Old Crow Medicine Show returns to form with Carry Me Back

By: Colin Rabyniuk –

After announcing a hiatus in 2011, Old Crow reunited with a new label (ATO) and a their first new album since 2008’s Tennessee Pusher.

Old Crow Medicine Show’s first post-hiatus album, Carry Me Back, continues the traditional Americana sound that they have cultivated over their past seven releases. It calls back to an age of freighthopping and bootlegged moonshine. It twangs and jangles. Fiddles and harmonicas drive and punctuate the music.

Founding member Critter Fuqua is back with the band after several years apart. Responsible for early Old Crow classics like “Big Time in the Jungle,” and “Take ‘Em Away,” Fuqua has helped bring a renewed energy to the band.

“Mississippi Saturday Night” is the album’s frantic, standout track. It keeps the pace of a speeding, southbound train. And as it charges past old tobacco fields at the feet of the Appalachians, you can almost feel the wind whipping through your hair from outside the car.

“Ain’t It Enough” is another highlight, though for different reasons. Here the wailing and footstomping give way to a quietly plucked guitar and a sorrowful harmonica. “Ain’t it enough,” frontman Ketch Secor sings, “to live by the ways of the world, to be part of the picture whatever it’s worth.” He seems to lament life’s excess and frills, crying for a time more simple and free.

Old Crow is a time capsule of sorts. They are firmly rooted in old time folk and bluegrass and last year the band went on a Railroad Revival tour with Mumford and Sons and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes which saw them spend eight days as they travelled around the American southwest in vintage rail cars, performing outdoors at trainyards.

Folk and bluegrass are genres defined by their authenticity and emotion. It doesn’t matter so much how you play as how you feel when you play. This is what makes the music so captivating and enduring. On Carry Me Back, Old Crow combines their technical skill with old time feel creating a folk classic for modern times. It’s a strange album to jump into with much reference, however, insistent listeners will be rewarded with an album perfect for summer runaways and roadtrips.