Critter Fuqua left
Old Crow Medicine Show shortly after the band celebrated its twenty first birthday in 2019, leaving
Ketch Secor as the lone remaining founding Crow on
Paint This Town, the group's return to their old home ATO Records.
Secor seizes the opportunity provided by
Fuqua's departure to revamp Old Crow, giving the band its first permanent drummer in Jerry Pentecost, a shift that broadens the band's reach while also giving it a serious kick. Maybe the backbeat is prominent on
Paint This Town but the music is still recognizably
Old Crow Medicine Show;
Fuqua's presence is even felt, as he's credited on two of the album's twelve songs.
Secor does make a conscious decision to have Old Crow sing songs of inclusion, imagining a Mississippi flag that represents all the people, writing an ode to abolitionist John Brown and ceding the spotlight to Pentecost to sing a tribute to Black country pioneer
DeFord Bailey. All of these subjects may reside in the past but their presence is pointedly political, as is the looming specter of climate change on "Used to Be a Mountain" and "Gloryland," a song that captures the fever dreams of a world gone wrong. Mortality also weighs upon
Secor, as he ponders middle-age on the road on "Reasons to Run." Heavy subjects all but
Old Crow Medicine Show lightens the mood with the heartland anthems of "Paint This Town" and the breakneck bluegrass of "Painkiller"--two songs written in tandem by
Secor and
Jim Lauderdale--and such old-timey shuffles as "Lord Willing and the Creek Don't Rise" and "Hillbilly Boy," tunes that give
Paint This Town levity but also deepens its soul. Making a joyous noise helps ease the pain of troubled times and that's precisely what happens here: the good and the bad intermingle like the past and the present, resulting in a lively, heartfelt record. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine