Jason Isbell, Old Crow Medicine Show Transport Music Fans from Chicago to Nashville
Live concert broadcast from Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to Chicago street corner.
Nashville has drawn musicians for decades due to its centralized location, numerous recording studios and vast concert venues. On Tuesday (May 24), Chicago, Ill. got a taste of the diverse music scene in Nashville, Tenn. with a live streamed concert by Jason Isbell and Old Crow Medicine Show from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
Part of The Soundtrack of America: Made in Tennessee Tourism Initiative, the 75-minute concert was filmed with a 360-degree panoramic camera angle with interactive ability that had music fans on S. Michigan Avenue and Congress Parkway in Chi-Town transported to Music City. Song requests were taken from the Chicago audience and one lucky participant won a trip to Nashville.
Grammy Award winning group Old Crow Medicine Show kicked off their high energy set at 5 p.m. with frontman Ketch Secor’s contagious vigor leading the performance with foot stomping songs including the appropriately titled “Tennessee Bound,” hillbilly flavored covers of “This Land Is Your Land” and “American Girl” and a spirited sing-along of “Wagon Wheel.” No strangers to busking on street corners, Secor told Sounds Like Nashville that they have previously played music on the curb of Michigan Avenue.
“We started playing on a street corner, making a loud noise for anybody who would listen,” Secor, a Virginia native who has lived in Nashville for nearly two decades, explains. “We played a lot in Tennessee. It’s funny the way a place chooses you. You might choose a place. I actually think it was the other way around. Tennessee wanted a new fiddle player and new banjo player to move to the state and shake it up a little bit.”
And shake it up they did. Having performed all over the state, both Secor and Isbell say Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium is their favorite concert venue. While Secor says the building has a unique spirit, Isbell says there is no place he’d rather see and hear his favorite artists.
“Selling out four consecutive nights there was unexpected and incredible, but nothing beats joining my wife Amanda and John Prine for a few songs the last time John played at the Ryman. He’s a hero of ours,” Isbell says.
Isbell has lived in Nashville for nearly five years and says a big reason he moved was for the support system he has in Music City as well as the opportunities for recording and collaborating with friends and heroes. His performance included the title track off his latest release, the Grammy Award winning Something More Than Free, the poignant “24 Frames” and the beautiful “Cover Me Up,” which he wrote for his wife, Amanda Shires, who backed him on fiddle.
Isbell says moving to Nashville has changed the way he records thanks to producer Dave Cobb and the access to the many different studios and talent the town offers. Performing at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is also an honor for the singer, who has had items of his featured in exhibits.
“I like to be able to see a shrine like this. Country music has been a really big part of people’s lives whether they’re artists or listeners.”
