants to write, but I thought that
Speaker 1: this might be a good song, and Jerry helped me
Speaker 1: finish it and then tell him about our trip after
Speaker 1: we both got COVID over Christmas. Oh yeah, So we
Speaker 1: got COVID three days before Christmas, and you know, we
Speaker 1: were just constantly checking in on each other because we
Speaker 1: both had to be isolated. And U and I say,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of nice the day you want
Speaker 1: to go for a walk, And he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go to a cemetery. And I had a cousin
Speaker 1: that had just passed three days before we had COVID,
Speaker 1: So I was like, I wanted to go out there.
Speaker 1: And my mom's buried. Greenwood Cemetery's second oldest African American
Speaker 1: cemetery in Nashville. So I've got a lot of family
Speaker 1: out there, and yeah, you know, I said, how about Greenwood?
Speaker 1: And he was like perfect. So we met at Greenwood
Speaker 1: and I said, I, you know, I looked up you
Speaker 1: can do grape Finder found out where d Ford Bailey's
Speaker 1: grave was. And first we went to d Ford Bailey
Speaker 1: Junior and saw his grave, which is actually really close
Speaker 1: to one of my uncles. But then d Ford's it's
Speaker 1: right kind of in the front, which is really like
Speaker 1: two feet over from an aunt of mine. It's across
Speaker 1: away from my mom and my granddad. You know. Like
Speaker 1: so there was just all this there was this energy
Speaker 1: there that you know, like all of a sudden, It's
Speaker 1: like even though we had to get COVID to experience it,
Speaker 1: you know, like we were we were right there, like
Speaker 1: we were in the presence of country music, African American history,
Speaker 1: like a legend, you know, like right there in such
Speaker 1: close proximity to you know, like to my family, and
Speaker 1: like potentially. I haven't decided if I wanted to be buried,
Speaker 1: but like if I did, that's where I would go,
Speaker 1: you know. So so yeah, like it just it seemed
Speaker 1: like we were on the right track for what we
Speaker 1: were trying to do, like I said, resurrecting this um
Speaker 1: the story and the life of this fallen soldier and
Speaker 1: in the early scapes of country music. So and we
Speaker 1: go out and we play the song, and you know,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people don't really know about Defour
Speaker 1: Bailey and and I feel like now it's become up
Speaker 1: to us to to educate crowds and anybody who wants to,
Speaker 1: you know, like either one of us can can talk
Speaker 1: about it for days, because like it's just it's important
Speaker 1: and what you would hope the opera is fighting for,
Speaker 1: like this all inclusive diversity. You know, like you when
Speaker 1: you ever you're out and you see something happen, you're
Speaker 1: like there's so much stick could be done, or like
Speaker 1: you're in a situation and you just don't know what
Speaker 1: to do and you're just thinking in your head like
Speaker 1: there's so much, like there's just so much work to do.
Speaker 1: That's how I feel about DeFord Bailey. There's so much
Speaker 1: work to do to bring the righteousness back to restore.
Speaker 1: You know. It's very symbolic of what's happened in the
Speaker 1: Nashville music story, which has operated in by an apartheid
Speaker 1: like playbook, and addressing the issues in country music in general.
Speaker 1: You know, like that people blindly, you know, like way
Speaker 1: through I have no choice but to acknowledge it. But
Speaker 1: for some other people, you know, like they can acknowledge
Speaker 1: it except when, you know, like when it's not beneficial
Speaker 1: to them, you know, So like I kind of feel
Speaker 1: like we're we're stuck where we have to be on
Speaker 1: the side fighting for it, and then other people can
Speaker 1: fight for it when it's convenient and then pull back,
Speaker 1: you know, like I only got the fight, that's all
Speaker 1: I got. Well, we're fighting to make sure that everybody
Speaker 1: understands what happened to d Ford and that it it
Speaker 1: never happen again, and it's just important to recognize it.
Speaker 1: You know. There's a kind of reckoning that's on in
Speaker 1: all all of the institutions of the of our country
Speaker 1: right now, and Nashville is also one and that and
Speaker 1: the reckoning is on and that in the music business
Speaker 1: in Nashville and it needs to be. Recently, the Nayam,
Speaker 1: the National African American Music Museum opened up. It's three
Speaker 1: three blocks across the street from the Country Music Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame and Museum, and that it suggests to me
Speaker 1: that and I love Naymeam, and I love the Country
Speaker 1: Music Hall of Fame. But country music is black music,
Speaker 1: and black music is country music. That's what Ray Charles s. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can I talk about a couple other songs? Sure? A
Speaker 1: lot of politics in this record. We just talked a
Speaker 1: bit about racial politics. Can you tell me a bit
Speaker 1: about Glory Land? Sure that that feels like a kind
Speaker 1: of pandemic song. You know. I talked about my love
Speaker 1: of Bob Dylan. One of my favorite periods of Bob's
Speaker 1: artistic expression is in the seventies with the Rolling Thunder Review.
Speaker 1: I loved that big band and Scarlet Riviera on the
Speaker 1: fiddle and Joan Bayez singing and Roger McGuinn back there
Speaker 1: beating on a tom tom or something and ringo somewhere nearby,
Speaker 1: you know, just the kaleidoscope and the party. So that
Speaker 1: was sort of sonically what we were going after the
Speaker 1: way we recorded it. And it's a song that Critter
Speaker 1: and I wrote early, you know, before the pandemic. It's
Speaker 1: an older song that always felt a little too rock
Speaker 1: and roll for any of the old Crow records that
Speaker 1: it would have been around for. But has the seems
Speaker 1: to have predicted the global shut down pretty well. I
Speaker 1: think we wrote that song and oh maybe twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: or something. I was just waiting for twenty twenty to
Speaker 1: hit home. A very different song is the New Mississippi Flag.
Speaker 1: It's a very beautiful song. Tell me about that. During
Speaker 1: the pan EMC, you know, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: things to get down about, you know, and when George
Speaker 1: Floyd got murdered, me and Jerry were together anyway there
Speaker 1: it just felt like everything was coming apart. But I
Speaker 1: heard one story I really liked, and it was a
Speaker 1: story I'd been hoping for, and that the flag of
Speaker 1: the rebel flag was coming down finally in Mississippi. You know,
Speaker 1: there has to be an alpha and omega in all
Speaker 1: of this, and Virginia might have been the first place
Speaker 1: to have a black governor in the South or anywhere
Speaker 1: in the United States, but somebody had to be the
Speaker 1: last one to lower the rebel flag. And it's Mississippi
Speaker 1: and it's long overdue, and so I got so excited
Speaker 1: about it that I was shouting and my kids said, hush,
Speaker 1: what are you so excited about? And they were watching
Speaker 1: TV and they came and I said, put it on pause.
Speaker 1: You have to hear this, and they all, what's going on.
Speaker 1: They're bringing down the rebel flag in Mississippi. And here's
Speaker 1: why it matters. And then as talking to my kid
Speaker 1: in the bed, and he said, out of the blue,
Speaker 1: what's gonna be on the new? One said what the
Speaker 1: new flag? What is it gonna look like? And I
Speaker 1: thought it was the most wonderful question. And so I
Speaker 1: thought with a song, I could explain what will the
Speaker 1: new Mississippi flag look like? And I just want to
Speaker 1: bring a new Mississippi flag up everywhere. I want to
Speaker 1: bring one up in country music in Nashville, Tennessee. I
Speaker 1: want to bring one up in Virginia and New Hampshire
Speaker 1: and over the grave of John Brown. Let's stitch something
Speaker 1: new states Hallelujah. You've got great lyrics in that song. Oh,
Speaker 1: I just dreamed them all up. I put Elvis in
Speaker 1: there for big Boy Crudup. I would have liked to
Speaker 1: put Arthur in there, but he was from Memphis. Eudora Wealth,
Speaker 1: he's in there. Yeah, I went to her house. I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan, especially of Delta wedding. Yeah, I put
Speaker 1: and I put Charlie Pride in there, who died of
Speaker 1: COVID and was always our biggest champion at the Grand
Speaker 1: Old Opry, him and little Jimmy, you know, the winner
Speaker 1: before COVID. He was on the Opry. And we got
Speaker 1: together and he held my children and we talked about baseball,
Speaker 1: and you know, we were friends. It was so such
Speaker 1: a happy, happy memory, like having more Old Haggard whisper
Speaker 1: in your ear when Charlie Pride puts his arms around
Speaker 1: your kid. Yeah. What kind of guy was he? Oh?
