Photos by Stan Martin – Old Crow Medicine Show began in late September of 1998 when a monkey wrench gang of old-time string band musicians, most of us still in our teens, left Ithaca, New York to cross the Canadian border and play our way to the Pacific. We brought our pawnshop fiddles, banjos, guitars and washboards to downtown street corners across Ontario, to paper mill towns above Lake Superior, farmers markets in Manitoba, Indian reservations in South Dakota, and out to the streets of Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle and Portland. Along the way we discovered a unique country sound both old and new, foreign and familiar. We knew we had captured something special.
The lineup was fluid, just hitch up the best available pickers and singers around at the time, and if you had a car that was a plus. Even today, Old Crow remains a collective, borrowing from the unique talents of an evolving cast. But right from the start it was me in the driver’s seat of that black ’82 Volvo station wagon with the flames painted on the side, Critter Fuqua riding shotgun, and in the rear view there was Willie Watson riding in Kevin Hayes’ Ford Econoline van (we called it the White Whale). Standing behind the big doghouse bass was founding member Benny Gould and, when he wasn’t birdwatching, wily Kevin Ahearn played the banjo. We had painter/poet Jake Hascup along the for the ride and Shani Abel, a sassy Lubbock Texan who sold found objects during our street corner sets.
Molly Tuttle
