Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Old Crow Medicine Show

Transcript

Old Crow Medicine Show · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, today we're featuring a chat with two
0:22
Speaker 1: members of the Nashville based string band Old Crow Medicine Show.
0:26
Speaker 1: We've got lead singer Catch scor and drummer Jerry Pentecost.
0:30
Speaker 1: Since Foreman in nineteen ninety eight, Old Crow has helped
0:33
Speaker 1: to preserve folk and blues songs that often pre date
0:36
Speaker 1: even World War Two. Of course, in the best of
0:39
Speaker 1: the folk tradition, they put their own spin on those
0:41
Speaker 1: songs and also have written a number of their own tunes.
0:45
Speaker 1: Old Crow's most successful song to date, the platinum certified
0:48
Speaker 1: wagon Wheel, was written around a Bob Dylan course catch
0:51
Speaker 1: Herd on an Old Dylan bootleg. In twenty thirteen, Darius
0:55
Speaker 1: Rucker of Hooting the Blowfish covered that song, making it
0:58
Speaker 1: a contemporary country music hit and even earned a Grammy.
1:02
Speaker 1: On today's episode, Bruce Sellem talks to Catch Scorps and
1:05
Speaker 1: Jerry Pentecost about Old Crow's latest album, Paint This Town.
1:09
Speaker 1: They share how the raising awareness around the major contributions
1:12
Speaker 1: black musicians like Ray Charles and d Ford Bailey have
1:16
Speaker 1: made to country music, and then Ketch recalls Old Crow's
1:20
Speaker 1: early days when they went through what he calls hill
1:22
Speaker 1: Billy Bootcamp learning how to make whiskey farm tobacco and
1:27
Speaker 1: also shoot groundhogs. This is broken record liner notes for
1:34
Speaker 1: the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Adlam with
1:38
Speaker 1: Ketch C Corps and Jerry Pentecost of Old Crow Medicine Show.
1:42
Speaker 1: So we're welcoming one third of the Old Crow Medicine Show,
1:46
Speaker 1: catch S Corp and Jerry Pentecost. Welcome, Thank you so
1:51
Speaker 1: much for doing this, Thanks for having us. It's wonderful
1:53
Speaker 1: to be here. You have a new album out on
1:56
Speaker 1: Ato Records, Is that right? That's right, and it's called
1:59
Speaker 1: Paint This Town and it is a very ambitious, sprawling
2:05
Speaker 1: album with a lot of different styles. And I'm much
2:09
Speaker 1: heavier sound even than your last album, which people said
2:11
Speaker 1: had a very heavy sound. Can you tell me just
2:13
Speaker 1: a little bit about making this record, how it all
2:16
Speaker 1: came together? Well, sure, thanks for that introduction of it.
2:20
Speaker 1: I like anything that sounds ambitious sounds cool to me,
2:23
Speaker 1: especially here in New York City. Well, so, yeah, we're
2:26
Speaker 1: just trying to keep up with the times. Man. There's
2:27
Speaker 1: a lot to sing about and talk about in times
2:30
Speaker 1: like these, and this was the record that we made
2:33
Speaker 1: in face masks from a six foot distance in an
2:37
Speaker 1: unvaccinated space because they weren't available yet, just waiting for
2:42
Speaker 1: the final green light to go down to the Walmart
2:46
Speaker 1: and Franklin and get our first shot. I said before,
2:50
Speaker 1: it is very ambitious. It's a very rocking record for
2:54
Speaker 1: you guys, more electric guitar. It sort of reminds me
2:57
Speaker 1: that there's more rock and roll in country right now
3:00
Speaker 1: than there is on the pop charts. I think it
3:02
Speaker 1: has to do with the Americano music scene being such
3:06
Speaker 1: a wide open platform to know that spectrum of sound.
3:11
Speaker 1: Ever since that term was coined, it was I've thought
3:14
Speaker 1: of it as sort of the lint trap in the
3:16
Speaker 1: spin cycle of the country music dryer. You know, everything
3:21
Speaker 1: that isn't keeping up on the charts gets collected, and
3:25
Speaker 1: that includes Loretta Lynn, you know, some of the you know,
3:30
Speaker 1: mainstay performers, anybody who hasn't had a hit since nineteen
3:33
Speaker 1: nineties suddenly Americana and then also a lot of you know,
3:38
Speaker 1: new fresh faces or folks like us that have been
3:41
Speaker 1: around since before Americana, or like Gillian Welch who predates
3:45
Speaker 1: some Americana by ten years when it was called old
3:47
Speaker 1: country and you know, like Gillian and David, we always
3:51
Speaker 1: wanted to rock, even though we set a course with
3:55
Speaker 1: acoustic instruments, and that's the pathway Old Crow picked, was
3:59
Speaker 1: to be an acoustic rock band. But that doesn't prohibit
4:03
Speaker 1: us from plugging in every now and then. Well you
4:06
Speaker 1: do on this album. Can you tell me a little
4:08
Speaker 1: bit about Reasons to Run? I just thought it was
4:10
Speaker 1: such a beautiful song. Sure. Well. I started this band
4:13
Speaker 1: with my best friend and boy we had We've had
4:17
Speaker 1: a long road together. We met in the seventh grade
4:20
Speaker 1: in the Shennanoah Valley of Virginia and both found this
4:24
Speaker 1: calling to go to Nashville. Really, we wanted to go
4:28
Speaker 1: to Nashville when we were in the eighth grade. What
4:31
Speaker 1: we really wanted to do was to get somebody to
4:33
Speaker 1: go into the corner store and buy us some beer
4:36
Speaker 1: and some cigarettes, and then we'd go to Nashville. We
4:40
Speaker 1: wanted to hitchhike the whole way. We were writing songs together.
4:43
Speaker 1: This is my pal Critter few Quay and Critter has
4:45
Speaker 1: spent in and out, you know, fifteen twenty years in
4:49
Speaker 1: this twenty three year old band, but was always a
4:52
Speaker 1: little bit in, a little bit out because of the
4:54
Speaker 1: things that Kritter needed to do to you know, find
4:57
Speaker 1: stability and you know, solid ground on his own, which
5:01
Speaker 1: he's found beautifully but has found largely outside of this
5:06
Speaker 1: professional workscape. So what I mean the truth is that's
5:09
Speaker 1: a song about saying goodbye to your you know, your collaborator,
5:12
Speaker 1: your your sidekick. M It's also is it from his
5:17
Speaker 1: point of view? Because of course the lines are you know,
5:20
Speaker 1: running out of reasons to run, which is great great line.
5:24
Speaker 1: Is that something that comes from you as well that
5:27
Speaker 1: you were wondering how long can I keep doing this? Yeah?
5:31
Speaker 1: For me, I had this one chance encounter with Merrell
5:35
Speaker 1: Haggard and we did We did a tour together. You know.
5:39
Speaker 1: It was some most amazing tour. It kicked off in
5:41
Speaker 1: Sierra Vista, Arizona, which I had never been to before
5:45
Speaker 1: and probably won't ever go back to because it's hard
5:48
Speaker 1: to sell tickets without the hag In Sierra Vista, it's
5:52
Speaker 1: way down south, it's right by No Gallus, it's a
5:54
Speaker 1: military base. And when we we've opened up for him
5:58
Speaker 1: and the governor came out and he had this like
6:01
Speaker 1: sixty or one hundred pound bag onions which he presented
6:06
Speaker 1: to Merle Haggard and said, this is the new crop
6:09
Speaker 1: of the season, you know, and just that confluence of ag,
6:14
Speaker 1: the hag and the military, the proximity to Mexico, everything
6:20
Speaker 1: about it was just beautiful and so country music. You know.
6:23
Speaker 1: We'd met that night and he whispered in my ear
6:26
Speaker 1: it was so beautiful. And a couple of years later
6:29
Speaker 1: I heard a quote in which they asked him about,
6:31
Speaker 1: you know, reflecting on his career, and he said, the
6:34
Speaker 1: part I didn't realize was that I was signing up
6:36
Speaker 1: for a fifty year bus ride. And there's something about
6:40
Speaker 1: it that just gave me chills and hurt. You know,
6:43
Speaker 1: it hurts to think about that, because a fifty year
6:47
Speaker 1: bus ride sounds real lonesome. I know, it's what she
6:50
Speaker 1: gotta do to live this way and make shows and
6:54
Speaker 1: make the make the date and put on the gig
6:57
Speaker 1: and make everybody dance and cavort and clap and applaud
7:00
Speaker 1: and maybe make love afterwards. But the toll it takes
7:04
Speaker 1: on you, It hurts, and it'll run you down. What
7:08
Speaker 1: was it like being around Merle Haggard. Did he talk
7:11
Speaker 1: about his writing or songs or or was it all business?