Speaker 1: A wonderful guy, an amazing performer. His voice was so good.
Speaker 1: He was very kind, very willing to talk, loved history
Speaker 1: and had a kind of numerological sensibility. I remember when
Speaker 1: we joined the Opry. He came up to us a
Speaker 1: month later and he said, I understand you guys. You
Speaker 1: fellows joined the Grand Old Opry on September twelfth, two
Speaker 1: and twelve. That means And then he like brought it
Speaker 1: back to something that happened in the seventies. He was
Speaker 1: so attuned to the numbers. His legacy will be felt
Speaker 1: at the Grand lit Opry and in Nashville country music eternally. Well,
Speaker 1: let's play one for him. Then you want to do
Speaker 1: paint this town? Yeah, that'd be great. Hey, how about
Speaker 1: we start to like we do it regularly. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: everybody comes out on the stage, you know, and fans
Speaker 1: all there. Just imagine a six piece like the Clash
Speaker 1: with more bancho. Ever since I was a young boy,
Speaker 1: I had a wonderus. So I walked and crawled across
Speaker 1: six eight lines by the time as in years old,
Speaker 1: and landed in some corn field. They caught a town
Speaker 1: on the groove, so I climbed up on that watertown. Man,
Speaker 1: But the city was a dope show. And that's when
Speaker 1: I spied you. And we didn't mind on that chuck
Speaker 1: stop driving stives. We were teenage troop of dolls hopping
Speaker 1: down box cars for a hell level one week round
Speaker 1: it's death to whipple hass you by my friends are
Speaker 1: scattered round. One of these days you would be babe,
Speaker 1: We're gonna spell the whole bucket and paint this town.
Speaker 1: Paint this time painted red white of glory, painted blue
Speaker 1: for the cops tailing your old man Ford shimmy, A
Speaker 1: found power lines and frinks from an archy signs that's
Speaker 1: what you do when you're fifteen years old were painted
Speaker 1: yellow for a warning they'll never take us a lie?
Speaker 1: Are we given our hearts to? This is part break
Speaker 1: City where far kids go to break. I all die well,
Speaker 1: he's dustin wife has you by? My friends are scattered
Speaker 1: a round one of the east days you would be bad.
Speaker 1: We're gonna smell the whole bucket and pain't this time?
Speaker 1: Pain't this sign? Now? The strain don't stop like it
Speaker 1: used to in the same rist by more than a
Speaker 1: mild still all these train upocket kids that grow up
Speaker 1: thinking riss the place by will soon by? And you
Speaker 1: and me, babe, we feed it away like the yive
Speaker 1: book page butt and now all I god lift its
Speaker 1: not heard under my finger? Day? Wouldn't we went digging
Speaker 1: for gold? Oh well, it's just a why be hashed
Speaker 1: you by cry by just fitting around turn One of
Speaker 1: these days they just might flat your way baking fill
Speaker 1: the hole, damn booking this time? Hey this hey, this
Speaker 1: catch scar Jerry Pentecost, thank you so much, thanks for
Speaker 1: having us. Thanks to Old Crows, Catch Sport and Jerry
Speaker 1: Pentecost for playing the title track off their new album
Speaker 1: Paint This Town, and for sharing their inspiration and stories
Speaker 1: of us. You're our favorite Old Crow Medicine show songs.
Speaker 1: Check out the playlist at broken Record podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube
Speaker 1: dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find
Speaker 1: all of our new episodes. You can follow us on
Speaker 1: Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced help from
Speaker 1: the a Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Holiday, Eric Sandler, and
Speaker 1: Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive
Speaker 1: producer is Mia Leve. Broken Record is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others from Pushkin,
Speaker 1: consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast
Speaker 1: subscription and that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad free
Speaker 1: listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin
Speaker 1: Plus on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and if you'd like the show,
Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
Speaker 1: podcast app or The musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.