Old Crow Medicine Show frontman Ketch Secor announces his debut solo album Story The Crow Told Me will release July 11 on Equal Housing Records via Firebird Music. Recorded at his own Hartland Studios and co-written/produced with Jody Stevens (Luke Bryan, Jake Owens), Story The Crow Told Me is a coming-of-age saga about a dreamer who carved his path to the top, one song at a time. The album is sharply written and wildly creative, featuring cameos from Molly Tuttle, Marty Stuart and even Old Crow alums Critter Fuqua and Willie Watson, as well as poignant samples from Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.
Along with the announcement, Secor has also released the debut single “Dickerson Road,” a tribute to East Nashville’s boulevard of broken dreams featuring guitar from The Cadillac Three’s Jaren Johnston. The official video was featured this morning at Rolling Stone, who said “Featuring strung-out, skronk-blues guitar from the Cadillac Three’s Jaren Johnston, the track evokes the gritty, hustling, danger-around-the-corner vibe of Dickerson Pike, a gasoline alley of car lots, tire shops, and seedy motels.”
In between Old Crow Medicine Show tour dates, Ketch Secor will hit the road for his solo Story The Crow Told Me Tour this July, before jumping on the Railroad Revival Tour with Mumford & Sons and Friends in August as a member of the “house band” along with Celisse, Chris Thile, Leif Vollebekk, Lucius, Madison Cunningham, Nathaniel Rateliff and Trombone Shorty. Find a full list of dates below or visit his website.
About the new single, Secor explains: “The Grand Ole Opry has stars and the Hall of Fame has plaques, and in the year 2000 there was one premier destination for Nashville’s castoffs, rejects, n’er-do-wells, petty thieves, lowlifes, losers and users; so like a barfly to a bottle I went to where I felt I belonged, straight up Dickerson Road. Nowadays you can only catch a fleeting glimpse of the misfit glory that once teemed down this boulevard of broken dreams, but once in awhile I’ll see some stray dog licking at some grease trap and know they’re still clawing their way to the top of trash pile down on The Dick.”
Now a Nashville resident for 25 years, Secor reflects on a quarter century spent in Music City and beyond with an album that is equal parts coming-of-age story, road-warrior autobiography, and love letter to the city that watched him grow into a man. Story The Crow Told Me details a Kerouac-worthy journey through the misfit wilderness of life, love, longing, and leaving home, filled to the brim with spoken-word vocal performances, punky tempos, bluegrass harmonies, honking harmonica, and fiddle. With these 12 songs, Secor showcases the full range of his musical talents – playing nearly a dozen instruments across the album and co-writing every track. Skilled in reinterpreting the sounds of the past for today’s audience, Secor sets the past 25 years of his music-making life to a new soundtrack.
“There are a lot of things happening at this point in my life that are causing me to be more retrospective,” he explains. “I’ve been in the game a long time. I do enjoy looking forward, but old-timey music is about simultaneously looking forward and backward at the same time. That’s why it’s a regressive art. You go back with it, but that’s where the strength is. The challenge is to carry the substance of the past into the present.”
Ketch Secor is a wheel-spinning multitasker whose recent projects include TEDx Talks, online variety shows, documentaries like Ken Burns’ Country Music (where he served as a consultant and interviewee) and Louder Than Guns (which he co-produced with Doug Pray and David Greene), a children’s book, a stage musical, and even the launch of a primary school in Nashville. His two-time GRAMMY-winning band Old Crow Medicine Show just celebrated their 25-year anniversary with the GRAMMY-nominated album Jubilee and the first-ever vinyl release of their debut album O.C.M.S., remastered by producer David Rawlings.