7:15
Speaker 1: He's he gets the bag of onion, sings and songs
7:17
Speaker 1: and keeps going. A very soulful person, just like a
7:22
Speaker 1: mother Teresa kind of vibe, seemed to float, had a
7:26
Speaker 1: like a ben Kenobi kind of vibe. I just wanted
7:30
Speaker 1: to be close to him. The one time that we
7:33
Speaker 1: actually talked, I could feel he can't really close up
7:36
Speaker 1: to my ears, and I could feel his whiskers touch
7:40
Speaker 1: me so great and he whispered sounds good son, that's fabulous.
7:47
Speaker 1: I do want to talk mainly about the new album
7:49
Speaker 1: because it's a great album, but for people who don't
7:52
Speaker 1: know your whole history, there are some pretty amazing twists
7:56
Speaker 1: and turns along the way. But first of all, for
7:58
Speaker 1: both of you, did you grow up with music in
8:00
Speaker 1: your house? How did you come to this? I told
8:02
Speaker 1: a story the other day about how it is hitch
8:04
Speaker 1: hiking in Tallahassee and the bus picked me up and
8:07
Speaker 1: that's how I joined the band. And Mason Steele thinks
8:10
Speaker 1: that's how I got in the band, But ultimately I
8:14
Speaker 1: my real dad, which I didn't really grow up with.
8:17
Speaker 1: He was a drummer and so I remember him having
8:19
Speaker 1: this big red drum set around the house. So from
8:22
Speaker 1: early ages. I always wanted to play drums, couldn't afford
8:25
Speaker 1: one until I was fifteen, started gigging as soon as
8:28
Speaker 1: I graduated. Became a drummer for hire in my mid twenties,
8:32
Speaker 1: and randomly met Ketch backstage at the Rheman after one
8:36
Speaker 1: of the fabulous New Year's Eve shows, so a few
8:39
Speaker 1: years ago, and I thought, who is that drummer? I'd
8:44
Speaker 1: always wanted to have a real drummer in the band.
8:47
Speaker 1: We always kind of flirted with drummers, and there were
8:50
Speaker 1: enough percussionists in Old Crow because we're always been a
8:54
Speaker 1: multi instrumentalist band. Critter could play drums. Corey was a
8:57
Speaker 1: good drummer. But I didn't actually get together with Jerry
9:00
Speaker 1: because I thought we would he would join Old Crow.
9:02
Speaker 1: We got together talk about Ray Charles, Yeah, and about
9:06
Speaker 1: working on a project together, celebrating Charles and kind of
9:11
Speaker 1: unpacking the story and legacy and looking through the closet
9:15
Speaker 1: as we talked about the story of black country music
9:18
Speaker 1: in Nashville, kind of its wayward path and maybe that
9:22
Speaker 1: record will come out. One of the things that's happened
9:24
Speaker 1: since this conversation, which was four years ago, and ongoing
9:29
Speaker 1: conversations as we talked and met, you know, several times labels.
9:34
Speaker 1: One of the things that's come about is that finally
9:36
Speaker 1: the Country Music Hall of Fame has made Ray Charles
9:40
Speaker 1: a member. He wasn't a member. No, he wasn't, shocking right, yeah. Yeah.
9:46
Speaker 1: The the woman that accepted the award, she said that
9:50
Speaker 1: the modern sounds and country and Western was it's still
9:53
Speaker 1: to this day, the biggest crossover country record of all time.
9:56
Speaker 1: More people who didn't listen to country started to listen
10:00
Speaker 1: to the country because of that record than ever. I
10:02
Speaker 1: think it's amazing to think about and here we are,
10:05
Speaker 1: you know, like I don't know, fifty semi years later
10:09
Speaker 1: after that record, even more that you know, like now
10:12
Speaker 1: it was sixty sixty one, sixty one, Yeah, and your
10:16
Speaker 1: dad would what was he a jazz drummer? Was he
10:19
Speaker 1: a rock drum now? I honestly, I'm gonna venture to
10:22
Speaker 1: say r and b um, you know, like we've had
10:25
Speaker 1: some some contact over the years, but like we're you know,
10:28
Speaker 1: it's it's not what you would expect slash hope for
10:33
Speaker 1: so um. I grew up in a in a household.
10:35
Speaker 1: I grew up in a typical low income nineties household,
10:39
Speaker 1: you know, like I kind of listened everything. My friends
10:42
Speaker 1: played rock music and so they needed a drummer. When
10:45
Speaker 1: I got my drum set, couldn't wait. So I started
10:48
Speaker 1: off playing rock and punk rock and you know, anything
10:51
Speaker 1: that I could get my hands on at that time.
10:53
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until I think, um, I got in
10:56
Speaker 1: my like early twenties that I discovered led Zeppelin and
11:00
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd and all of that stuff. And then the
11:02
Speaker 1: early twenties was country because those were the gigs that
11:05
Speaker 1: were happening around Nashville. I decided that, like, if I
11:07
Speaker 1: wanted to be being blessed and privileged to be from
11:11
Speaker 1: Nashville and like wanted to be a member of this scene,
11:15
Speaker 1: I probably should learn how to play country. And actually
11:17
Speaker 1: the way that happened, I got a gig that I
11:19
Speaker 1: was forced to have to learn how to play country. Shuffles,
11:22
Speaker 1: trade beat, straight eights, you know, all the stuff that
11:25
Speaker 1: will require you to play, and it's deceptively difficult. It
11:30
Speaker 1: requires a lot of patients and listening. So your ears,
11:33
Speaker 1: I think, become your biggest assets. So I just dove in.
11:37
Speaker 1: I went into the history and in this past Sunday
11:39
Speaker 1: also Eddie Bears was inducted, who probably will go down
11:43
Speaker 1: as the greatest country drummer of all time. So you know,
11:45
Speaker 1: you have recordings from all these greats that you listen to,
11:48
Speaker 1: you do the homework, and but like whether you stay
11:51
Speaker 1: in the scene, you know, because I have a lot
11:53
Speaker 1: of friends that kind of jump in and out. So
11:56
Speaker 1: so I feel very fortunate to be in this band
11:59
Speaker 1: playing real country music. I don't know Eddie Bears, who
12:02
Speaker 1: did he play with, what was his style? So he's
12:05
Speaker 1: currently the drummer, one of the house drummers for the
12:09
Speaker 1: but he's a descendant of Larry London was the main guy,
12:14
Speaker 1: which was another major session drummer. I think it was
12:16
Speaker 1: like a third of the songs that were in the
12:18
Speaker 1: top forty one country and ninety he played drums on Wow,
12:22
Speaker 1: everything from Brooks and Done to Nce. I mean, you
12:27
Speaker 1: name it, any new or and by new I mean
12:30
Speaker 1: nineties you know, like country artist Garth, like all those guys,
12:33
Speaker 1: Like he's played on a track with just about everybody.
12:36
Speaker 1: So it would probably go down as the most recorded
12:38
Speaker 1: country drummer ball time. And I loved all that nineties
12:41
Speaker 1: country stuff too growing up in the Chendel Valley because
12:43
Speaker 1: that's all I heard. Yeah, country radio was the only thing.
12:46
Speaker 1: It was. Out of that or pop radio. There wasn't
12:48
Speaker 1: any anything else to listen to. And I love that
12:52
Speaker 1: kind of music, but it wasn't doing that much. It
12:55
Speaker 1: didn't make me want to go out and play those songs. Yeah,
12:58
Speaker 1: And for me, it was the discovery of the folk
13:02
Speaker 1: music of the nineteen sixties that just pulled me in.
13:06
Speaker 1: It was like a magnet to my soul man. And
13:09
Speaker 1: what was that? What was the first song you've heard
13:11
Speaker 1: that you can remember? It happened for me that my
13:16
Speaker 1: uncle went away to the Philippines to teach, and he
13:19
Speaker 1: left us all of the stuff. And among all of
13:22
Speaker 1: this stuff all these records. And I heard all these
13:24
Speaker 1: records when I was twelve, and I remember saying to
13:28
Speaker 1: my mom, Okay, it's time to take all my toys out.
