Song Exploder - Old Crow Medicine Show - Dearly Departed Friend

Episode Date: May 29, 2016

Old Crow Medicine Show is a six-piece band from Tennessee, who have been around since 1998. They were inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2013, and they won the Grammy for Best Folk Album in 2015, for their record Remedy. In this episode, bandleader Ketch Secor tells the story of how they made "Dearly Departed Friend," one of the songs from Remedy.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. My name is Ketch Seekor, and I play the fiddle and Old Crow Medicine show. I remember Operation Desert Shield. All through the night, every one of our favorite shows had been preempted by night vision flashes of air strikes on Baghdad. And that 12 years old, I knew that I was captivated, but I also knew that I thought the war was wrong. The very next day in school, there was a great big speech all about this new time we were living in, and George Bush and his decision to put these airstrikes together.

And I remember not standing for whatever we sang, whether it was God bless America or whatever it was, and getting in a lot of trouble for it, getting pulled. pulled out of the room. I had a really wonderful principal, and he was a sweetheart of a guy, but he told me then, well, catch you. The way I think about it, you love it or you leave it. So I really came up in a love it or leave it kind of town, and that sentiment is something that I've been wrestling with as a songwriter ever since. Old Crow Medicine Show is a six-piece band from Tennessee, who've been around since 1998. They were inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2013, and they won the Grammy for Best Folk album in 2015 for the record Remedy.

In this episode, K. Seacore tells the story of how they made one of the songs from that record. It's called Dearly Departed Friend. I'm Rishi K. Shureway. You're listening to Song Exploder. I was always interested in the stories from Afghanistan. The kind of music that I play has found appeal among a number of veterans, my age, and younger, and older too. So I knew I wanted to write a song and write many songs from their perspective.

This is a story about somebody from a place much like a lot of the places that I've lived before, these sort of crossroads, these sort of tri-cities with a sign out front and says, welcome to a certified business location and all you see around are smokestacks. The story of dearly departed friend

really is centered in this town called Elizabethan. But up there they say it, Lisbethon. Well, I lived sort of on the outskirts of Elizabethan, Tennessee, where Tennessee meets Virginia and North Carolina. There's pretty limited economic opportunity for the kids who would graduate from a place like Elizabethan High. So when I was living there, I would see other 18-year-old young men like me, and there were no jobs, so they just joined the military. The military was the best option going. I've been dealing with this idea of a kid from the hills who goes over. And Dear the Departed Friend is about him coming home. In preparation for talking to you today, I was going through some old recordings I had made. And the demo, it's a lot different.

It starts with sort of the bare bones, which was a lot more spoken. I really thought that This could be a song where I just ramble. Service went the way it should have gone. No one talked too much or cried too long. Except your mama's new boyfriend. He went on and on and on about the country and the hero you'd become. We were all bowed down and just in a truck back fired and all the boys flinched their heads.

Yeah, that choked me up pretty good, I guess. The music that I wrote for it changed entirely when we went to make a record on it. The band worked with producer Ted Hut to make the album. When Ted Hut got involved with this song, he treated it sort of like a hymn with more of an oratory approach to the vocal. Ted's ability to capture this band called the Dropkick Murphys. They are playing traditional Irish music at breakneck speed with sweat. wagger that's very modern. And we're playing sort of the wicked step sister of Irish music, old time, or the sort of Appalachian string band music. We're playing that kind of thing with a

whole lot of, you know, modern styling as well. And the thing about these genres is that they're very live, they're really energetic stuff. So how can you capture that live energy successfully and not compromise sonically? And that's what Ted, was so good at doing. He really honed in on a melody line. I'm standing by the grave of a dearly departed friend. Nothing much to say except sorry it turned out like it did. To me, the song and the narration has a hard edge to it. From the vantage point of a guy who has seen a lot of things that the typical guy his age, unless he's been in combat, has not seen. So that colors his understanding of the world around him, this new world that he's reentered. He's not the same boy who left.

The service went the way it should have gone. No one talked too loud or cried too long, except your mama's new boyfriend. He went on and on while they laid you in the ground. but it's not negative and it's not somber it's just sort of plain this is how it is you're dead and we've buried you and i live in this town now and i drive circles around it and right about then a truck back fired and all the boys they flinched their heads yeah that shook me up i guess i've been home a month now and i still can't get no rest And on this song, Jay the Departed Friend, the arrangement, there's an intricacy to this. It was a challenge.

