Ketch Secor - Story The Crow Told Me (2025)

Amidst a storied career as the leader of Old Crow Medicine Show, Ketch Secor steps out for his first solo release in Story The Crow Told Me. But he does not stand by his lonesome. Secor has been joined again by Willie Watson, Critter Fuqua, Molly Tuttle, Morgan Jahnig, and a few extra special (and even, apparitional) guests. With Jody Stevens as a co-engineer, he has built a record of living that drives across many different states of being.

Story The Crow Told Me begins with the bells of a railroad crossing crossing into Secor’s fiddle as “Busker’s Spell” opens up. This is the first panel in a triptych—including “Talkin’ Doc Blues” and “Ghost Train”—that details the early days of Old Crow Medicine Show. These are lyrically dense songs originally meant as a poetry cycle. They celebrate Secor and the band’s time busking across Appalachia, the moment when Doc Watson discovered them, and their eventual move to Nashville. And their production is electric. Heavy distortion on Secor’s speaking voice make for staticky radio transmissions, setting off his plain-old singing voice and the harmonies his companions offer.

Secor calls this music “a regressive art.” It draws on the spirits bound to the rooted archives of history. “The challenge,” he says, “is to carry the substance of the past into the present.” And it is a challenge. To be disconnected from one or the other risks a product that is irrelevant, or worse, kitschy. At this point, Keth Secor is a pro at navigating this third rail. And more often than not, Story The Crow Told Me forges this vital link between past and present. Its production makes the mythologizing that is so central to Country and Americana music go down easy.

But occasionally, as on “Dickerson Road” or “What Nashville Was,” it wavers. The latter track closes Story The Crow Told Me in homage to his home as he encountered it in the late 90s. Secor sets this song in a landscape sampled from Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan’s performance of “Girl from the North Country” on Nashville Skyline. Here, however, Secor’s longing for the “true grit” underneath all the modern gloss stands out as strangely commercial. When he lists old watering holes and celebrates country icons, Secor plays in tropes that have become common as the genre works to right its recent excesses.

I suspect, however, that this reflects of Secor’s influence over more than a quarter of a century. Secor has held his attention on the gritty, complex, and ultimately sacred roots of this music. On Story The Crow Told Me, this sight burns brightest when he looks to the land.

On “Highland Rim,” Secor fashions a prayer that rises from and goes to the ground in conversation with Marty Stuart: “Hello, Highland Rim, coursing around my city, standing for a long old time full of mystery. You’ve seen it all before, so I’m wondering, ‘Will you show me the way down your trail to the place where the birds fly away to be free?’” His direct address achieves the kind of timelessness that makes roots music meaningful by embodying the real longings of the heart for life.