13:31
Speaker 1: I found the records. Now I don't need toys anymore,
13:33
Speaker 1: and my mom cried like boxing them all up. The
13:38
Speaker 1: records were so great. It was a lot of motown,
13:40
Speaker 1: mostly motown. I heard so many great songs. Its twelve
13:44
Speaker 1: years old. But then I heard this record called Live
13:48
Speaker 1: at Newport Broadside, and that's when I learned to play
13:51
Speaker 1: my first song. I was twelve years old. I want
13:54
Speaker 1: to sing a little bit of it for you. In
13:59
Speaker 1: the state of Mississippi, many years ago, a boy of
14:05
Speaker 1: fourteen years got a taste of Southern law. He saw
14:09
Speaker 1: his friend of hanging. His color was his crime. The
14:13
Speaker 1: blood upon his jacket left a brand upon his mind.
14:18
Speaker 1: Too many martyrs and too many dead, too many lies,
14:24
Speaker 1: too many empty words were said, too many times for
14:29
Speaker 1: too many angry men. Oh let it never be again.
14:36
Speaker 1: It's called the ballot of Medgar Evers by phil Oakes.
14:40
Speaker 1: And I didn't know who Medgar Evers was, but I
14:44
Speaker 1: knew that he was worth marching for. Was it? That?
14:47
Speaker 1: Was it? The militancy of the song that you loved.
14:51
Speaker 1: It was a feeling that, like that civil rights mattered,
14:55
Speaker 1: and that for some reason it spoke to me. My
14:58
Speaker 1: first job was working in a barber shop. I shine shoes,
15:02
Speaker 1: and I would hear all the old men talk. They
15:05
Speaker 1: were all biggots, like really bigoted dudes, old men. You know.
15:09
Speaker 1: I lived in this in a town that had a
15:12
Speaker 1: sidewalk preacher. You know. It was nineteen eighty six and
15:15
Speaker 1: I was, you know, nine or something, and I'd walk
15:18
Speaker 1: to work and carry my little box, and I got
15:21
Speaker 1: a dollar a shine, and the big at Barber's would
15:25
Speaker 1: just talk all we had a We had the first
15:27
Speaker 1: African American governor of any state. His name was Douglas Wilder, great,
15:32
Speaker 1: great leader. And I felt like, well, that's what phil
15:36
Speaker 1: Oakes is singing about. Phil Oakes is making sure everybody
15:40
Speaker 1: knows that we have to stand up and make sure
15:43
Speaker 1: that equality gets hammered out, and you can only do
15:46
Speaker 1: it with a hammer. And that's when I heard Pete
15:49
Speaker 1: Seeger sing about having a hammer, and heard Pete sing
15:53
Speaker 1: about getting waist deep in the big muddy, and all
15:56
Speaker 1: of these songs all got me ready to hear Bob Dylan.
16:00
Speaker 1: I was primed. I had heard the other sounds, but
16:04
Speaker 1: then when I heard Bob, it was like finding, you know,
16:09
Speaker 1: Ecclesiastes for the first time. We'll dig into Bob Dylan's
16:13
Speaker 1: influence on catch C Corps, but first let's take a
16:15
Speaker 1: quick break and then we'll be back with more from
16:18
Speaker 1: bruce Headlam, Catch C Corp and Jerry Pentecost of Old
16:21
Speaker 1: Crow Medicine Show. We're back with more from bruce Headlam,
16:29
Speaker 1: Catch C Corps and Jerry Pentecost of Old Crow Medicine Show.
16:33
Speaker 1: Was your first instrument of the guitar or were you
16:36
Speaker 1: already playing the violin by then? No. I learned the
16:38
Speaker 1: fiddle last I learned. My first instrument was the juice harp.
16:42
Speaker 1: I learned it in the fourth grade for a school play,
16:46
Speaker 1: and I could do it right away. It was so
16:48
Speaker 1: I felt like kind of called into folk music. And
16:50
Speaker 1: then I learned the harmonica and then the guitar. I
16:53
Speaker 1: learned to play the banjo and I was fifteen, and
16:55
Speaker 1: that was a really important turn. That's when I was
16:58
Speaker 1: up at Exeter and I got a banjo teacher because
17:02
Speaker 1: I wanted to play like this guy, Happy Tround, as
17:05
Speaker 1: a New York banjo picker, played with Bob Dylan on
17:08
Speaker 1: the song call You Win o Nowhere. I thought that
17:10
Speaker 1: song was so great. Who we ride High Tomorrow us
17:14
Speaker 1: the day that my Bride's gonna come? Oo? Are you
17:18
Speaker 1: gonna fly down into the easy chair? Well, Happy Tromp
17:22
Speaker 1: plays it like a bluegrass player with a nice gentle role.
17:26
Speaker 1: And I petitioned the student affairs counsel to get me
17:30
Speaker 1: a banje teacher because they didn't have one at the
17:33
Speaker 1: world's most elite preparatory school in New England didn't have
17:38
Speaker 1: a banjo teacher. We got three Latin teachers. Oh yeah,
17:42
Speaker 1: I gonna learned Aramaic. But I had to petition to
17:47
Speaker 1: get me a damn banjet teacher. Well I did and
17:50
Speaker 1: they accepted it. But then they found me a teacher
17:53
Speaker 1: who played clawhammer. And that was the big fork in
17:56
Speaker 1: the road for me, was learning this primitive ultra American
18:01
Speaker 1: of the style that came from Africa. The part of
18:05
Speaker 1: the of the African instrument that is the American band
18:09
Speaker 1: show that is most from West Africa is when you
18:13
Speaker 1: play it like a drum, because that's what it is.
18:17
Speaker 1: It's the same thing as what Jerry's got over here,
18:20
Speaker 1: except instead of beating on it with stich, you play
18:24
Speaker 1: it with your finger. And the revolutionary thing about this
18:35
Speaker 1: is that it's both rhythm and melody. It's all about
18:37
Speaker 1: this drone string. Drone is always singing, no matter what,
18:46
Speaker 1: and it just it fills everything out. When I play
18:49
Speaker 1: the fiddle, it's the same way I always like to
18:51
Speaker 1: keep a drone string running. It's the same principle behind
18:54
Speaker 1: the bagpipes. A lot of folk musics use it. The
18:56
Speaker 1: hammer dulcimer, the ood. It's all about the drone. That's
19:00
Speaker 1: when you know that you're like calling in the herd.
19:05
Speaker 1: It's like out on the step kind of feelings. Now
19:09
Speaker 1: you were also when you were a teenager, you wrote
19:12
Speaker 1: your first big hit. We should just tell the story
19:14
Speaker 1: of Wagonwheel, because I think for a lot of people
19:18
Speaker 1: it's like, well the circle be unbroken or something. They
19:20
Speaker 1: didn't even know one person wrote it. It's got this
19:22
Speaker 1: great history, So just tell me a bit about that song. Well. Sure,
19:26
Speaker 1: So following my little chronology here, Once I was ready
19:30
Speaker 1: to discover Bob, I was ready to go deep, and
19:35
Speaker 1: I was like a Bob scholar in high school. I mean,
19:38
Speaker 1: my math teacher was flunking me. They were calling home
19:41
Speaker 1: to say, what's wrong with catch? If they busted me
19:44
Speaker 1: smoking pot. I was the only kid in the history
19:47
Speaker 1: of this high school that didn't get thrown out for
19:49
Speaker 1: burning grass, and thankfully I got caught with the kid
19:53
Speaker 1: with the highest GPA in the grade. But by the
19:56
Speaker 1: time I was about seventeen, I'd listened to every Bob
19:59
Speaker 1: Dylan record ever made, and then I was on the bootlegs,
20:03
Speaker 1: So that means I was about nineteen ninety four that fall,
20:07
Speaker 1: So Dylan had put out Probably World Gone Wrong at
20:10
Speaker 1: that point, which was the second of his nineties back
20:14
Speaker 1: to folk music albums which were just phenomenal. And it
20:18
Speaker 1: was maybe the year before Time out of Mind, which
20:21
Speaker 1: was a Grammy Award winning fabulous album that gave him
20:25
Speaker 1: a hit to make You Feel My Love, which Garth
20:28
Speaker 1: Brooks took to number one, and just a side story here,
20:32
Speaker 1: Wagon Wheel when Darius took it to number one, was
20:35
Speaker 1: the second time that Bob Dylan had a number one
20:39
Speaker 1: country hit as a songwriter and not as a vocalist.
20:43
Speaker 1: So tell me more. How did the song come about? Well,
20:45
Speaker 1: the aforementioned critter was over at the Virgin Megastore in London,
20:52
Speaker 1: England with his mom and dad, and you know, he
20:55
Speaker 1: had twenty pound note and he bought this bootleg off
21:00
Speaker 1: out in front of the Virgin Megastore where you could
21:02
Speaker 1: buy all the good shit. So he bought this thing
21:05
Speaker 1: called like the genuine Columbia bootleg series, not made by Columbia,
21:09
Speaker 1: and it had some really good stuff on it. Nineteen
21:12
Speaker 1: seventy two, I think Sam Peck and Paul directs this
21:14
Speaker 1: film called Pat Garrett and Billy the kid. I'm convinced
21:18
Speaker 1: that after he wrote rock Me Mama, he's like, nah,
21:21
Speaker 1: this is a very good And then he wrote Knocking
21:23
Speaker 1: on Heaven's Store. To me, the songs are sort of
21:25
Speaker 1: brother and sister. I think that Knocking on Heaven's Door is,
21:29
Speaker 1: of course a far superior tune. But he left this scrap.
21:33
Speaker 1: It's about you know, thirty six seconds or forty five seconds.
21:37
Speaker 1: And I heard it on this tape that critter sent
21:39
Speaker 1: me because he dubbed it, and he's sent it up
21:41
Speaker 1: to me in New Hampshire at my high school, and
21:44
Speaker 1: I Scott, I couldn't get that song out of my head.
21:47
Speaker 1: Rock Me Mama, like the wind and the rain. Oh.
21:51
Speaker 1: I loved it so much. And then, you know, one afternoon.
21:55
Speaker 1: This was like the third or fourth time I tried
21:57
Speaker 1: to rewrite a Bob Dylan's song. I remember when I
22:00
Speaker 1: was a kid, I rewrote The Lord's Prayer into a song.
22:02
Speaker 1: I was always taking something and turning it into a
22:05
Speaker 1: song or wiggling it around. I'd take leaves of grass.
22:09
Speaker 1: I mean, that thing is full of songs or anyway.
22:13
Speaker 1: So I got to Rock Me Mama. I wrote penn
22:16
Speaker 1: some quick autobiographical verses about getting out of New Hampshire
22:20
Speaker 1: and going down south where I felt I belonged. Now,
22:23
Speaker 1: I was gonna move to North Carolina. I was gonna
22:24
Speaker 1: join an old time string band, be a picker man.
22:27
Speaker 1: I was gonna hitchhike the whole way. And I put
22:29
Speaker 1: in every place name I could think of, even ones
22:32
Speaker 1: that I'd never been to and just imagined. And it's
22:36
Speaker 1: funny because I feel like I wrote myself a bus
22:38
Speaker 1: ticket back to merle in that fifty year bus ride.
22:41
Speaker 1: Like I was, you know, seventeen and just dreaming about
22:44
Speaker 1: all the places I want to go. I didn't dream
22:46
Speaker 1: that far. It took me not much longer to start
22:49
Speaker 1: dreaming about Manitoba. You know. That's when Old Crow started.
22:53
Speaker 1: Old Crow was the seed of a dream about the
22:55
Speaker 1: Canadian prairie provinces. I was like, what is it gonna
22:58
Speaker 1: take to get way out there? Man? But anyway, I
23:02
Speaker 1: wrote this song real quick, and then I sang it
23:05
Speaker 1: for my friends. I was like, Wow, that thing is good,
23:08
Speaker 1: and we called it rock Me Mama, and I played
23:12
Speaker 1: it everywhere I went. Was that on your first album? Then? Well?
23:15
Speaker 1: Then then Old Crows started and we moved to Nashville,
23:19
Speaker 1: and we had then we had a manager, and it
23:22
Speaker 1: was time to select our tunes and we played you
23:26
Speaker 1: know what we still called rock Me Mama. When we
23:29
Speaker 1: were living up in East Tennessee, not far from Johnson City,
23:33
Speaker 1: we had this kind of pill popping friend that was
23:36
Speaker 1: a Vietnam Vet who had the tobacco allotment behind the
23:38
Speaker 1: house we were squatting in. It didn't have running water
23:42
Speaker 1: or electric or anything. And he came down. He's like,
23:44
Speaker 1: what are Ian's doing here? He's sort of befriended us,
23:47
Speaker 1: and you know, I was sort of looking for a
23:50
Speaker 1: party himself. One day, we were doing a show in Hickory,
23:53
Speaker 1: North Carolina, and we played rock Me Mama like we
23:56
Speaker 1: all like we often did, and afterwards he came up
23:59
Speaker 1: to me. He's real high in the parking lot and
24:01
Speaker 1: he said, you need to play that wagon we about
24:04
Speaker 1: every where you go. And it's the first time I'd
24:06
Speaker 1: ever heard it called that, and I was like, wow,
24:09
Speaker 1: that's got a ring to it. But at first I
24:11
Speaker 1: was like it felt a little weird. It was like two,
24:14
Speaker 1: it felt like corny, or really, would anybody like a
24:18
Speaker 1: song called wagon Wheel? It's called rock Me Mama? But anyway,
24:22
Speaker 1: by the time we got to Nashville, this old Hillbilly
24:25
Speaker 1: had definitely renamed it. So we played it for the label,
24:29
Speaker 1: and you know, they wanted to cut it. But then
24:32
Speaker 1: we had to get it published. So we got really
24:35
Speaker 1: lucky because we had this publishing administrator who knew how
24:38
Speaker 1: to get a hold of Bob's manager, and Bob's manager
24:41
Speaker 1: said wrote back to us a few weeks later saying, Okay,
24:45
Speaker 1: Bob approves it. He's going to call it a fifty
24:48
Speaker 1: fifty s corp Dylan split. Oh, but he wants you
24:52
Speaker 1: to know that Dylan didn't write it, and we're like what,
24:55
Speaker 1: and then he says, Dylan says that he got it
24:58
Speaker 1: from Arthur crowd Up. Well, I read in the liner
25:01
Speaker 1: notes of this song that Bob said he got rock
25:03
Speaker 1: Me Mama from called rock Me Baby, which is like
25:06
Speaker 1: rock man Baby. There really there's nothing about the wind
25:10
Speaker 1: and the rain or a southbound train, but that's what
25:13
Speaker 1: Bob said, so I took it for his word. But
25:15
Speaker 1: in the liner notes it says, oh, and Arthur Crudup
25:20
Speaker 1: wishes to attribute his recording rock Me Baby to the
25:23
Speaker 1: late great Big Bill Brunci, So that would have been
25:26
Speaker 1: Chicago in the twenties, Big Boy would have been Memphis
25:29
Speaker 1: in the fifties. So if you believe the story that
25:31
Speaker 1: Bob spun from Big Bill to Big Boy to Bob
25:36
Speaker 1: to me an Old Crow to Darius, then in that
25:40
Speaker 1: year long century gestation, the song sees the shared authorship
25:45
Speaker 1: of all five of us to become this big hit.
25:49
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about two more people who
25:52
Speaker 1: are very important in your career, and the first is
25:55
Speaker 1: Doc Watson. Can you tell that story? Sure? We were
25:58
Speaker 1: on the street corner. It was the fifth of July
26:01
Speaker 1: because on the fourth of July we made whiskey. We
26:04
Speaker 1: made it with a water distiller that we got from
26:07
Speaker 1: the old Lynnville Hospital because me and Gritter were cutting
26:10
Speaker 1: rebar stakes there for manpower job. We did a lot
26:13
Speaker 1: of odd jobs back then, and it got us a
26:16
Speaker 1: lot of the kind of color that we used to
26:17
Speaker 1: write songs later. It was all this period of time
26:20
Speaker 1: that I thought of as like a hillbilly boot camp
26:23
Speaker 1: for Old Crow, because you know, I mean, I learned
26:25
Speaker 1: how to play, and I was from the South, but
26:27
Speaker 1: like I went to prep school and I learned to
26:29
Speaker 1: play the banjo, I learned to play Southern music in
26:32
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. I learned to play Southern music in New
26:34
Speaker 1: Hampshire from a guy from New Hampshire who went south
26:37
Speaker 1: to learn to play Southern music and then went back
26:39
Speaker 1: to New Hampshire and then taught it to me, and
26:41
Speaker 1: I went back down south, and he learned all the
26:44
Speaker 1: good ship from the seventies, back when the Truvon was
26:47
Speaker 1: still intact, when you could find players who didn't play bluegrass.
26:52
Speaker 1: They only played old time, and it had for generations,
26:55
Speaker 1: but that died out in the seventies by the time
26:57
Speaker 1: that I came around, So we were a new crop,
27:00
Speaker 1: and I thought about us like a kind of new
27:02
Speaker 1: last city ramblers. We were like the college kids, you
27:05
Speaker 1: know with the beards who were like, gonna not go
27:08
Speaker 1: to Vietnam. We We're gonna like grow turn ups and
27:11
Speaker 1: ship woodstock or like nitty gritty or like nitty gritty
27:15
Speaker 1: out in Colorado. Was Yeah, just like that, only you know,
27:20
Speaker 1: in the nineties instead of in the seventies, which honestly
27:23
Speaker 1: probably wasn't as nearly as much fun up in northwest
27:27
Speaker 1: North Carolina in the nineties, where we found ourselves living
27:29
Speaker 1: on a six hundred acre thing that we were renting
27:31
Speaker 1: and working tobacco and cutting rebar and making whiskey and
27:35
Speaker 1: planting by the lunar signs and doing all the zany
27:37
Speaker 1: stuff that we were doing out of the box buyer
27:39
Speaker 1: book to try and authenticate country music and sort of
27:43
Speaker 1: like baptize ourselves and make ourselves worthy to sing songs
27:47
Speaker 1: about like pig meat and you know, groundhogs and shooting
27:52
Speaker 1: ground hogs and skinning them and making banjos. All the
27:55
Speaker 1: crazy stuff that we did that felt like a kind
27:58
Speaker 1: of important spiritual ceremony, got us in touch with the
28:02
Speaker 1: great Shaman of all these things. And we're busting on
28:05
Speaker 1: the street corner. We made whiskey and we were all hungover.
28:08
Speaker 1: But on the fifth of j we knew we wanted
28:09
Speaker 1: to go out and make a buck because all the
28:10
Speaker 1: tourists were in from Charlotte. So we walked down to
28:14
Speaker 1: the big corner store and boone the drug store there,
28:17
Speaker 1: and we said we bust there before, and this lady said,
28:20
Speaker 1: my daddy loves this kind of music. He and it's
28:22
Speaker 1: going to be here for a while. And we said, well,
28:24
Speaker 1: I don't know, just come back or tip usa, don't
28:26
Speaker 1: we're all hungover. She came back. About an hour later,
28:31
Speaker 1: she walked her dad, Doc Watson, across the street, and
28:34
Speaker 1: I just remember being dumb struck seeing him walk out
28:37
Speaker 1: of a red jeep Cherokee and Jay walk across the street.
28:41
Speaker 1: You know, he's blind and as his daughter's leading him,
28:44
Speaker 1: as Nancy Watson later became a great friend, and then
28:48
Speaker 1: Doc comes up and he just annoints us right there
28:51
Speaker 1: on the corner. Man was so beautiful. I can't believe
28:55
Speaker 1: it happens. I still can't believe it happened. And as
28:58
Speaker 1: it was happening, I thought, oh my god, it's happening.
29:02
Speaker 1: All of the things that me and Chritter thought were
29:04
Speaker 1: gonna happen are gonna happen. And what did he say
29:07
Speaker 1: when you were were playing? When he came playing, we
29:10
Speaker 1: were right in the middle of a tune called oh
29:13
Speaker 1: My Little Darlin that goes like Jimmy holds the wagon,
29:17
Speaker 1: Jimmy holds Little Darlin, you know, like a real old
29:26
Speaker 1: time rake and rude and rambling kind of number. He says,
29:31
Speaker 1: I was on that's some of the most authentic old
29:33
Speaker 1: time music I've heard in a long time. He gave
29:37
Speaker 1: like a radio quote. Nice and then and then he
29:43
Speaker 1: said I'd like you boys to play my festival that
29:45
Speaker 1: I have an honor on my son Merrel and he
29:47
Speaker 1: brought us to the moral Fest. Wow. So the other
29:50
Speaker 1: person I want to ask about is Marty Stewart. Well,
29:54
Speaker 1: after Doc found us at them and brought us to
29:57
Speaker 1: morral Fest, the next thing that happened was that the
30:00
Speaker 1: Grand Old Opry found us at morral Fest. Like we
30:03
Speaker 1: always knew to do, we busked, We did a stage show.
30:07
Speaker 1: Doc got us a slot and Alice Girard hosted brought
30:10
Speaker 1: us on at the traditional stage. But we sucked. We
30:14
Speaker 1: weren't used to playing a microphones, we were all out
30:18
Speaker 1: of tune. Everybody was kind of edgy, and we put
30:21
Speaker 1: on a terrible set and also nobody was there. And
30:24
Speaker 1: so afterwards we licked our wounds and we said, well,
30:26
Speaker 1: let's just open up a case right here by this fountain.
30:29
Speaker 1: We'll call this a stage of our own, and we
30:31
Speaker 1: just started busking. All the people came over us. We
30:34
Speaker 1: were the talk of the festival. And afterwards we got
30:38
Speaker 1: a phone call from Sally Williams at the Opery said,
30:41
Speaker 1: you know, I saw your festival sat at Merlefest at
30:44
Speaker 1: the fake stage you made up, I want you to
30:47
Speaker 1: come to Nashville and do the same thing out in
30:49
Speaker 1: front of the Grand Old Opry. So the summer of
30:52
Speaker 1: two thousand, we all came down to Nashville on the
30:54
Speaker 1: weekends and we'd stay in a like a twenty six
30:58
Speaker 1: dollar crack motel and we'd bust in front of the
31:00
Speaker 1: Grand Old Opry and then our shift would end about
31:03
Speaker 1: nine o'clock, we'd go downtown. We'd bust on Lower Broadway. God,
31:07
Speaker 1: we were making like eight hundred dollars on a Friday night,
31:10
Speaker 1: and we'd come back to that crack motel and we'd
31:13
Speaker 1: buy two cases of beer and a cart and smokes,
31:15
Speaker 1: and we would just just feel like kings and we
31:20
Speaker 1: were the high rollers in those motels. And it was
31:23
Speaker 1: a different Nashville. Like people weren't clamoring and moved to Nashville.
31:27
Speaker 1: There was like the country music thing, and there was healthcare.
31:30
Speaker 1: But you know, you could have bought those houses for nothing. Well,
31:34
Speaker 1: it was around that time that we stumbled into Marty Stewart.
31:38
Speaker 1: When we found that the Uncle Dave making Day's Festival
31:42
Speaker 1: had had a five hundred dollar prize. We thought, well,
31:44
Speaker 1: let's go down there and win it. And we went
31:46
Speaker 1: down to Murfresboro and we were busking there making a
31:50
Speaker 1: big hoot, and Marty Stewart walked in. He was the
31:53
Speaker 1: grand mason of the festival that year, and he brought
31:59
Speaker 1: us into his fold right away and made sure that
32:03
Speaker 1: we played the Oprey. He hosted our first Oprey debut
32:07
Speaker 1: at the Rhyman, you know, which which came just three
32:10
Speaker 1: months after that, and then you know, had us open
32:13
Speaker 1: for him, had us out to the house, made us
32:16
Speaker 1: know that his Nashville was a place that we were welcome,
32:21
Speaker 1: and he what was your first performance like in the Opry?
32:25
Speaker 1: It was in January when the Opry would traditionally move
32:29
Speaker 1: from its home at the Opry House down to its
32:33
Speaker 1: old home at the Rhyman Auditorium. And we all got
32:37
Speaker 1: dressed up in suits and we were all so nervous.
32:42
Speaker 1: Critter was so nervous he threw up in the trash
32:44
Speaker 1: can right there in the wings before we walked on,
32:47
Speaker 1: and we were all just sweat and bullets. And we
32:50
Speaker 1: came out there and Marty had given us each little
32:53
Speaker 1: gee gauze to where it was really helpful honestly to Kevin,
32:58
Speaker 1: our get Joe player. He gave a pair of glasses
33:02
Speaker 1: that had belonged to some old Hollywood movie star, and
33:06
Speaker 1: to me he gave a funny kind of vel vid
33:09
Speaker 1: bow tie that had belonged to Slim Whitman. And everybody
33:14
Speaker 1: had one little thing to like borrow for the set,
33:17
Speaker 1: because Marty's a collector, He's got all this crazy memorabilia.
