Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor Announces Debut Solo Album

Ketch Secor, the leader of Old Crow Medicine Show, takes a stroll down one of Nashville’s most out-to-get-ya streets — I know, I lived there for 10 years — in his debut solo song “Dickerson Road.” Featuring strung-out, skronk-blues guitar from the Cadillac Three’s Jaren Johnston, the track evokes the gritty, hustling, danger-around-the-corner vibe of Dickerson Pike, a gasoline alley of car lots, tire shops, and seedy motels.

“Who’s knocking on the screen door/rattle the bars/he’s got one shoe/gas can stuck in his arms y’all,” Secor raps in the opening verse. Later, he nods to the storied history of the pike, the pre-interstate thoroughfare between Louisville, Kentucky, and Nashville, where country stars spent the night on their way into and out of Music City and James Brown recorded “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine” at the now demolished Starday Studios: “This old postman tried to get me to hear his song by the Piggly Wiggly/said he used to blow some sax with Jimmy.”

“Dickerson Road” also announces Secor’s album, Story the Crow Told Me. Due July 11, it’s the debut solo LP for the charismatic singer, musician, raconteur, and activist. Musically, the song evokes the hybrid bluegrass of artists like Gangstagrass or even Elvie Shane, with whom Secor and Johnston once collaborated on the Cadillac Three song “Hillbilly.” But to younger ears, Secor’s solo track may call to mind “Dirt Road Anthem,” the country-rap hit that was all over country radio in 2011. Far less polished and produced than that song, “Dickerson Road” bristles with the same energy of its namesake.

“The Grand Ole Opry has stars and the Hall of Fame has plaques, and in the year 2000 there was one premier destination for Nashville’s castoffs, rejects, n’er-do-wells, petty thieves, lowlifes, losers and users; so like a barfly to a bottle I went to where I felt I belonged, straight up Dickerson Road,” Secor says in a statement. “Nowadays you can only catch a fleeting glimpse of the misfit glory that once teemed down this boulevard of broken dreams, but once in awhile I’ll see some stray dog licking at some grease trap and know they’re still clawing their way to the top of trash pile down on The Dick.”

Story the Crow Told Me, arriving on Equal Housing Records via Firebird Music, features guests Molly Tuttle and Marty Stuart, along with Old Crow Medicine Show members past and present, like Critter Fuqua and Willie Watson. Secor produced the LP with Jody Stevens and recorded it at Old Crow’s Hartland Studios — located just off Dickerson Pike.

Story The Crow Told Me Tracklist

1. “Busker’s Spell” 
2. “Talkin’ Doc Blues” 
3. “Ghost Train” 
4. “Dickerson Road”
5. “Old Man River” 
6. “Catch Me If You Can”
7. “Highland Rim” (feat. Marty Stuart)
8. “Junkin’” 
9. “On the Wall”
10. “Thanks Again”
11. “Holes in the Wall”
12. “What Nashville Was”