O.C.M.S.

The 2004 debut album of Old Crow Medicine Show introduced the quintet's old-timey bluegrass standards (by way of Appalachian stringband inspiration) to fans of Americana music, with ample help from Gillian Welch's partner Dave Rawlings who produced O.C.M.S. It opens with the classic cover "Tell It to Me" invoking gritty and sinister images of the old weird America that Norman Rockwell never painted. The folkie traditional "CC Rider" gets a drunken, warbling weariness that would well accompany anything from Bob Dylan and The Band's Basement Tapes sessions. Speaking of Bob, "Wagon Wheel" is this album's true gem — it began as an unfinished Dylan song (in chorus form only) pulled from his 1973 soundtrack to Sam Peckinpah's film Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid. O.C.M.S.'s Ketch Secor wrote some choruses for it and the chemistry between bygone Dylan and these 21st century tunesmiths is uncanny. Their own compositions are similarly authentic. Songs like "Big Time In This Jungle" and "Take 'Em Away" blend boxcar hobo ramblings with old dustbowl blues, protest tunes, and hints of acoustic rockabilly to create a sound that is much more unique than that of most retro revivalists.