Old Crow Medicine Show Bring Incredible Energy, Musicianship to Little Rock's The Hall

by Julian Spivey

Julian Spivey Photo

Old Crow Medicine Show brought its incredible musicianship and showmanship to The Hall in Little Rock, Ark., on Saturday, September 27, for one of the most energetic performances I’ve ever seen from any act.
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I’ve seen O.C.M.S. twice before at a makeshift outdoor stage in front of Little Rock’s Clinton Presidential Center during the sweltering summer, but this indoor show at The Hall was the group at the best I’ve seen them.

O.C.M.S. can pretty much do it all musically, and they proved that much on Saturday night with their usual brand of alternative country, which mixes traditional country sounds with folk and bluegrass music. In addition, they performed gospel numbers, old-timey blues standards, and even some soul-funk in covering Sly & the Family Stone’s 1968 hit “Everyday People.” And the band members do all of this while switching off between instruments and vocals – every single band member played took at least one song on vocals on Saturday night, and also performed multiple instruments during the show. Even the band’s stage tech, Tyler Nichols, played accordion on multiple songs, while keeping the instruments tuned and stringed for the rest of the band – he was also an incredibly entertaining baton twirler during one performance.

Ketch Secor, the band’s frontman and its last original member (though bassist Morgan Jahnig has been with the group since its first studio album in 2004), is the engine behind the band, leading the way front and center on the stage and taking lead vocals on the majority of the songs, though he’s sharing the load more these days than I remember in the past.

Jahnig got the crowd pumped with a performance of “Humdinger,” off the band’s 2008 album Tennessee Pusher, which was written and originally performed by band member Kevin Hayes. It’s nice to see that some of the tunes on which Secor isn’t the main vocalist have remained within the band when band members have left throughout the years.

Cory Younts, who’s from Little Rock, takes vocal lead on most songs of anybody in the group that isn’t Secor, and does so admirably with performances such as “Lord Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise,” which flowed smoothly into a cover of Jerry Lee Lewis’s rock & roll classic “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” Younts played keyboards, banjo, drums, harmonica and mandolin during the show.

Mike Harris, the band’s lead guitarist, who also dabbled on banjo during the show, took lead on the gospel number “Take ‘Em Away,” which was originally a lead vocal for former band member Critter Fuqua.

Chance McCoy returned to the band this year after a five-plus year hiatus, and entertained the crowd on acoustic guitar, fiddle and banjo. And, PJ George, the newest member of O.C.M.S. show who joined in 2023, was the band’s primary drummer, but also played accordion, fiddle and guitar throughout the show and took lead vocals on some song or another I can’t remember off the top of my head, because there was that much mix-matching on stage on Saturday night.

O.C.M.S. is so raucous that I was concerned they wouldn’t play some of my favorite songs of theirs during the show, which are slower, and hadn’t been on recent setlists, so I was incredibly surprised and gratefully so when they performed two of my favorites in “Caroline,” off Tennessee Pusher, and “Levi,” off 2012’s Carry Me Back. Secor didn’t speak a whole lot between songs but did tell the story of how “Levi” came about when he heard about a soldier, Leevi Barbard, who fought and died in Iraq and had his favorite song, the band’s “Wagon Wheel,” played at his funeral.

The group split its set between original numbers and covers that ranged from not all that surprising like Bob Wills/Willie Nelson’s “Stay A Little Longer” and Alabama’s “Dixieland Delight,” which the band had recorded for a tribute album some years back, to pretty surprising like the previously mentioned “Everyday People” and The Bellamy Brothers’ ‘80s country hit “Redneck Girl.”

Secor, who released his first solo album – Story The Crow Told Me – in July, got the chance to show off one of his solo numbers with the excellent “Old Man River,” which certainly feels at home at an O.C.M.S. show.

The band finished their set with the tune that has become the one most synonymous with them – 2004’s “Wagon Wheel,” which was a cult favorite when they recorded it and gained a new, more known life when country singer Darius Rucker took it to No. 1 on the Billboard country chart in 2013.

The band returned to the stage for an epic three-song encore that began with Younts taking the lead on “Down Home Girl,” while Secor took his turn behind the keys for the first time during the evening. Younts cracked up the crowd with his best Sabrina Carpenter impression with risqué dance moves during the performance.

Following “Down Home Girl,” the group excited everybody in attendance with a terrific sing-along of The Band’s classic “The Weight,” in which nearly every member of the band took a verse on vocals. It instantly became one of my all-time favorite live covers I’ve seen.

The band finished the evening with the old Hank Williams gospel classic, “I Saw the Light,” which also turned into a giant sing-along with the crowd.

If you’ve never had a chance to see Old Crow Medicine Show live, I implore you to find tickets when they are near your town – you simply won’t regret it.

Singer-songwriter Emily Fenton opened the show with about a 20–25-minute set featuring tunes from her 2023 album Hello, from Planet Earth, which included cute numbers like “Favorite Song” and “Sunny Saturday,” as well as an ode to Arkansas (“Down in Arkansas”) and weed smoking (“Roaches”).