Seems there’s a bluegrass revival going on, and odd thing is, it’s coming from the Eastern Seaboard. Your humble Agitator told you many months ago about the Boston band The Tarbox Ramblers, a rollicking, rockin’, gospel-touched outfit that wails with the coarse vocals of Michael Tarbox, and puts on one of the best live shows I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Now from New York comes Old Crow Medicine Show, with fiddle, stand-up bass, banjo, guitar and hillbilly harmony.

O.C.M.S.’s bluegrass cred is legit. Assembed in New York, they were discovered doing some method musicianship in the hills of North Carolina by bluegrass legend Doc Watson. He invited them to play at Merle Watson’s Merlefest, and they’ve since played at the Grand Old Opry, and opened for a number of big names, including bluegrass deity Del McCoury.

O.C.M.S’s self-titled debut covers bluegrass standards with contemporary treatment, a few originals, and pulls both off with heavy musical influence from Bill Monroe, Doc Boggs, the Greatful Dead, Gram Parsons, and Woody Guthrie, set against Appalachia-cum-counterculture lyrics. You might call it alt bluegrass. Or punk meets rockabilly. Cocaine and corn liquor. The love child of a moonshine-fueled tryst between Earl Scruggs and William S. Burroughs. A soundtrack for smoking great weed in on a back poch somewhere in the Tennessee Smokies.

The album’s best track is “Take ‘Em Away,” a Guthrie-esque dustbowl ballad about death, woe, and backbreaking labor. Written by the band’s banjo player and backup vocalist “Critter” Fuqua, the melancholy refrain begs of the Almighty, “Take ‘em away/ Take ‘em away, Lord/ Take away these chains from me/ My heart my is broken because my spirit’s not free/ Lord take away these chains from me.”

Other solid tracks include standards “Tear It Down,” “CC Rider,” “Tell It to Me,” and the Vietnam protest song (were these guys even alive for Vietnam?) “Big Time in the Jungle.” Also check out “Wagon Wheel,” co-written by….Bob Dylan.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 21st, 2004 at 12:00 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.