33:22
Speaker 1: And we did some old time Holcomb songs that brought
33:25
Speaker 1: the house down, and when they asked for an encore,
33:29
Speaker 1: we didn't know what to do, so we just played
33:31
Speaker 1: the same song again and then they wanted another encore. Honestly,
33:35
Speaker 1: it felt the closest that I've ever felt to feeling
33:39
Speaker 1: like Hank Williams must have felt that time that he
33:43
Speaker 1: made his opery debut, or just to be Hank Williams.
33:47
Speaker 1: It was like there was no nothing digital about the world.
33:51
Speaker 1: It was like an analog moment. We were on AM radio,
33:56
Speaker 1: we were not on the internet. It was the year
34:00
Speaker 1: two thousand. I didn't have a cell phone. I was
34:05
Speaker 1: still carrying a spiral notebook in my back pocket. And
34:09
Speaker 1: the crowd in a hundred and twenty year old gospel
34:13
Speaker 1: union tabernacle all rose to its feet because we were
34:16
Speaker 1: playing one hundred year old music that made him feel joy.
34:21
Speaker 1: We have to take one last quick break, but after
34:23
Speaker 1: that we'll be back with more from Bruce Headlam, Catch
34:26
Speaker 1: S Corps, and Jerry Pentecost. We're back with the rest
34:33
Speaker 1: of Bruce's interview with Catching Jerry of All the Chrome
34:36
Speaker 1: Medicine Show. There's a song on your record I do
34:38
Speaker 1: want to talk about, which is de Ford Bailey Rides Again. Well,
34:42
Speaker 1: it's de Ford Rides Again, but it's about this incredible
34:45
Speaker 1: character to Ford Bailey. Can you talk a bit about that.
34:48
Speaker 1: When we were working on songs for the record, Ketch
34:51
Speaker 1: reached out to me and he was like, you know,
34:52
Speaker 1: like I've been working on this idea of writing a
34:54
Speaker 1: song about DeFord Bailey, and so like we got together
34:58
Speaker 1: and we just kind of started talking about it, you know,
35:01
Speaker 1: like talking about him as an individual, you know, like
35:03
Speaker 1: what he stood for, and it kind of actually I
35:05
Speaker 1: never told you this, but it made me think back
35:07
Speaker 1: to like in my early days of you know, like
35:10
Speaker 1: being this drummer for hire, you know, like and when
35:13
Speaker 1: I was starting to play country music, people would ask me,
35:15
Speaker 1: you know, like like do you want to be in
35:17
Speaker 1: country music? And I was like why there's no black
35:19
Speaker 1: people in country music, and every so often somebody would say,
35:22
Speaker 1: what about Depot Bailey? And I never knew who he was.
35:25
Speaker 1: And you know, like we played the Opery for years now,
35:28
Speaker 1: they've been members since what twenty twelve, twenty thirteen. Uh,
35:31
Speaker 1: there's not a really strong presence of him at the Opery.
35:35
Speaker 1: So like, as a African American individual, when I'm there,
35:39
Speaker 1: you know, like I I'm sensing for you know, like
35:42
Speaker 1: a feeling of belonging, you know, and uh and so
35:45
Speaker 1: like if you don't see representation, you know, like then
35:49
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to figure. So so yeah, so
35:52
Speaker 1: like I was really excited about resurrecting this, this legacy,
35:56
Speaker 1: this you know, like this wrong doing because that's kind
35:59
Speaker 1: of you know, like how how I look at it,
36:01
Speaker 1: this fallen soldier or pioneer of the Oprey. You know,
36:04
Speaker 1: everybody knows about Roy Cuff and Mini Pearl, but people
36:08
Speaker 1: seldom now about Defort Bailey. And he is a member
36:11
Speaker 1: of the Country Music Hall of Fame. It only took
36:13
Speaker 1: them what twenty some ode years after he died for
36:17
Speaker 1: them to do it. And you know, him being on
36:20
Speaker 1: the show when the term or the name Grand Old
36:24
Speaker 1: Opry was introduced for the first time, being the first
36:28
Speaker 1: African American member. You know, like there's just um, there's
36:32
Speaker 1: a lot dismissing. So you know, like we wanted to
36:34
Speaker 1: tell this this song about the legacy and the life
36:37
Speaker 1: of Defour Bailey, and it's it's actually, you know, kind
36:40
Speaker 1: of kind of sad. He was the first performer, wasn't
36:43
Speaker 1: he on the radio show? Yeah, the Grand Old Opry
36:47
Speaker 1: opened with an African American performer. He was a harmonica player,
36:51
Speaker 1: a harmonica wizard. They called him the Harmonica Wizard. And
36:54
Speaker 1: he would open up the show is on WSM by
36:59
Speaker 1: playing the sound of the freight train called the Pan
37:01
Speaker 1: American that would blow. That would blow as it went
37:04
Speaker 1: by the broadcast tower. And then he would sing his
37:12
Speaker 1: songs and he did fox chases in all this mimicry.
37:15
Speaker 1: And you know, he was the grandchild of slaves. Born
37:18
Speaker 1: in Smith County, Tennessee, eighteen ninety nine. He had polio
37:22
Speaker 1: when he was a kid. As an adult, he was
37:24
Speaker 1: about four foot nine, and he became the very first
37:30
Speaker 1: African American recording artist in Nashville. And he did that
37:33
Speaker 1: in the twenties. His albums were released to both a
37:36
Speaker 1: white and black audience. His acclaim from the opry. He
37:40
Speaker 1: was so popular. He was a national touring act. And
37:44
Speaker 1: he would go out on the road with Bill Monroe
37:47
Speaker 1: and they would have to put him in a suitcase
37:50
Speaker 1: to bring him into some of these hotels where he
37:53
Speaker 1: wasn't welcome as a black man in the South. He
37:56
Speaker 1: was so small he could ride in a steamer trunk.
37:59
Speaker 1: It kind of makes me want to cry when I
38:01
Speaker 1: think about that. Did he perform on stage with white performers? Oh? Yeah.
38:06
Speaker 1: And so when the Opery would go out on the
38:08
Speaker 1: tour is during the weeks, because you know, the Opery
38:11
Speaker 1: was a weekend show, but all through the weeks, opera
38:14
Speaker 1: members could play anywhere that they could get a booking,
38:16
Speaker 1: and that's where they could really make money because the
38:18
Speaker 1: opera didn't pay. So he would tour with Uncle Dave Machan,
38:21
Speaker 1: who was the biggest star of this era in which
38:25
Speaker 1: hillbilly music and vaudeville were sort of thick as thieves,
38:29
Speaker 1: and before anybody even called it country and Western, it
38:32
Speaker 1: was just called hillbilly music. DeFord Bailey was a hillbilly
38:35
Speaker 1: star and the first black recording artist in Nashville. So
38:40
Speaker 1: we knew we wanted to resurrect the story in the
38:44
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, the early eighties, after DeFord had been kicked
38:49
Speaker 1: off the opry, had his name dragged through the mud,
38:53
Speaker 1: became a shoeshine operator. Okay, let's back up. Why did
38:57
Speaker 1: he get kicked off the opera? Well, the story is
39:00
Speaker 1: that in nineteen forty one that BMI and a couple
39:06
Speaker 1: other songwriting performance royalty bear agencies determined that you could
39:13
Speaker 1: make more money if you did their catalog on the
39:16
Speaker 1: radio because of new broadcast a copyright laws that would
39:21
Speaker 1: were royalty bearing. And the opera says that they said
39:25
Speaker 1: to d Ford, if you're going to stay on the opera,
39:28
Speaker 1: you have to do a new catalog of songs, and
39:31
Speaker 1: d Ford said, well, I only play the songs I play.
39:35
Speaker 1: And then after he was then dismissed, they said that
39:39
Speaker 1: he was sullen in his work ethic as attributed to
39:43
Speaker 1: men of his color. That was the quote from the
39:48
Speaker 1: Honorable Judge D. Hay, who was the longtime radio voice
39:52
Speaker 1: of the Grand ol Opry. So they basically, you know,
39:56
Speaker 1: they blackballed him and he lived another forty years and
40:01
Speaker 1: eventually moved into federal housing he ran a successful shoeshine business,
40:07
Speaker 1: and then in the late seventies they started bringing him
40:10
Speaker 1: back to the Opry and kind of token rolls, old
40:12
Speaker 1: timers show and yeah, there was a folklorist who discovered
40:18
Speaker 1: him who's since become a friend of mine named David
40:20
Speaker 1: Morton who was working for HUD And he was, you know,
40:26
Speaker 1: a college grad, white kid, maybe at Vanderbilt or something,
40:32
Speaker 1: new employee that summer for HOOD. And he's going around
40:35
Speaker 1: in the housing projects checking in with residents, and somebody
40:39
Speaker 1: said he liked music, and some old lady said to him, well,
40:41
Speaker 1: if you like music, you need to go up to
40:43
Speaker 1: the eighth floor. Well, de Ford Bailey lives there. And
40:48
Speaker 1: he comes back home and to his dad in Alabama.
40:51
Speaker 1: His dad was born, you know, in the teens or something,
40:54
Speaker 1: and he said, oh, yeah, I just met this old
40:55
Speaker 1: black gentleman plays a harmonica. Allats his name, d Ford Bailey.
40:59
Speaker 1: You met Dvord Bailey. He's still alive because this guy,
41:02
Speaker 1: David Morton's father had listened to the Opry in the
41:05
Speaker 1: twenties and knew that Dvord was a legend. And so
41:10
Speaker 1: d Ford told David that he felt that God had
41:13
Speaker 1: called them together so that Dford's story could finally be
41:17
Speaker 1: retold and and Dford could finally say his piece. And
41:22
Speaker 1: so he wrote a book, he made a record. All
41:25
Speaker 1: of these things happen in the nineteen in the year
41:27
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty. I think he died in about nineteen eighty two.
41:30
Speaker 1: But I think the most moving thing for the whole
41:32
Speaker 1: story about me was I wanted to write a song
41:34
Speaker 1: about d Ford ever since I came to Nashville, but
41:37
Speaker 1: I never felt like it'd be appropriate for me, as
41:39
Speaker 1: a white country guy, to sing that song. And when
41:44
Speaker 1: Jerry and I got together, I mean, Jerry can write
41:46
Speaker 1: any song Jerry wants to write, but I thought that
41:48
Speaker 1: this might be a good song, and Jerry helped me
41:51
Speaker 1: finish it and then tell him about our trip after
41:54
Speaker 1: we both got COVID over Christmas. Oh yeah, So we
41:58
Speaker 1: got COVID three days before Christmas, and you know, we
42:02
Speaker 1: were just constantly checking in on each other because we
42:04
Speaker 1: both had to be isolated. And U and I say,
42:07
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of nice the day you want
42:08
Speaker 1: to go for a walk, And he was like, yeah,
42:10
Speaker 1: let's go to a cemetery. And I had a cousin
42:12
Speaker 1: that had just passed three days before we had COVID,
42:15
Speaker 1: So I was like, I wanted to go out there.
42:16
Speaker 1: And my mom's buried. Greenwood Cemetery's second oldest African American
42:21
Speaker 1: cemetery in Nashville. So I've got a lot of family
42:24
Speaker 1: out there, and yeah, you know, I said, how about Greenwood?
42:27
Speaker 1: And he was like perfect. So we met at Greenwood
42:29
Speaker 1: and I said, I, you know, I looked up you
42:31
Speaker 1: can do grape Finder found out where d Ford Bailey's
42:34
Speaker 1: grave was. And first we went to d Ford Bailey
42:37
Speaker 1: Junior and saw his grave, which is actually really close
42:40
Speaker 1: to one of my uncles. But then d Ford's it's
42:42
Speaker 1: right kind of in the front, which is really like
42:47
Speaker 1: two feet over from an aunt of mine. It's across
42:49
Speaker 1: away from my mom and my granddad. You know. Like
42:51
Speaker 1: so there was just all this there was this energy
42:55
Speaker 1: there that you know, like all of a sudden, It's
42:56
Speaker 1: like even though we had to get COVID to experience it,
42:59
Speaker 1: you know, like we were we were right there, like
43:01
Speaker 1: we were in the presence of country music, African American history,
43:07
Speaker 1: like a legend, you know, like right there in such
43:10
Speaker 1: close proximity to you know, like to my family, and
43:13
Speaker 1: like potentially. I haven't decided if I wanted to be buried,
43:16
Speaker 1: but like if I did, that's where I would go,
43:18
Speaker 1: you know. So so yeah, like it just it seemed
43:21
Speaker 1: like we were on the right track for what we
43:23
Speaker 1: were trying to do, like I said, resurrecting this um
43:26
Speaker 1: the story and the life of this fallen soldier and
43:30
Speaker 1: in the early scapes of country music. So and we
43:34
Speaker 1: go out and we play the song, and you know,
43:36
Speaker 1: like a lot of people don't really know about Defour
43:39
Speaker 1: Bailey and and I feel like now it's become up
43:42
Speaker 1: to us to to educate crowds and anybody who wants to,
43:46
Speaker 1: you know, like either one of us can can talk
43:48
Speaker 1: about it for days, because like it's just it's important
43:51
Speaker 1: and what you would hope the opera is fighting for,
43:54
Speaker 1: like this all inclusive diversity. You know, like you when
43:58
Speaker 1: you ever you're out and you see something happen, you're
44:01
Speaker 1: like there's so much stick could be done, or like
44:02
Speaker 1: you're in a situation and you just don't know what
44:05
Speaker 1: to do and you're just thinking in your head like
44:07
Speaker 1: there's so much, like there's just so much work to do.
44:10
Speaker 1: That's how I feel about DeFord Bailey. There's so much
44:13
Speaker 1: work to do to bring the righteousness back to restore.
44:19
Speaker 1: You know. It's very symbolic of what's happened in the
44:23
Speaker 1: Nashville music story, which has operated in by an apartheid
44:29
Speaker 1: like playbook, and addressing the issues in country music in general.
44:34
Speaker 1: You know, like that people blindly, you know, like way
44:39
Speaker 1: through I have no choice but to acknowledge it. But
44:42
Speaker 1: for some other people, you know, like they can acknowledge
44:46
Speaker 1: it except when, you know, like when it's not beneficial
44:50
Speaker 1: to them, you know, So like I kind of feel
44:52
Speaker 1: like we're we're stuck where we have to be on
44:54
Speaker 1: the side fighting for it, and then other people can
44:57
Speaker 1: fight for it when it's convenient and then pull back,
45:00
Speaker 1: you know, like I only got the fight, that's all
45:03
Speaker 1: I got. Well, we're fighting to make sure that everybody
45:06
Speaker 1: understands what happened to d Ford and that it it
45:09
Speaker 1: never happen again, and it's just important to recognize it.
45:13
Speaker 1: You know. There's a kind of reckoning that's on in
45:16
Speaker 1: all all of the institutions of the of our country
45:20
Speaker 1: right now, and Nashville is also one and that and
45:24
Speaker 1: the reckoning is on and that in the music business
45:27
Speaker 1: in Nashville and it needs to be. Recently, the Nayam,
45:31
Speaker 1: the National African American Music Museum opened up. It's three
45:34
Speaker 1: three blocks across the street from the Country Music Hall
45:37
Speaker 1: of Fame and Museum, and that it suggests to me
45:41
Speaker 1: that and I love Naymeam, and I love the Country
45:43
Speaker 1: Music Hall of Fame. But country music is black music,
45:47
Speaker 1: and black music is country music. That's what Ray Charles s. Yeah.
45:52
Speaker 1: Can I talk about a couple other songs? Sure? A
45:55
Speaker 1: lot of politics in this record. We just talked a
45:58
Speaker 1: bit about racial politics. Can you tell me a bit
46:00
Speaker 1: about Glory Land? Sure that that feels like a kind
46:04
Speaker 1: of pandemic song. You know. I talked about my love
46:07
Speaker 1: of Bob Dylan. One of my favorite periods of Bob's
46:11
Speaker 1: artistic expression is in the seventies with the Rolling Thunder Review.
