About
Ketch is best known as the founder and frontman of Old Crow Medicine Show, a two-time Grammy Award-winning juggernaut whose triumphs include induction into the Grand Ole Opry, double-platinum certification, and world-wide touring. It is impossible to overstate the influence of Old Crow, whose literary songwriting, true-to-life roadside adventures, and high-octane live performances helped spur artistic shifts in country, Americana, folk, pop, and rock music spheres since the band’s formation in 1998. “Old Crow Medicine Show were the band that made me fall in love with country music,” says Marcus Mumford.
A prolific writer, wordsmith and storyteller, Ketch’s most familiar creation is “Wagon Wheel,” originally recorded by Old Crow Medicine and later by Darius Rucker. Co-written with Bob Dylan, “Wagon Wheel” is one of the top five best-selling country songs of all time. But his mastery of language doesn’t stop with song. From children’s books to musical theatre productions and from TEDx talks to New York Times’ opinion pieces, Ketch’s words take on many forms. “Ketch Secor is one of my favorite writers. Whether it’s songs, books, essays, radio scripts or letters to home, Ketch has a way of making the world spin a little smoother when he starts putting words together. His words never fail to enlighten and they always have the power to make me smile,” says Marty Stuart.
When it comes to American music, Ketch is a chosen steward and a torch bearer––as well as a questioner of the gatekeepers. Serving as an advisor, historical consultant, and featured speaker in Ken Burns’ acclaimed 2019 documentary Country Music, Ketch was a bridge between generations of country music makers and lovers, as he pushed for a wider lens and deeper understanding of the art form’s roots. “Ketch is a library, but he has this carnival-barker showman thing,” says Dave Rawlings.
“Whether I’m in front of an audience of concert-goers or a six-year-old, whether I’m using puppets or a banjo, I’m always trying to show people that they can be mesmerized by a story, by a person, by a character. By humanity, really. By one another.”
Ketch Secor keeps showing us new ways to experience old things––ancient things. Connections between people and continents once lost and forgotten come vividly back to the foreground in Ketch’s nimble care. He is the consummate entertainer: the merry ringmaster, mischievous busker, passionate professor, modern Beat, and unassuming virtuoso, all rolled into one. “Ketch is a library, but he has this carnival-barker showman thing,” says Dave Rawlings.
A singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, author, speaker, and teacher, Ketch commands every stage like a charismatic evangelist with a message: Everyone should have a seat at the table.
“It’s like I’m preaching up there––preaching with a fiddle, preaching with a blues song, preaching with a song about drinking, preaching when I’m telling a story about how I miss John Prine. Preaching when I make space for my band members to have their voices and songs and talents shine through,” Ketch says. “All of it feels like a greater passage of light and love.”
Ketch is still best known as the founder and frontman of Old Crow Medicine Show, a two-time Grammy Award-winning juggernaut whose triumphs include induction into the Grand Ole Opry and double-platinum certification for their iconic hit single “Wagon Wheel”. It is impossible to overstate the influence of Old Crow, whose literary songwriting, true-to-life roadside adventures, and high-octane live performances helped spur artistic shifts in country, Americana, folk, pop, and rock music spheres since the band’s formation in 1998. “Old Crow Medicine Show were the band that made me fall in love with country music,” says Marcus Mumford.
As a songwriter, Ketch excels with a novelist’s knack for characters, a folkie’s heart, and a traveler’s restlessness. The stories behind songs are often as legendary as the songs themselves. Take “Wagon Wheel”: Ketch built the song using a 1970s-era Bob Dylan song scrap. When Ketch sought Dylan’s permission for Old Crow to record the song, Dylan replied that he hadn’t written it. He’d based the lines on a rarely heard 1950s B-side called “Rock Me, Baby” by Memphis artist Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup. Through masterful writing and chasing the truth, Ketch exhumed trails that connect generations, genres, races, and regions. The result now one of the top five best-selling country songs of all time thanks to Darius Rucker’s Grammy award winning recording of “Wagon Wheel.”
Ketch’s mastery of language is only matched by his love of it. “I’m in love with words, and I just love putting them together,” he says. “It makes me so, so happy. If I get a good couplet, and it’s sexy or powerful, it just makes me feel so good. Yet, it’s agonizing sometimes to put those words together. And painstaking. So that’s probably why I do it.”
The scope and potency of Ketch’s work has long-since spilled over to include even more: documentaries, variety shows, a children’s book, a musical, a school.
When it comes to American music, Ketch is a chosen steward and a torch bearer––as well as a questioner of the gatekeepers. Serving as an advisor, historical consultant, and featured speaker in Ken Burns’ acclaimed 2019 documentary Country Music, Ketch was a bridge between generations of country music makers and lovers, as he pushed for a wider lens and deeper understanding of the art form’s roots: “All of American music comes from the same place,” he said in the film. “It’s just sort of where it ends up. And country music is one of the destinations. You have the banjo, which comes from Africa. And you have the fiddle, which comes from the British Isles and from Europe. And when they meet, they meet in the American South. And that’s the big bang.”
