But then, the Old Crow Medicine Show, or OCMS to their fans, have always been somewhat more interested in kicking back with an ice cold beer and watching the tobacco grow tall in their yard than large payslips and the glamorous shenanigans of city
folks.
While the five-piece may have been indulging in a little commercialism by playing the Liquid Room for cold hard cash last night, there's more to their journey to fame and fortune than meets the eye.
Just over a decade ago, as most of middle America concentrated on firmly embracing the official white picket dream of a plot of land, deep-fried Christmas turkey and invading Iraq, OCMS took the road less travelled. Living a beatnik existence in a large brown van and a Volvo with a flash of fire on its bodywork, they spent their formative years touring towns so small the postal system had yet to arrive. In exchange for a crust of bread and a place to sleep, they gave their audiences some genuine old-time folk music – the weather-beaten, gin-sodden grandmother of jazz, blues, bluegrass and country.
Invited to play at Nashville's answer to The Royal Variety Performance, the Grand Ole Opry, in 2001 the boys were suddenly inundated with glitzy prime-time offers. They succumbed to a manager, sat-nav for the bus and a chequebook, but decided to keep on with the life they'd been happy living.
Although one of Northern America's oldest music styles, old-time regularly finds itself compared to punk, mostly because it's easy for anyone who can play a little to pick up and is just as much about the community involved as the talent on stage.
It's this simplicity that just about sums up OCMS's whole existence. But while it's unlikely that a punk band ever began their set on time, these hillbillies do things a little bit different. Starting up on the stroke of eight without the usual entourage of support artists and roadies, OCMS moved quickly into an engaging two-hour set, broken only by the boy's need for a nicotine boost at half time.
Hiding their years of honed practice under a tough veneer of guitar strumming and down home ditties, mostly dedicated to the imbibing, influence or kicking of illicit substances, there was a touch of enthusiastic restlessness to the welcoming crowd.
Beginning with a loose set of less familiar songs and previews from their new album Tennessee Pusher, out in three weeks' time, Willie Wilson shared the lively vocals with multi-tasking Ketch Secor, who put in time with the guitar, harmonica and fiddle too. Only in the second set did OCMS's façade slip as their set tightened up considerably and the songs became subtly harder to play.
All that's missing from their truly authentic performance, it seems, is the creek of a rocking chair on the porch and a whiff of moonshine.
The full article contains 545 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
