Old Crow Medicine Show - O.C.M.S. (LP)

Some records just feel like fresh air hitting your face when you step out of a stuffy room. O.C.M.S., released in 2004, is one of those, a set that took Old Crow Medicine Show from street corners to the centre of the Americana conversation. It is the sound of five players who had spent years busking and barnstorming, sharpening songs on the fly. You can hear the footboards creak, the rosin fly, the grin in the singing. It still jumps out of the speakers like a busker who has suddenly found a full house.

Everyone knows this album for Wagon Wheel, and fair enough. The band’s version, credited to Bob Dylan and Ketch Secor, turns a fragment from a Dylan outtake into a proper folk anthem. The verses Secor added feel like they have been around forever, and the take here set the template for a thousand pub singalongs. Years later Darius Rucker’s cover made the song a country hit and earned him a Grammy, but the warmth and swagger of the Old Crow original is the one that sticks. The fiddle hook, the easy sway, the ragged harmonies, it is all right here.

What makes O.C.M.S. more than a one song album is how tight and varied the rest of it is. Tell It To Me kicks the door in with a raucous jug band charge and a cocaine chorus that belongs to the dim, wild corners of American song. Big Time in the Jungle shifts to a soldier’s view of Vietnam, sung without grandstanding and backed by a gallop of fiddle and banjo. Take ’Em Away slows the pace to a weary prayer, the clawhammer banjo carrying a story about land, labour and loss that could be set in any decade. Their reading of C.C. Rider leans into the tune’s deep blues bones, but it still feels like part of their world, not a museum piece.

The chemistry is the hook. Ketch Secor’s fiddle and harmonica dart and dance, Willie Watson’s tenor cuts through like a well tuned pocketknife, Critter Fuqua brings that high lonesome banjo strain, Kevin Hayes drives the rhythm on his guitjo, and Morgan Jahnig keeps the whole thing grounded on upright bass. You can tell these songs earned their shape on street corners and festival side stages. There is space for hoots and handclaps, yet the arrangements never sprawl. Tunes start, make their point, and move on. It is old time string band music that never forgets to entertain.

The record also landed at a neat moment. In the early 2000s, plenty of acts were rummaging through pre war sounds, but Old Crow did it with a busker’s urgency rather than sepia tone polish. O.C.M.S. helped introduce a lot of listeners to the modern old time revival without dumbing anything down. It sits comfortably next to Gillian Welch on the shelf, but it throws a livelier party. That balance, respectful of tradition and alive to the present, is why the album still feels fresh.

If you are the type who cares how these things feel under a needle, O.C.M.S. is a treat. The acoustic instruments bloom on vinyl, the scrape of bow and the snap of strings coming up warm and close. Old Crow Medicine Show vinyl often gets spun hard in my house, and this pressing earns the mileage. If you have been hunting O.C.M.S. vinyl, keep an eye on your local crate at a Melbourne record store or buy Old Crow Medicine Show records online from a trusted shop. Good copies rarely linger long. It is one of those titles that makes sense to keep handy, whether you are a long time fan or just curious after a night of pub singing.

Nearly two decades on, the album has become a gateway, the one people recommend when someone asks where to start with Old Crow Medicine Show albums on vinyl. It is also a strong reminder that classic forms can still surprise. Spin it next to new folk upstarts or between bluegrass staples and it holds its own. For anyone building a shelf of essential Americana on wax, from local digs to the broader hunt for vinyl records Australia wide, this belongs near the front. It is rowdy and tuneful, tough and tender, and it still sounds like a band playing for the hat, except the hat got very full.