Old Crow Medicine Show - Jubilee

Old Crow Medicine Show do what they do best on Jubilee, turning Appalachian string-band tradition into something rowdy, tender and alive. This 2023 album shows why the Nashville crew became a roots-music cornerstone.

Ketch Secor and company spent the late 1990s busking their way into the old-time revival, and songs like "Wagon Wheel" made them unlikely campfire royalty. A quarter of a century on, the band sounds as energized as ever, with fiddle, banjo, harmonica and hollering harmonies piled high and played like the barn is on fire.

"Ballad of Jubilee Jones" opens the record with a tall tale worthy of a front-porch storyteller, while "Allegheny Lullaby" offers a sweeter, mountain-mist moment of calm. "Belle Meade Cockfight" spins a Nashville yarn with a wicked grin, and "Nameless, TN" pays homage to the small towns and backroads that run through so much of their music. Between the stomps and the slower songs, the album plays like an old-fashioned revue, packed with character and wit.

It is the kind of record that turns a quiet evening into a kitchen party, with neighbors drifting in to see what the noise is about. Jubilee captures a band still deeply in love with the music that raised them, and still finding fresh stories to tell inside it.