Ketch Secor

Secor grew up in Harrisonburg, Virginia, the son of an Episcopal school headmaster. Earlier generations of the Secor family had achieved success banking and business in Toledo, Ohio, but lost much of their fortune in the stock market crash of 1929.[2]

Secor's first musical instrument was a mouth harp purchased on a field trip when he was in the fourth grade. In the seventh grade, Secor met future bandmate Christopher "Critter" Fuqua. Secor and Fuqua began playing music together, performing open mics at the Little Grill Collective in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where they met Robert St. Ours, founder of The Hackensaw Boys. Secor and St. Ours joined to form the Route 11 Boys.[3]

Secor received a scholarship to New Hampshire's prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy, where he learned to play banjo and discovered the music of Jerry Garcia and Bob Dylan. Secor moved to Ithaca, New York at 19 to attended Ithaca College while his girlfriend, Lydia Peelle, attended Cornell University. After multiple breakups, the couple married on November 3, 2001 in North Andover, Massachusetts.[4] The couple founded the Episcopal School of Nashville in 2016, and Secor is the Board Chair, Emeritus.[5][6]

Secor frequently collaborates and writes music with American bluegrass guitarist Molly Tuttle who occasionally tours and appears with Old Crow Medicine Show. In early 2023, it was reported that Secor and Tuttle are in a romantic relationship.[7]

While traveling and busking with Fuqua, Secor met Old Crow Medicine Show co-founder Willie Watson in upstate New York, and Kevin Hayes in Maine, where he worked raking blueberries.[2] The newly formed group decided to call themselves "Old Crow Medicine Show" in honor of the traveling variety shows, or medicine shows, that from the previous century. In 1998, the group recorded a 10-song album called Trans:mission and went on their first tour in October 1998, performing across Canada.[8]

In 1999, Secor and bandmates moved to Boone, North Carolina, settling in a rural barn with no running water where they learned to make corn whiskey and worked on their music. In 2000, the group were busking outside a pharmacy called Boone Drug on King Street when the daughter of folk-country legend Doc Watson heard them playing, and brought her father back to hear them. Doc invited them to play in his annual MerleFest music festival in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.[9] The gig proved to be a big break for the band, resulting in an invitation to play at the Grand Ole Opry where they met and were mentored by Marty Stuart, and got the opportunity to open for Dolly Parton at the Ryman Auditorium.[10]

Secor is known for co-writing Old Crow Medicine Show's biggest hit and signature song, "Wagon Wheel", which started as a short snippet recorded by Bob Dylan in 1973 called "Rock Me, Mama" and was later extended by Secor to include new verses about feeling homesick for the south and hitchhiking his way home.[2] Secor and Dylan signed a co-writing agreement, agreeing to a 50–50 split in authorship. The final version of the song was released on their second album O.C.M.S. (2004), and was certified Gold in 2011 and Platinum in 2013 by the Recording Industry Association of America. The song has been covered many times, notably by Nathan Carter in 2012 and Darius Rucker in 2013, whose version hit #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.[2]

In 2018, Secor published Lorraine: The Girl Who Sang the Storm Away with illustrator Higgins Bond, a children's book inspired by Appalachian folktales about a young African American girl and her grandfather who weather a severe storm with the help of music.[11][12][5]