California: Songs that Are Everywhere

Have you heard the song "Wagon Wheel"? Based on my experiences over the last week or so, I'm betting at some point you have. It goes like this:

Rock me, mama, like a wagon wheel
Rock me, mama, any way you feel
Hey, mama rock me

Rock me, mama, like the wind and the rain
Rock me, mama, like a south-bound train
Hey, mama rock me

I'd heard the song around enough that I just sort of assumed it was one of those American classics, along the lines of "Country Roads," the kind of song that Europeans love to play in bars and at sing-alongs.

In fact, I'm 99% sure "Wagon Wheel" is the specific song I remember hearing played – twice, to great audience acclaim – in a pub in the tiny capital town of the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, when the father of the woman who ran the hostel where I stayed invited us all to come hear him and his friend in a cover band at the local pub, and I and another American traveler went down and watched the local folks getting happily drunk to country music, and the hostel owner's dad was really flattered that we came, and apologized that we'd traveled all this way just to end up hearing covers of our own American music.

When I got to my cousin's wedding in Chico last weekend, it was to find that his crowd of friends are really into country and bluegrass and old-time music, and especially into the song "Wagon Wheel" – so it's clear I was right that this is a big, well-known song – but also for the first time I was able to put a name of a band to the song; it turns out it's by Old Crow Medicine Show – which clearly also is or has become a big, well-known band.

Except that in my mind, Old Crow Medicine Show was just one of those local bands that used to play at the Grassroots Festival in Trumansburg, the nearby music festival I went to every year as a kid.

?? Confusion ensues. How can this be both a song so famous that it's the crowd favorite at the local pub in Stornoway, Scotland, yet also a local band I remember from my childhood?

After the wedding weekend, when I had internet access again, I looked up Old Crow Medicine Show, and had a "Stop, you're both right!" moment:

Old Crow Medicine Show is "an Americana string band based in Nashville, Tennessee" (thank you, Wikipedia). Part of the band met as kids in Virginia, but the other part met in upstate New York, where they originally formed a band called "The Funnest Game" – which is a local band I remember playing around Ithaca when I was a kid, and which was part of the old-time music scene that's a big thing around Ithaca and Trumansburg. When the Virginia portion of Old Crow Medicine Show's future members came to Ithaca College, history was made, as they all met, formed a new band, and were eventually discovered and mentored by some big names in folk and country music.

So they're world-famous and from Ithaca, which is just rather awesome. And it's also fun that "Wagon Wheel" is a favorite song of my cousin and all his friends in California – by the end of the weekend, I felt like it had been the unofficial theme song.

Here's a live recording, from Youtube: