With names like Chance, Ketch, and Critter, you just know that the guys in Old Crow Medicine Show (OCMS) are the real deal . From busking on the streets of upstate New York to hitting the stage at the Grand Ole Opry, they’ve kept their string band roots strong and deep while growing into a Grammy-winning recording and touring outfit. What’s more, they enjoy a unique connection to that ever-enigmatic Nobel Prize–winning no-show, Bob Dylan. On Thursday, May 4, OCMS will take its relationship with Dylan one big step further when it begins a series of concerts in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Blonde on Blonde, the 1966 double album recorded in Nashville that many consider to be Dylan’s finest.
Last spring, the group played its all-Blonde on Blonde program for two nights in the CMA Theater of Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame, and on April 28, it will drop a live album on Columbia Nashville, 50 Years of Blonde on Blonde, which documents those shows from May. They will then play the record in sequence and in its entirety every night on a two-month tour of the U.S., the U.K., and the Netherlands. Thanks to UCSB’s Arts & Lectures, the opening night of that tour is here at the Granada.
Old Crow multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter Ketch Secor’s history with Dylan rivals that of any artist working today. As a teenager, he devoured every scrap of recording he could find by the man, claiming to have listened to “nothin’ but Bob for four years.” Through bandmate Critter Fuqua, Secor discovered an abandoned track called “Rock Me Mama” from the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack sessions. As a homesick kid at a New Hampshire boarding school, Secor completed the song, which he eventually dubbed “Wagon Wheel.” Years later, after having played it thousands of times as young buskers, Old Crow Medicine Show went into the studio and Secor contacted Dylan about acquiring the rights.