Words by Caroline Schwarz
Pics by Tracer Rock Photography – TRP

Old Crow Medicine Show made the most of a whirlwind Colorado tour last week, starting strong and gaining momentum and intensity like an avalanche down a Rocky Mountain slope with each show. They covered a lot of ground – both mileage-wise and musically – on a three-day, three-show Colorado tour that traveled from the mountain town of Beaver Creek on March 26th 2025, down to Pueblo on March 27th 2025 and back up to Aspen on March 28th 2025. Each night was a varied and entertaining rave-up, pinned down by crowd-pleasing favorites from throughout their over 25 year career, and peppered with unique surprises at each stop.

OCMS has long been a band with a fluid line up, with members occasionally leaving to later return (as is the case with West Virginian Chance McCoy, who was with Old Crow from 2012-2019 and is back as of the beginning of this year); and new personnel joining along the way to contribute new songs as well as lend their voice to resurrected old favorites (like Mike Harris who now fully inhabits Take ‘Em Away, a song of struggle and faith written and long sung by founding member Critter Fuqua). Morgan Jahnig has faithfully held down the bottom on both acoustic and electric bass almost since the band’s inception.

Founder and frontman Ketch Secor is a masterful musician and showman, enthralling to watch as he works the audience, charging to the lip of the stage with his fiddle or running the length of the front row like a possessed musical shaman, waving arms, blowing harmonica, hooting, grimacing and growling.

The current lineup also includes longtime member Cory Younts, who lends an overflowing amount of musical talent, fancy footwork and energetic personality to the proceedings. P.J. George III is the other most recent addition (along with Harris), and is another man of many instruments, stringed and otherwise.

Virtually everybody in the band is a multi-instrumentalist, which makes for a captivating cavalcade of members circulating seamlessly between fiddles,banjos, mandolins, guitars (acoustic, electric and resophonic), harmonicas, accordion, and even taking turns at the keyboards and drums. Most of them take a turn on lead vocals as well, and everyone sings back-up and harmonies. Much like the music that OCMS plays, the name of their current “Circle The Wagons Tour” has both deep roots and up-to-date relevance. Pioneers in wagon trains would come together at the end of a day of travel and circle their wagons, creating a perimeter to enhance both safety and a sense of community and interaction between the families. Connection and oneness in our modern world, or the need for it, were distinct themes at these shows. Secor expressed it in heartfelt spoken words about the power of music to bring people of all persuasions together, despite our differences. Many of the songs played echoed these sentiments and some also pointed more directly to current social and political situations. At the Vilar Center in Beaver Creek, for example, “World Away” (from 2018’s Volunteer) was performed as an upbeat rocker with a hint of reggae beat. With lyrics like:

“I’m a world away, right outside your window
I got money in my pockets and I brought a nice bottle of wine
I think I’m on the list, do you see my name there?
I’ve come a long hard way and I’m lookin’ for a better time,”

the song portrays the United States as a big party that is getting more difficult to get into and be part of, and easier to get bounced from.

In Pueblo – at what was surprisingly their debut show there, played to an extremely enthusiastic audience (“You’re Colorado’s best kept secret!” Secor told the appreciative fans) – “World Away” was replaced by “Levi” (from 2012’s Carry Me Back) in the set. The most personal of all the Old Crow peace-promoting songs, it was written in honor of a young lieutenant who died in Iraq and who had Old Crow’s signature song, Wagon Wheel, played at his funeral. This night it was reworked with less country twang than the original and had a hard-hitting intensity.

At all three shows, “Mean Enough World” (from 2014’s Grammy winning album, Remedy) exemplified the punked-up string music that the Old Crows excel at playing. It was banjo-driven and performed at a breakneck speed that underscored the biting humor of the words and emphasized the more urgent than ever plea to “stop all this hatin’ before we all disappear!” At Aspen’s Belly Up, the rarely played chestnut “Ain’t It Enough” (from 2012’s Carry Me Back) retained its soft, lilting quality in its call for humanity to join together. But in our divisive times it seemed to have an urgent edge that the audience felt and echoed in a rousing singalong that peaked on the lines,
“So let the prison walls crumble
And the borders all tumble,
There’s a place for us all here,
And ain’t it enough?”

