Paint This Town

About

It’s not Old Crow Medicine Show’s first rodeo, but the raucous roots outfit sounds fresh as ever on their seventh studio album. Led by charismatic frontman Ketch Secor, the string band has been a mainstay in bluegrass and roots music circles for decades, owing, in part, to their beloved hit “Wagon Wheel.” On <i>Paint This Town</i>, the band does what it does best: pair intricate, often freewheeling string arrangements with heavily narrative lyrics, the latter of which, as on “John Brown’s Dream” and “DeFord Rides Again,” often draw from American and musical history. Highlights include the rollicking title track, which celebrates retaining a youthful spirit, and “New Mississippi Flag,” a frank reckoning with the racism and bigotry lurking in American patriotism. “I like the way that a kid taunts authority and uses his or her or their youth as a resource that’s theirs alone,” Secor tells Apple Music. “And that every generation has the opportunity to look into the face of authority and say, ‘Not me.’” Below, Secor walks Apple Music through several key tracks on <i>Paint This Town</i>. <b>“Paint This Town”</b> “Being a 23-year-old band at this point, I thought it made sense to start the song with a youthful number, something that harkens to that first feeling of wanting to play music for a living. In that song, I’m about 15 years old. I write a lot of songs about being a kid again. Music has kept me young and full of this great spirit. I love a song that makes you feel young all over, makes you get out of bed with zest and vim and vigor, makes you want to run a couple miles and then go save the world.” <b>“Gloryland”</b> “It’s written with a voice that makes me feel like listening to an old Bob Dylan record. You know, there’s a little sneer to it. It’s a little bit mean, but it’s also fun and peppy. There’s a sing-along ability to it. On top of all that, it’s a song that seems to go with the flow of the times we’re living in, and that speaks to current events and situations that are important. This is called topical folk songwriting, and it’s what I learned to do when I was a kid, and I never quit.” <b>“Painkiller”</b> “I’m just taking another page out of the Old Crow songbook. We always sing about illegal substances. And we always sing about the Southern Highlands and coal district and rural America. And this song puts those both together in a somewhat jovial, fun, but also menacing way. There’s no fun to the opioid epidemic. It wasn’t fun when my friend died last year. It wasn’t fun when three other friends died in the five years preceding that. It’s not fun to see so many Americans fall victim to this very solvable epidemic. We just want to keep the pressure on, as a band, and remind people that this is a fight that’s ongoing, and there’s a siege, particularly in small-town America, particularly in the South. There’s a siege on these communities, and it’s got to stop.” <b>“DeFord Rides Again”</b> “I’ve always been interested in the legacy of DeFord Bailey. I’m a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and I think of DeFord’s role in the infancy of country music as paramount to its success and also very symbolic of its failures. DeFord was stripped of his title, while other members of the Grand Ole Opry who joined in its infancy enjoyed a lifelong membership, many of whom died in mansions in Brentwood. DeFord Bailey died at federal housing on 12th Avenue, in Nashville, alone and largely forgotten except by close family and friends. That’s a bitter legacy for the Opry and for the country music establishment to have left when given such a wonderful talent to work with. We’re just really glad to shine a light on this unfortunately grim episode in country music history and remind folks that country music traces its origins to Africa through the banjo, which is one of the primary instruments of the genre and is not from Kentucky. It’s not from Tennessee. It’s not from Ireland. It’s not from England. It’s from Africa.” <b>“John Brown’s Dream”</b> “It’s important that you look in the face of what real sedition is, especially when the nightly news wants to tell you that it’s some wackos in Oregon. Sedition is a very mainstream concept. It started in this country with John Brown. John Brown believed so much that the slaves should be set free that he felt that it was appropriate, and decreed by God, to use violence and to overthrow the government, if necessary. He had no qualms about this. He heard voices. They spoke to him, and they said that he was a liberator, and he murdered people. He murdered men and women and children, lots of them, and he was wrong to do it, but it’s a complicated story. And it’s important to look it in the eye, especially in times when this kind of vanilla approach to sedition exists, when you can say, ‘Oh, I’m kind of seditious because I liked this Facebook post.’ So, the song is just here to remind you that this is nothing new. And yet the folks who used to overthrow the government did it with a little more class.”

via Apple Music