The new Old Crow Medicine Show is stellar. I’m not yet sure if I like it more than the band’s debut, but Big Iron World covers much of the same ground. It’s a terrific blend of bluegrass, country, gospel, blues, rolled up in mountain spirituality. What’s really remarkable about the album is just how well these 20-something guys from New York know their material. They embrace the syntax, langauge, and tone of the Civil War-to Dust Bowl voices in their songs, which makes the joy, pain, loss, and faith conveyed in the songs all the more convincing. It’s been reported that Bob Dylan has become something of an obsessive American history buff of late, giving his last two very American ablums so much authenticity. So it’s probably appropriate that Old Crow’s latest was released at the same time as Dylan’s Modern Times (Old Crow’s biggest hit to date, “Wagon Wheel,” borrows heavily from a refrain Dylan once wrote, and gives him a nod in the songwriting credits). Hell, even the throwback cover art borrows elements from Highway 61.

Not everything works. The last track about tracking a Bobcat feels a little gimmicky. One of the odder tracks on the band’s first album was “Tell It to Me,” a quirky but playful and infectious little ditty about cocaine and corn liquor. The new album has “Take a Whiff on Me,” another ode to cocaine. The two songs sound so simliar that fiddle master Kech Secor actually starts singing the song from the prior album on the new CD, showing the band not only recognizes the similarities, but had the sense of humor and humility to keep the flubbed beginning on the recording.

Humility and good humor are in good supply with these guys. When I saw them at D.C.’s 9:30 Club last year, the band introduced themselves to the audience not with their real names, but with the names of professional baseball players from the 1980s and 1990s. I was probably one of only about six people in the building who cracked up when Succor actually said, “and on drums….Odibe McDowell!”

But back to the album.

The strolling, bluesy “James River Blues” laments the loss of jobs on the docks of the James River when the railroad came to town. “Let It Alone” is a cheeky, almost-libertarian song about minding your own damned business. “God’s Got It” captures the necessarily enormous role faith and religion played in the hard-knocks time and place when bluegrass thrived.

The gem of the album, however, is “I Hear Them All,” an anthemic, goose-bump inducing bromide against injustice that, again, could easily have fit on one of Bob Dylan’s first three albums. The lyrics are pure poetry, the refrain a simple but towering call-to-arms with flecks of gospel grandeur.

The lyrics are worth quoting in full:

I hear the crying of the hungry in the deserts where they’re wandering;
hear them crying out for heaven’s own benevolence upon them;
hear destructive power prevailing, I hear fools falsely hailing;
to the crooked wits of tyrants when they call.

I hear them all
I hear them all
I hear them all

I hear the sounds of tearing pages and the roar of burning paper.
All the crimes and acquisitions turn to air and ash and vapor.
And the rattle of the shackle far beyond emancipators.
And the loneliest who gather in their stalls.

I hear them all
I hear them all
I hear them all

So while you sit and whistle Dixie with your money and your power,
I can hear the flowers growing in the rubble of the towers.
I hear leaders quit their lying
I hear babies quit their crying.
I hear soldiers quit their dying, one and all.

I hear them all
I hear them all
I hear them all

I hear the tender words from Zion, I hear Noah’s waterfall.
Hear the gentle lamb of Judah sleeping at the feet of Buddha.
And the prophets from Elija to the old Paiute Wovoka.
Take their places at the table when they’re called.

I hear them all
I hear them all
I hear them all

I hear them all
I hear them all
I hear them all

Earns an Agitator.com “highly recommended.” I also strongly suggest you see OCMS live. They’re a terrific act. Watch especially Succor, as he attacks his fiddle. Within minutes, the bow strings begin to pop. By the end of the show they’re flailing all over the place. Looks like he’s stroking the thing with a cat o’ nine tails. Here’s a little taste:

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 17th, 2006 at 8:55 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.