Issue #113: Ketch Secor Answers the DRTI Proust-ish Questionnaire

When I think of Nashville gone by, I think of Old Crow Medicine Show, and when I think of Nashville now, I think of Old Crow Medicine Show. Perhaps no other band has been able to live so effortlessly in the present while still constantly conjuring up the past - string band traditions made for living the way we do now, with reverence and not nostalgia. The place they hold in country music culture is theirs alone, really: who else can you hear sung (screamed?) by tourists on Broadway, see on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry (they were inducted in 2013), count as Bob Dylan-co-writers and watch their frontman and co-founder passionately and openly rally for social justice and gun control? Old Crow's corner of country music is theirs alone, lead undoubtably by the freewheeling mind of Ketch Secor, who has held things down for two decades and a half and counting.

But this July, Ketch took a little detour, releasing his debut solo project,  Story The Crow Told Me, with appearances from Molly Tuttle, Marty Stuart and fellow OCMS bandmates Critter Fuqua and Willie Watson. It's a deviation from the string band sound: a little sing-talkin' blues, a little bluegrass, a little punk, a little country-rock renegade, all telling his story of growing up and becoming an artist in a city that is changing faster than he can swap a string. Old Crow was one of the first bands I interviewed for Rolling Stone Country at the Fiddle House in East Nashville, which, in theme with the album, no longer stands: I haven't checked, but there's a good chance it's an Airbnb now, because, as Ketch sings on "What Nashville Was," this hectic town where I'm livin' in ain't like its humble beginnings.

To celebrate the album, we asked the ever-creative Ketch to run down our new DRTI Proust-ish Questionnaire, because we knew he'd have good answers (we were right). I've burnt a lotta toast, too, Ketch. I'm working on it.

The Don’t Rock the Inbox Proust-ish Questionnaire: Ketch Secor

1. What country album is your idea of perfect happiness?

Believe me, I know the irony when I tell you that my favorite perfect happiness country album is one recorded in prison. But there’s just something so magically free and liberating about Johnny Cash’s voice booming through the mess hall on the album Live from Folsom Prison.

2. What’s your greatest fear about your career?

Relevance. Keeping up with the Joneses can be a real motivator. But after over a quarter century of the hard slog that is punching above your weight in the music business, I’ve never been above riding a coattail or two.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in other artists?

I don’t think deplore accurately describes the irritation I get when I hear the numb silence of an artist’s refusal to mention a tragic mass casualty shooting in our community. I can’t be anyone’s mouthpiece but my own. But I feel it’s time that we the music community of Nashville have a pressing need to take a stand for the safety of kids and families in the face of such staggering gun violence statistics.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

I try to do too much shit. Gets me every time. You know how much toast I’ve burned?

5. Which living country artist do you most admire?

I think Lainey Wilson is the best country singer this side of Connie Smith. The songs, the voice, the authenticity. She gives me all the hope I need to know the future of our music is in good hands.

6. What is your greatest extravagance on tour?

A wardrobe case. After six nights on the road it’s nice to know your clothes are still hanging.

7. What is the most overrated virtue in the country music world?

The one-upping of how “country” you are is pretty rampant nowadays, yet if you got to crow about it chances are you’re eating crow.

8. Which of your past aesthetic choices do you dislike most?

I used to wear a lot of my dad’s clothes in my 20s, just because at that age I don’t think I really understood that there was a fashion choice available to me besides hand-me-downs. My dad is a little bigger than me, so I looked a little bit like I was wearing parachute pants and a parka in some of those old photos from the early 2000s.

9. Which country artist, living or dead, do you most despise? 

I guess I actually love them all. We’re all trying our best to make sense of the world with six strings and songs from the heart.

10. Which words or phrases do you most overuse in your songwriting? 

The words “silver screen” seem to pop up constantly for me. Also “wildcat.”

11. When and where were you happiest?

Nashville’s a pretty happening place and so is Tucumcari, Peoria, Mobile, Brattleboro, and all the myriad places I go. I like a happening place. Most places are. I think happiness is overrated, so I go with happening. That’s something that never seems to stop.

12. Which talent would you most like to have, other than music?

​​Tap dance, no question about it. Either that or be a really sick clogger.

13. If you could change one thing about your career so far, what would it be?

I think the thing we all wanna change is the number of people we reach. Touching the hearts and ears of a listener is what this whole shenanigan is all about. So I wouldn’t mind some more listeners.

14. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

I wrote a song more popular at summer camp than “On Top of Spaghetti.”

15. If you were to die and come back as another country artist, living or dead, what would it be?

I’d like to come back as Jimmie Rogers. Ride them freights. Yodel. Change the world. And head back up to heaven after about 31 years of it.

16. Where would you most like to live if you didn’t have to be tied to one particular place for work (if you are)?

​​I love Canada, always have. They got a nonstop from Montreal to Nashville now, to which I say “Laissez les bon temps rouler.”

17. What is your most treasured musical possession?

I have Roy Acuff’s fiddle, which he played at the Grand Ole Opry for about 30 years. He carved his name in the back with a pen knife. But I don’t hang it on the wall. I scratch out a living on that thing about every night.

18. Which historical figure in country music would you most like to collaborate with?

Some of these cats that played at the Bristol sessions are who I’d really like to jam with. There was a Harmonica player back then - a guy named El Watson who recorded a tune called “Pot Liquor Blues.” The first Black recording artist to make a hillbilly record.

19. Who are your heroes in real life?

​​Teachers. They are the best.

20. What is your greatest regret?

No regrets. 

21. What is one perfect country song, to you?

Funny, Ken Burns asked me this too and I’ll tell ya what I told him. 

It’s from about 1930 and it goes, “All the time time time time time time. Keep my skillet good and greasy all the time.”

And check out our last questionnaire, from Fancy Hagood.