A true call to arms – as in the kind that you throw “‘round each other, and love one another!” The Belly Up is a small venue for Old Crow, with a small stage on which to squeeze their many varied instruments and energetic choreography, and the closeness of the band members to one another and to the sold out crowd amped up the rowdiness a few notches. There was lots of banter and jokes between band and fans, and Ketch even jumped off the stage during a one-off for the tour encore of Harry Belafonte’s “Jump In The Line” to get a conga line going with the audience. Other highlights from the run featured the band’s skillful ability to create medleys and also draw on local flavor wherever they play.They demonstrated both things with a mashup of their moving anthem to the oppressed and downtrodden “I Hear Them All” (from Big Iron World, 2006) into John Denver’s “Country Roads”– naturally employing the lyrical swap, “Almost heaven, Colorado!”

For three nights they ranged widely and enthusiastically over turf that paid tribute to musical heroes including Bob Wills, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Marty Robbins, The Band, and lots of others. They played straight-up cover songs, their own originals, and songs like Cocaine Habit (from Eutaw, 2001) and Down Home Girl (from Big Iron World, 2006) that feel somewhere in between, arising from old folk songs but now so much become their own that it’s easy to forget they came from anywhere else! Visit crowmedicine.com/tour to find out where you can circle your wagon with Old Crow Medicine Show and their unique, genre-spanning blend of old and modern music this spring and summer. Vinnie Paolizzi accompanied by Damon Atkins opened the shows and also joined OCMS on Up On Cripple Creek and Jump In The Line.

See below for setlists for the three Colorado shows:

Vilar Performing Arts Center, Beaver Creek, CO March 26th, 2025

Tell It To Me
Alabama High Test
Belle Meade Cock Fight / Proud Mary / Carry Me Back >Shenandoah
Cumberland River
Lord Willing And The Creek Don’t Rise / Great Balls Of Fire
Take Em Away
Hard To Love / Boatman Dance / Elizick’s Farewell
Stay All Night
Boll Weevil
Sweet Amarillo
Dixie Avenue
Cuando Yo Era Un Jovencito
Cissy Strut Jam
World Away
Redneck Girl
Cocaine Habit
I Hear Them All / Country Roads
CC Rider
Cool Water
Union Maid
Child Of The Mississippi
Mean Enough World / Flicker & Shine
Wagon Wheel

(E) Down Home Girl
Up On Cripple Creek
I Saw The Light

Pueblo Memorial Hall, Pueblo, CO March 27th, 2025

Tell It To Me
Alabama High Test
Belle Meade Cock Fight / Proud Mary / Carry Me Back >Shenandoah
Cumberland River
Lord Willing And The Creek Don’t Rise / Great Balls Of Fire
Take Em Away
Hard To Love / Boatman Dance / Elizick’s Farewell
Stay All Night
Boll Weevil
Sweet Amarillo
Dixie Avenue
Cuando Yo Era Un Jovencito
Cissy Strut Jam
Stuck Inside Of Mobile (With The Memphis Blues Again)
Cocaine Habit
I Hear Them All / Country Roads
Levi
CC Rider
Union Maid
Cool Water
Methamphetamine
Mean Enough World / Flicker & Shine
Wagon Wheel

(E) Down Home Girl
Up On Cripple Creek
I Saw The Light

Belly Up, Aspen, CO March 28th, 2025

Tell It To Me
Alabama High Test
Belle Meade Cock Fight / Proud Mary / Carry Me Back >Shenandoah
Cumberland River
Tennessee Bound
Lord Willing And The Creek Don’t Rise / Great Balls Of Fire
Take Em Away
Hard To Love / Boatman Dance / Elizick’s Farewell
Stay All Night
Boll Weevil
Ain’t It Enough
Dixie Avenue
Cuando Yo Era Un Jovencito
Cissy Strut Jam
Stuck Inside Of Mobile (With The Memphis Blues Again)
Cocaine Habit
I Hear Them All / Country Roads
Hard To Tell
CC Rider
Union Maid
Cool Water
Methamphetamine
Mean Enough World / Flicker & Shine
Wagon Wheel

(E) Down Home Girl
Up On Cripple Creek
Jump In The Line