The hardest part about this song was trying to do something this slow in a band that normally plays at breakneck speeds. You know, trying to breathe through it, trying to approach it the way we do all songs with a lot of gusto and fire, but not to lose the delicacy of the song. It was really difficult to slow it down this much. The pedal steel and its sort of ambient hum really feels akin to the story that's being told. Gil Landry spent a long time figuring out that pedal steel solo. In fact, he really bought a pedal steel to play this song.

This is his pedal steel, recorded debut. So he's spent a lot of time working on it. The pedal steel is unrestrained by frets. It just moves. And our boy, our hero here, is adrift. He's not bound in by anything except the voices in his head. He's sort of letting the winds blow him. And they've blown him back home. And now he's letting the winds blow him all across town. Gitcho is a six-string banjo. back in the teens and in the early 1920s, the banjo was the instrument. Everything got turned into a banjo.

Banjo ukuleles, banjo mandolines, banjo guitars. And this is the banjo guitar. Gitchos don't really sound like banjos. They sound like Gitchos. When you isolate it and you hear it solo, it ain't pretty. But stick it into a six-piece band, and it kind of makes all the difference. I'm such a rudimentary mandolin player

but the reason that I did play that part is because what the song wanted was a rudimentary mandolin. When it comes to harmony parts, we just got to figure it out. Nobody in this group has the background and the science of notes and fifths and parts and all that stuff. Standing by the grave of a daily departed friend.

You know, we just know when it sounds right. Nothing much to say except sorry it turned out like it did. And in the choruses, that's the trio of chance and critter and I. 21 guns for 21 years and American flags in the wind. Standing by the grave of a dearly departed friend. Particularly in the tradition that our music comes out of, harmony singing is just sort of taken for granted. That's the kind of singing, group singing, that's most exciting to me.

And when we're good, we can do that in Old Crow. I'm just standing by the grave of a dearly departed friend. There wasn't a bridge originally when I wrote this song. And this was Ted saying, all right, I wanted to go deeper here, guys. You know, we needed this big part with the drums and spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the kind of rumble would be. I really wanted it to be a rocket's red glare kind of a sound. Yeah, that's definitely the rocket's red glare and the bombs in the air. Hey, there's only one road leads out of this town, and it comes right back.

So I just drive in circles, circles, and I try not to blow my stash, I wrote that line. That was all a new line that there's only one road leads out of this town and it comes right back. So I just drive in circles and I try not to blow my stack. It was definitely a eureka moment. That bridge to me felt like the heart of the song. This song has broken the ice in a conversation that I've really wanted to have with the men and women in the United States Armed Services. really want to talk to them. I want to know what they're doing. I want to know what they're up to right now and how they feel about it. And I want them to feel my love and gratitude. Now, here's

dearly departed friend by Old Crow Medicine Show in its entirety. The service went the way it should have gone. No one talked too loud or cried too long except your mama's new boyfriend. He went on and on while they laid you in the ground. Right about then a truck back fired and all the boys they flinch their heads. Yeah, that shook me up, I guess. I've been home a month now and I still can't get no rest. Standing by the grave of a dearly departed friend with nothing much to say except sorry I turned out like it did.

21 guns for 21 years and American flags in the wind standing by the grave of a dear little pollid friend barbecue brills and lawn mows kids on four-wheeler's and ice cream trucks Yeah they buried you on a Saturday Georgia lost to Tennessee You would like that I know Afterwards we went to old Charlie, as your mama's boyfriend got drunk, saying it should have been me.

I wish it was. Hear my mean. So I went home, got drunk, and watched the TV. I'm standing by the grave of a dearly departed friend. Nothing much to say except sorry I turned out like it did. 21 guns for 21 years. in the wind standing by the grave of a dearly departed friend Hey, there's only one road this town and it's just as lonesome as I see

The girls round here the girls round yellow ribbon round the old hackbear tamp the dirt down Y'all going home now there ain't nothing here to see I'm nearly departed friend We have nothing much to say except Sorry it turned down like it did I look great Nearly departed friend Visit songexplor.net

For links to learn more about Old Crow Medicine show I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh, her way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations

about the process of making music talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby,

Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wynrope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live.

That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. You can find all the past and future episodes of SongExploder at songexplor.net or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts. Next time on Song Exploder, Odessa. Song Exploder is a proud member of the Radiotopia Network from PRX, made possible by the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork. Find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, at Song Exploder.

This episode was edited by Christian Coons and me. My name is Rishi Kesh Your Way. Thanks for listening.