7 September 2022
Builder Via, a talented-but-fresh-faced singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Danbury, North Carolina, knows it is type of crazy that he’s right now in the Old Crow Medication Show. The impish Americana/string band dates its delivery all the way back to the past due 1990s — that’s right round the time Via was born. “It’s kind of a wild situation, ” he said in the phone interview, sounding a little dumbfounded still at their circumstances. “I got this particular Instagram text from Ketch (Secor, the founder plus front man of the group), saying, ‘Hey man, produce a call some time. ‘ And I just thought, ‘This is amazing, Ketch wants my music. ‘”But Secor wasn’t connecting just as the mentor or fan — his band needed fresh new blood, particularly with the leaving of co-founder Critter Fuqua in 2019. Via’s knack for a wide variety of string devices along with his rich, of-the-hills tenor meant this was more of the recruitment conversation. A month later on, the then-23-year-old went to Nashville for an extended hang along with one of his musical characters that doubled as an season casting. “The first day all of us just started jabbering such as old buddies and selected some old-time tunes all day, ” Via recalled. They will did the same thing the next day. Around the third day, they had written a song together. A couple weeks later, Via got the phone call that he was in, and had been quickly hustled into the facility for work on the group’s latest album, the lately released “Paint This City. “Via wasn’t alone being an Old Crow neophyte — the group had also additional drummer/percussionist Jerry Pentecost plus slide guitarist Mike Harris, both of whom delivered a more country-rock background that will colored the arrangements from the new songs. The starting title track is nearer to John Mellencamp than Doctor Watson, and the elegiac “Reasons to Run” brings the poppy, Jackson Browne feel to the proceeding, although somewhere else the band sounds just like themselves. “We all simply found this commonality using this hillbilly, Southern rock type of thing with a lot of the particular songs on this album, inch recalled Via, who wound up playing more than a half number of different instruments on the 12-song effort. “I’m really adoring it. It’s kind of a brand new direction for the band, yet we’re still doing a lots of the old-timey stuff as well. “Of course, as the most junior and unseasoned person in the group, Via was enthusiastic to impress. “Every day time I went in sensation like, ‘Tomorrow, I might not have to get in the band, so I much better sound good, ‘” this individual said of those sessions. “It was a real trip. “Now, with more than 100 shows below his belt since the periods, he feels settled in to the group and is feeling the firmer sense of identification in it. The band currently has another album along the way, with Secor/Via co-writes and something where the new kid will get a lead vocal. Plus, in the end, there’s something that seems right about Old Crow Medicine Show becoming more of the institution and musical cannon rather than just a fixed group of players and personalities. In the end, since their beginning, bluegrass and old-timey have rotated and balanced players in and out. Via symbolizes the next generation of younger Appalachian kids who consumed in the music and great the region before giving their very own spin on things, the same as Secor and company had been doing a few decades prior to. “There’s a synergy that we get on the stage, ” Through said of Secor. “I think it comes from (exactly that) — that Appalachian kind of history that we each shared and talked about jointly. There’s 20 years between all of us, but we experienced many of the same fiddler’s conventions, understanding a lot of the same people in your area and musically. “And, for your record, Free Times failed to ask Via whether the music group would play “Wagon Steering wheel. “Sept. 10. 8 g. m. The Township Auditorium. 1703 Taylor St . $47-$77. thetownship. org