I first heard of the OCMS in 2005, when their self-titled album, was locally released. I can remember it because it left me a little annoyed. At the time, I was totally immersed in all things Jug and vintage country blues. The album’s first song was called “Tell It To Me”, another version of a song I knew otherwise as “Cocaine Habit Blues”. That song, I could trace back to 1930 and The Memphis Jug Band. I didn’t know so much about “Tell It To Me”. In their defense, though, the Old Crow Medicine Show did include a take of ‘Cocaine Habit Blues’ on their next disc, ‘Big Iron World’ in 2006.
But what irked me most about that first album was that I was certain my own little Jug Band could have done it better. Okay, in some crazy parallel universe, maybe. But I still look at that album as getting by on not much more than ‘charm’.
Oh, did I mention, I was also, possibly, just a little jealous? Well, only a little.
The Old Crow Medicine Show was actually LIVING the dream, playing dusty old tunes on the streets of (albeit) modern day Nashville. They’d caught the attention of Doc Watson, a REAL American Folk music legend, become the new darlings of Garrison Keillor ‘s ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ program, and reintroduced a few nuggets from the old days to a wider audience. On the contrary, I was simply an avid student of history. “Old Crow Medicine Show?… Fuck ‘em”.
But last night, I had to tip my hat to these guys whom, henceforth, I shall refer to as OCMS. By virtue of its relative ambiguity, OCMS implies a certain cache of COOL. It means, I know this band, they rate with me, they get my attention and are worthy of some loyalty. The kind of loyalty that makes you check out their follow-up, just in case it’s their masterpiece.
That’s what comes from hearing a song like “Methamphetamine” on the new OCMS album, ‘Tennessee Pusher’.
Okay, I apologize for the suspiciously recurring references to exotic pharmacopeias in these titles. But as a song, “Methamphetamine” is such a dark and affecting achievement, you can tell, it’s a shoe-in for the inevitable ‘Best Of OCMS’, at some point in the future.
It’s riveting and tawdrily desperate. About the kind of folk who might call Dylan’s Desolation Row ‘someplace uptown’. Those Redneck junkies, who give regular poor, white, trailer trash such a bad rep.
“It’s gonna rock you like a hurricane,
It’s gonna rock you till you lose sleep,
It’s gonna rock you till you’re out of a job,
It’s gonna rock you till you’re out on the street”
We’re talking the stuff of Lynch or Tarantino.
OCMS have never been exclusively ‘Old-Time’ and on this album it is patently evident. ‘Tennessee Pusher’ is much closer to contemporary Americana than some turn-of-last-century ‘street music’. “Methamphetamine” is bleak and cinematic in it’s ambition. Around every corner, someone is desperately “waiting for a knock on the trailer door” from their personal “Doctor Disregard”. The turf is mapped clearly enough: “It’s a war out there, and it’s fought by poor white men”. But as it goes on, it’s the song’s chorus that really nails it.
“It’s gonna rock you till you’re down on your knees,
It’s gonna have you beggin’, pretty please?
It’s gonna rock you like a hurricane,
Methamphetamine!”
It’s the best anti-drug song since JJ Cale’s “Cocaine”. It won’t be a hit though. Not short of Guns ‘n’ Roses reconvening to record it with Kid Rock. Yeah, like THAT would ever happen.
Produced by Don Was, ‘Tennessee Pusher’ kicks off jovially enough, with “Alabama High-Test”. There’s a motor in it, rockabilly with a whiff of early Dylan.
“They’re gonna put me in the slammer,
If they catch me with that Alabama High-Test”.
It sounded like it might be about high-octane gasoline but it was soon obvious what it really meant. The album’s title notwithstanding, it should have been obvious. Meanwhile, “Tennessee Pusher”, the song, has its darkness too, but darkness that looks to the hope in a new dawn. It has the melancholy of Little Feat’s “Willin’”.
Not all the songs on ‘Tennessee Pusher’ involve the ferrying, distribution, ingestion, or consequences of illicit chemical entertainment devices. There are the road songs too. Like “Mary’s Kitchen”, about a trucker’s rest stop you might be inclined to visit “if you want your sausage ground”.
“Motel In Memphis” takes in racism and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “That Evening Sun” is a great freight-rider’s song and “Humdinger” is, well, just that:
“Party of the century, No Cops Allowed!” - and that’s just the opening line.
‘Tennessee Pusher’ works as an album, too. There’s even the hint of a happy ending for our redneck backslider. After the redemptive reassurance of, “Always Lift Him Up And Never Let Him Down”, comes the album’s closer, “Caroline”, a song strangely juxtaposed in mood to everything that comes before it. In contrast, “Caroline” is joyful, optimistic. Clean.
It’s been earmarked as the first ‘single’ from the album. And it is the only song from ‘Tennessee Pusher’ as yet available on the OCMS MySpace page. http://www.myspace.com/oldcrowmedicineshow
Hopefully that will change. Maybe when the album is released on the 23rd of September.
