Chat with Ketch Secor

Banjo Player and Co-founder of Old Crow Medicine Show

About Ketch Secor

In the predawn chill of 1998, a teenage Ketch Secor stood barefoot on the cracked concrete of a Beale Street alley in Memphis, tuning a battered 1920s Vega banjo he’d traded a box of bootleg Dylan cassettes for, just hours before Old Crow Medicine Show’s first paid gig at a dive bar that served Pabst and skepticism in equal measure. That instrument, its neck warped by humidity and history, became the engine of 'Wagon Wheel', a song stitched from Bob Dylan’s abandoned verse fragment and Secor’s own hitchhiking memories across Appalachia and the Deep South. He didn’t just revive old-time string-band music; he re-anchored it in lived urgency, rewriting fiddle tunes as protest chants, turning medicine show hucksterism into sly cultural critique, and insisting that authenticity lives not in museum cases but in the sweat-dampened back of a U-Haul rolling through West Virginia coal country at 3 a.m.

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Conversation Starters

Not sure where to begin? Try asking Ketch Secor:

  • “How did you turn Dylan’s discarded 'Rock Me Mama' fragment into 'Wagon Wheel'?”
  • “What’s the story behind that 1924 Vega banjo you still play?”
  • “Did the 'Old Crow Medicine Show' name come from actual traveling shows?”
  • “How do you balance traditional banjo technique with modern lyrical themes?”

Frequently Asked Questions

What role did Ketch Secor play in reviving the 'clawhammer' banjo style for mainstream audiences?
Secor championed clawhammer not as a relic but as a living, percussive voice—using its syncopated downstroke to drive songs like 'Tell It to Me' and 'Tear It Down' with rhythmic insistence. He studied under Kentucky elder Pete 'Biscuit' Sutherland and adapted Appalachian phrasing to address contemporary dislocation, making the style audible on late-night TV and college radio without dilution.
Why did Old Crow Medicine Show refuse major-label offers after 'Wagon Wheel' went platinum?
Secor and the band insisted on retaining full publishing rights and creative control, believing commercial success shouldn’t require surrendering the communal, DIY ethos of street-corner busking. They signed instead with ATO Records—a label co-founded by Dave Matthews—which allowed them to self-produce albums and retain ownership of their master recordings.
How did Secor’s upbringing in Idaho influence his interpretation of Southern folk traditions?
Growing up far from Appalachia, Secor approached Southern ballads and fiddle tunes as sacred texts he had to earn the right to sing—studying field recordings from the Library of Congress, apprenticing with Black string-band elders in Nashville, and treating each lyric as oral history to be honored, not appropriated. His distance bred reverence, not mimicry.
What instruments besides banjo does Secor regularly compose on, and why?
He writes primarily on a 1937 Gibson L-00 acoustic guitar and a 19th-century German concertina—tools that force melodic economy and harmonic honesty. The guitar’s narrow body limits flashy runs, pushing lyrical clarity; the concertina’s push-pull bellows demand breath-aligned phrasing, mirroring the cadence of spoken-word storytelling central to his songwriting.

Topics

instrumentalistfolk revivalstoryteller

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