The same themes anchor Ketch’s compelling 2019 TEDx Talk. Entitled “Will The Circle Be Unbroken In Sudanese,” it is a master class in musicology, exposing, subverting, and educating through a freewheeling monologue that incorporates different languages, storytelling, instruction, and song with thrilling grace. “I view myself as a progressive voice in a genre that tends to be conservative and move slow,” he says. “I feel compelled to educate just because as a student of all American popular music, I feel so riveted by the subject that I’m impassioned by it. I just want to share it. I want to pass it along, because it’s turned me on. It’s got me so fired up.”
A trusted son and focused provocateur, Ketch shoulders the duality with love and determination.
“It’s like I’m preaching up there—preaching with a fiddle, preaching with a blues song, preaching with a song about drinking, preaching when I’m telling a story about how I miss John Prine. Preaching when I make space for my band members to have their voices and songs and talents shine through. All of it feels like a greater passage of light and love.”
Ketch’s stubborn insistence on inclusion and truth telling has created a career-long pattern of art that brings people together. When the world shut down in 2020, Ketch and Old Crow launched Hartland Hootenanny, an entertaining and thought provocative variety show series hosted and live-streamed from their East Nashville Hartland Studio. Featuring an all-star Americana guest list that included Molly Tuttle, Marty Stuart, Billy Strings, Sierra Hull, The War & Treaty, Jim Lauderdale, and more, Hartland Hootenanny combined humor, music, hope, and nostalgia to offer genuine comfort during a time of stark isolation. Ketch wrote and starred in each of the 31 episodes, incorporating laugh-out-loud skits sandwiched between virtuosic musical performances, thought-provoking commentary on the challenges at hand, and real letters from viewers. With straight-faced silliness and razor-sharp wit, Ketch delivered line after line of feel-good respite and timely questioning.
Ultimately, Ketch is a mentor and a co-conspirator as well, working and writing with other artists as he also produces albums, offers advice, and builds community. “We feel worshipful of the privilege of being alive on Earth when we congregate around music,” Ketch says.
Ketch’s knack for honoring traditions and then reinterpreting them also defines Lorraine, his children’s book featuring illustrations by Higgins Bond and published by Sourcebooks. Based on an Appalachian folktale, Lorraine traces the origins of blues music through a relatable young girl’s eye-opening and empowering experience. Ketch reimagined the old story––and added to it. Featured as part of the Tennessee Department of Education’s Reading 360 program, Lorraine was named an Amazon Best Book of the Month, and earned praise from NPR’s Morning Edition, The Tennessean, and more.
Ketch’s wild creativity is prolific and he always has some new project in the works. His musical, Hooten Holler, was part of the Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights at the legendary Barter Theatre in Virginia in 2022 and 2023, with other writing, hosting, speaking, and acting opportunities on the horizon.
As dizzying as Ketch’s output is, a common thread runs throughout it all: education. Touring around the world with Old Crow, Ketch can often be found in a local library, reading and browsing. The son of educators, Ketch has always valued different forms of learning: He attended the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy on scholarship. He also spent years busking with his “band of merry pranksters,” and sat at the feet of Allen Ginsberg and Pete Seeger. “To me,” says Ketch of the time, “that feels holy.”
In 2016, Ketch took his interest in education even deeper: He co-founded the Episcopal School of Nashville, a private primary school nestled in his East Nashville neighborhood. Spirituality, service, diversity, and discovery shape the school’s mission. Ketch now serves as Board Chair Emeritus and leads fundraising. Under his leadership, the school has grown from an inaugural class of 16 kindergarten through second grade students in modular buildings in a church parking lot to more than 100 pre-K through eighth graders learning in a beautifully renovated historic school building sitting on 1.5 acres. The Episcopal School of Nashville’s vision statement reflects Ketch’s personal mission: “To shape students who are intellectually, spiritually, and responsibly engaged with the place, community, and world they call home.”
“We feel worshipful of the privilege of being alive on Earth when we congregate around music.”
When Old Crow released their critically acclaimed seventh studio album Paint This Town in 2022, Ketch pointed to the places and people that move the group. “Our band has always drawn its inspiration from those elemental American places, where water towers profess town names, where the Waffle House and the gas station are the only spots to gather,” he said upon the record’s release. “This is the scenery for folk music in the 21st century, and the John Henrys and Casey Joneses of today are the youth who rise up out of these aged burgs undeterred, undefeated, and still kicking.”
The travelers and heroes whose journeys have inspired the world’s greatest stories: Ketch wants the rest of us to understand they’re right outside our doors––or staring back at us in the mirror. And that connects us all. “I feel like I’ve lived one variation of this American mythology in which the holy deities are itinerant wanderers or work in diners, just regular plain folk and not gods made of stone, edged in finery somewhere 6,000 miles away,” he says. “My life has been a conjuring of a new American mythology. If my life’s work could ever be completed, it would be if and when I have a better understanding––or an addition––to this new American mythology.”
For Ketch, choosing all the ways he’ll add to the new American mythology is personal. “I feel like I listen to a lot of inner whispering and outer murmuring. I feel pulled in places by a force that’s more than just what I want, because oftentimes where I’m pulled is in the direction of something that’s a lot harder than where I was,” Ketch says. “If I get another 40 years, then I’ll probably keep on building other things that are hard.” He pauses, then adds resolutely, “I’m just a builder like that.”