How do you suppose your old-world country music will go over amid the modern sheen of a new-world city like Las Vegas?
I think it’s gonna be perfect, because, while old-school entertainers might be what’s missing there now, it’s that kinda attitude that made Vegas what it is. I would imagine you don’t get a lot of string bands, so I’m glad we’re there to be that string band. And it certainly won’t be the first time that our kind of show has set up in the desert landscape. Long ago, before the city became what it is today, our kind of music—the fiddle, the banjo, this strain of country music—was played and enjoyed by people native to the state of Nevada—square-dance music and singing the ballads that people brought West with them. But then again we’re talking about a pretty long time ago, so it’s pretty untested.
You guys exist well beyond the radar of radio or most music publications, yet your albums have sold well, and you draw well on tour. Is that mostly attributable to old-fashioned word of mouth?
Yes, it’s been a very grassroots sort of growth, and our crowds are very varied. It seems like marketing is all about creating homogeneity—it’s so much easier to target just one kind of dude—but our audiences are really diverse, and that’s because the appreciation of our music is valid in so many times. It’s valid to people that are 65 and remember when jug bands were on the radio in the ’60s. And it’s popular with people who remember the 1970s ... “Oh, what happened to all the great harmony singing that used to be on the radio like Crosby, Stills & Nash? And what happened to country songwriting that went pop like the Eagles?” And then there’s all the young kids who maybe don’t know every Bob Dylan album yet and are just feeling it all for the first time.
What’s it been like living in Nashville, where the majority of the “country music” being produced is light years from what you do?
We’re definitely outsiders. We had a pack mentality throughout our arrival in Nashville and the building up of this band. We were very much on our own. In those first, formative years in Nashville we didn’t see any live music; we were freaking out over 78s and staying very much inside closed doors. I feel like in many ways we were, like, 70 years too late to the party of being Nashvillians in Music City. It was all happening in 1928, but in 1998 when we came around there wasn’t a lot of room for us. So we played on street corners and for crazy people and stayed in scary hotels and stayed up all night playing music to each other. But since that time there’s been a lot of string-band activity all over the country, and three nights ago we sold out [Nashville’s] Ryman Auditorium on our own. So in the past couple years things have really changed for us.
Old Crow Medicine Show
November 8, 7 p.m., $20. Canyon Club, 888-645-5006.