Old Crow Medicine Show: Jubilee Tour
with Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway
Old Crow Medicine Show
Old Crow Medicine Show began in late September of 1998 when a monkey wrench gang of old-time string band musicians, most of us still in our teens, left Ithaca, New York to cross the Canadian border and play our way to the Pacific. We brought our pawnshop fiddles and banjos, guitars and washboards to downtown street corners across Ontario, to paper mill towns above Lake Superior, farmers markets in Manitoba, Indian reservations in South Dakota, and out to the streets of Vancouver and Victoria, Seattle and Portland. Along the way, we discovered a unique country sound both old and new, foreign and familiar. We knew we had captured something special.
The lineup was fluid, just hitch up the best available talent around at the time…and if you had a car that was a plus! But right from the start, it was me in the driver’s seat of that black ’82 Volvo Station Wagon with the flames painted on the side, Critter Fuqua riding shotgun, and in the rearview there was Willie Watson riding in Kevin Hayes’ Ford Econoline van (we called it the White Whale). Standing behind the big doghouse bass was founding member Benny Gould and, when he wasn’t birdwatching, wily Kevin Ahearn played the banjo. We had painter/poet Jake Hascup along for the ride and Shani Abel, a sassy Lubbock Texan who sold found objects during our street corner sets.
After recrossing the continent we decided on moving to the mountains of North Carolina to further explore our newfound musical farrago. Once there, Old Crow lived off the land, worked in tobacco fields, made corn whiskey, and learned from the old-timers the affairs of plain living. Willie and Benny built banjos. Critter trimmed Fraser firs. Kevin and I shared a cabin deep in a holler with no electricity or plumbing (we did have a sheep, Daisy, and a potbelly pig named Jazz). We were a collective, immersed deeply in the richness of Appalachia, but more than that we were a pack of friends becoming a band.
After a chance encounter on a downtown curb in Boone, NC with flat pick legend Doc Watson we were invited to Merlefest where we caught the attention of Nashville, moving here in 2000, and bringing in tow buck dancing multi-instrumentalist Matt Kinman. Like in Boone before, busking continued to bear more than just tips. One night on Lower Broadway, Morgan Jahnig threw a dollar in the case and 20 years later he’s still our bassist. Gill Landry joined the band in a similar fashion in Jackson Square, New Orleans. During the early 2000s, as Critter struggled with addiction, Old Crow brought in banjo players from Richie Stearns to Dave Rawlings to help plug the gap; even Bucky Baxter played a few shows in the lineup.
No matter who was on the stage in support, there was always Willie and me front and center, our fiddle and guitar lines weaving and swooping in attack formation. Altogether we built a following around our string band revival sound, finding a growing legion of fans hungry for roots music and capturing the hearts of acclaimed artists like John Prine, Gillian Welch, and Marty Stuart who helped propel our music. We found early exposure from both Garrison Keillor and Conan O’Brian who helped fan the flames we’d been lighting across the country with a relentless touring schedule of club dates and opening slots for artists from Ricky Skaggs to Loretta Lynn to Dave Matthews Band to Willie Nelson.
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway
On her new album, City of Gold, Molly Tuttle, joined by her band Golden Highway, shares a batch of spellbinding stories that span time and place: wildly colorful fables populated by gold miners and fortune tellers, true-to-life tales of love and loss and a fast-changing world, and a reimagining of Alice in Wonderland set in the backwoods of Kentucky, to name just a few. The follow-up to 2022’s Crooked Tree—a widely lauded LP that won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album, with Tuttle earning a Best New Artist nomination—the Northern California-raised musician’s fourth full-length album brings those narratives to a resplendent form of bluegrass rooted in her virtuosic guitar playing. Like Crooked Tree, whose accolades also include an International Folk Music Award for Album of the Year, City of Gold, is co-produced with bluegrass legend Jerry Douglas, showcasing the extraordinary musicianship that made Tuttle the first woman ever named Guitar Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association. But this time around, the Nashville-based singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist chose to record with her live band for the first time—a move that lends a potent new energy to her exquisitely crafted sound.