46:16
Speaker 1: I loved that big band and Scarlet Riviera on the
46:19
Speaker 1: fiddle and Joan Bayez singing and Roger McGuinn back there
46:23
Speaker 1: beating on a tom tom or something and ringo somewhere nearby,
46:29
Speaker 1: you know, just the kaleidoscope and the party. So that
46:32
Speaker 1: was sort of sonically what we were going after the
46:34
Speaker 1: way we recorded it. And it's a song that Critter
46:36
Speaker 1: and I wrote early, you know, before the pandemic. It's
46:39
Speaker 1: an older song that always felt a little too rock
46:42
Speaker 1: and roll for any of the old Crow records that
46:45
Speaker 1: it would have been around for. But has the seems
46:49
Speaker 1: to have predicted the global shut down pretty well. I
46:53
Speaker 1: think we wrote that song and oh maybe twenty fifteen
46:56
Speaker 1: or something. I was just waiting for twenty twenty to
46:59
Speaker 1: hit home. A very different song is the New Mississippi Flag.
47:04
Speaker 1: It's a very beautiful song. Tell me about that. During
47:08
Speaker 1: the pan EMC, you know, there was a lot of
47:10
Speaker 1: things to get down about, you know, and when George
47:15
Speaker 1: Floyd got murdered, me and Jerry were together anyway there
47:20
Speaker 1: it just felt like everything was coming apart. But I
47:23
Speaker 1: heard one story I really liked, and it was a
47:25
Speaker 1: story I'd been hoping for, and that the flag of
47:29
Speaker 1: the rebel flag was coming down finally in Mississippi. You know,
47:33
Speaker 1: there has to be an alpha and omega in all
47:36
Speaker 1: of this, and Virginia might have been the first place
47:39
Speaker 1: to have a black governor in the South or anywhere
47:42
Speaker 1: in the United States, but somebody had to be the
47:45
Speaker 1: last one to lower the rebel flag. And it's Mississippi
47:50
Speaker 1: and it's long overdue, and so I got so excited
47:55
Speaker 1: about it that I was shouting and my kids said, hush,
48:00
Speaker 1: what are you so excited about? And they were watching
48:02
Speaker 1: TV and they came and I said, put it on pause.
48:05
Speaker 1: You have to hear this, and they all, what's going on.
48:09
Speaker 1: They're bringing down the rebel flag in Mississippi. And here's
48:13
Speaker 1: why it matters. And then as talking to my kid
48:16
Speaker 1: in the bed, and he said, out of the blue,
48:19
Speaker 1: what's gonna be on the new? One said what the
48:22
Speaker 1: new flag? What is it gonna look like? And I
48:25
Speaker 1: thought it was the most wonderful question. And so I
48:28
Speaker 1: thought with a song, I could explain what will the
48:31
Speaker 1: new Mississippi flag look like? And I just want to
48:35
Speaker 1: bring a new Mississippi flag up everywhere. I want to
48:39
Speaker 1: bring one up in country music in Nashville, Tennessee. I
48:42
Speaker 1: want to bring one up in Virginia and New Hampshire
48:45
Speaker 1: and over the grave of John Brown. Let's stitch something
48:49
Speaker 1: new states Hallelujah. You've got great lyrics in that song. Oh,
48:53
Speaker 1: I just dreamed them all up. I put Elvis in
48:56
Speaker 1: there for big Boy Crudup. I would have liked to
48:59
Speaker 1: put Arthur in there, but he was from Memphis. Eudora Wealth,
49:04
Speaker 1: he's in there. Yeah, I went to her house. I'm
49:06
Speaker 1: a big fan, especially of Delta wedding. Yeah, I put
49:10
Speaker 1: and I put Charlie Pride in there, who died of
49:14
Speaker 1: COVID and was always our biggest champion at the Grand
49:18
Speaker 1: Old Opry, him and little Jimmy, you know, the winner
49:21
Speaker 1: before COVID. He was on the Opry. And we got
49:24
Speaker 1: together and he held my children and we talked about baseball,
49:29
Speaker 1: and you know, we were friends. It was so such
49:32
Speaker 1: a happy, happy memory, like having more Old Haggard whisper
49:35
Speaker 1: in your ear when Charlie Pride puts his arms around
49:39
Speaker 1: your kid. Yeah. What kind of guy was he? Oh?
49:42
Speaker 1: A wonderful guy, an amazing performer. His voice was so good.
49:47
Speaker 1: He was very kind, very willing to talk, loved history
49:52
Speaker 1: and had a kind of numerological sensibility. I remember when
49:56
Speaker 1: we joined the Opry. He came up to us a
49:58
Speaker 1: month later and he said, I understand you guys. You
50:02
Speaker 1: fellows joined the Grand Old Opry on September twelfth, two
50:05
Speaker 1: and twelve. That means And then he like brought it
50:09
Speaker 1: back to something that happened in the seventies. He was
50:12
Speaker 1: so attuned to the numbers. His legacy will be felt
50:17
Speaker 1: at the Grand lit Opry and in Nashville country music eternally. Well,
50:22
Speaker 1: let's play one for him. Then you want to do
50:24
Speaker 1: paint this town? Yeah, that'd be great. Hey, how about
50:28
Speaker 1: we start to like we do it regularly. Yeah, so
50:34
Speaker 1: everybody comes out on the stage, you know, and fans
50:39
Speaker 1: all there. Just imagine a six piece like the Clash
50:44
Speaker 1: with more bancho. Ever since I was a young boy,
51:02
Speaker 1: I had a wonderus. So I walked and crawled across
51:08
Speaker 1: six eight lines by the time as in years old,
51:14
Speaker 1: and landed in some corn field. They caught a town
51:19
Speaker 1: on the groove, so I climbed up on that watertown. Man,
51:25
Speaker 1: But the city was a dope show. And that's when
51:30
Speaker 1: I spied you. And we didn't mind on that chuck
51:35
Speaker 1: stop driving stives. We were teenage troop of dolls hopping
51:40
Speaker 1: down box cars for a hell level one week round
51:46
Speaker 1: it's death to whipple hass you by my friends are
51:50
Speaker 1: scattered round. One of these days you would be babe,
51:57
Speaker 1: We're gonna spell the whole bucket and paint this town.
52:04
Speaker 1: Paint this time painted red white of glory, painted blue
52:14
Speaker 1: for the cops tailing your old man Ford shimmy, A
52:17
Speaker 1: found power lines and frinks from an archy signs that's
52:21
Speaker 1: what you do when you're fifteen years old were painted
52:26
Speaker 1: yellow for a warning they'll never take us a lie?
52:33
Speaker 1: Are we given our hearts to? This is part break
52:36
Speaker 1: City where far kids go to break. I all die well,
52:42
Speaker 1: he's dustin wife has you by? My friends are scattered
52:47
Speaker 1: a round one of the east days you would be bad.
52:53
Speaker 1: We're gonna smell the whole bucket and pain't this time?
53:00
Speaker 1: Pain't this sign? Now? The strain don't stop like it
53:23
Speaker 1: used to in the same rist by more than a
53:27
Speaker 1: mild still all these train upocket kids that grow up
53:32
Speaker 1: thinking riss the place by will soon by? And you
53:38
Speaker 1: and me, babe, we feed it away like the yive
53:42
Speaker 1: book page butt and now all I god lift its
53:47
Speaker 1: not heard under my finger? Day? Wouldn't we went digging
53:51
Speaker 1: for gold? Oh well, it's just a why be hashed
53:55
Speaker 1: you by cry by just fitting around turn One of
54:02
Speaker 1: these days they just might flat your way baking fill
54:06
Speaker 1: the hole, damn booking this time? Hey this hey, this
54:31
Speaker 1: catch scar Jerry Pentecost, thank you so much, thanks for
54:35
Speaker 1: having us. Thanks to Old Crows, Catch Sport and Jerry
54:41
Speaker 1: Pentecost for playing the title track off their new album
54:44
Speaker 1: Paint This Town, and for sharing their inspiration and stories
54:47
Speaker 1: of us. You're our favorite Old Crow Medicine show songs.
54:51
Speaker 1: Check out the playlist at broken Record podcast dot com.
54:55
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube
54:57
Speaker 1: dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find
55:01
Speaker 1: all of our new episodes. You can follow us on
55:03
Speaker 1: Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced help from
55:07
Speaker 1: the a Rose, Jason Gambrel, Ben Holiday, Eric Sandler, and
55:10
Speaker 1: Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive
55:14
Speaker 1: producer is Mia Leve. Broken Record is a production of
55:18
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55:36
Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
55:38
Speaker 1: podcast app or The musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.