It’s impossible to talk about famed bluegrass collective Old Crow Medicine Show without discussing Bob Dylan. Without the latter, after all, there would be no former.
Members of the band have been on the record at length about the monumental influence the poet-laureate himself has had on what Old Crow does. It stretches back even to before Old Crow itself existed, as one of the band’s founding members attests to.
“Growing up in Virginia, we’ve been Dylan-heads forever,” says Chris “Critter” Fuqua, who plays slide, banjo, and guitar in the group, as well as providing vocals. “I’ve listened to just about every Dylan record countless times, Blonde on Blonde especially.
“For Ketch [Secor, fiddle/banjo/guitar] and I, it was there all through high school. He introduced me to a lot of the early stuff – I can remember him showing me Blowin’ in the Wind and having it completely speak to me. It’s funny, some people have an easy favourite Dylan record, but one of the first things of his that I got into was Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. It was this great double album with a lot of my favourite songs on it. I listened to that a lot. After that, Blood on the Tracks became my favourite. We used to play those songs a lot when we were playing in coffee houses and the like.”
The band’s Dylan obsession came full circle in 2016 when they were approached to play a show in which Dylan’s 1966 LP Blonde on Blonde was performed in its entirety. The show went down in May of that year at Nashville’s CMA Theatre to coincide with an exhibition detailing Dylan’s time working and recording in the Tennessee city.
“We were asked to do the show last year, and we naturally jumped at the chance,” says Fuqua. “We liked doing it so much that we decided to release it as a live album. I feel like that was a really good move on our part. I think that we learned a lot about these songs by playing the whole record cover to cover.
“We learned pretty quickly that we couldn’t do the songs the exact same way that Dylan did it – only Dylan can do Dylan, y’know? It became pretty important that it sounded like us when we were doing it. Our interpretations came about pretty organically – all we had were the lyrics, the chord changes and our instruments in front of us.”
Since putting out the live album – 50 Years of Blonde on Blonde – the band has now done the show dozens of times across several continents. Up next is Australia, where the band will perform two sets – Blonde on Blonde first, then a full set of their own songs. These are set to be some of the biggest shows that the group has ever played here, but that’s not the only reason this tour is special for Fuqua.
“The band’s been over a couple of times now, but this will actually be my first time ever coming over there personally,” he says.“The times they’ve been there before, I was taking a break from the band. I was at school, studying history, and then changing over to study English. I needed to recharge my batteries and see what else was out there.
“It was really good to take a break from the music world and pursue some of my other interests – it made me appreciate coming back all that much more. Plus, now I finally get to come to Australia.”
