The 2023 North Carolina Azalea Festival at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 13, at Live Oak Bank Pavilion features Carly Pearce with openers Conner Smith and Jonathan Hutcherson!

And at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 14, at Live Oak Bank Pavilion features Old Crow Medicine Show and Jamestown Revival!

Tickets at this link.

Old Crow Medicine Show

Ketch Secor (fiddle, harmonica, guitar, banjo, vocals) – Morgan Jahnig (upright bass) – Cory Younts (mandolin, keyboards, drums, vocals) – Jerry Pentecost (drums, mandolin) – Mike Harris (slide guitar, guitar, mandolin, banjo, dobro, vocals) Mason Via (guitar, gitjo, vocals)

On their whirlwind new album Paint This Town, Old Crow Medicine Show offer up a riveting glimpse into American mythology and the wildly colorful characters who populate it. The most incisive body of work yet from the Nashville-based roots band—a two-time Grammy Award-winning juggernaut whose triumphs include induction into the Grand Ole Opry and double-platinum certification for their iconic hit single “Wagon Wheel”—the album pays homage to everyone from Elvis Presley to Eudora Welty while shedding a bright light on the darker aspects of the country’s legacy. Fueled by Old Crow’s freewheeling collision of Americana, old-time music, folk, and rock & roll, Paint This Town relentlessly pulls off the rare and essential feat of turning razor-sharp commentary into the kind of songs that inspire rapturous singing along.

In a major milestone for Old Crow, Paint This Town marks the first album created in their own Hartland Studio: an East Nashville spot the band acquired in early 2020 then transformed into a clubhouse-like space custom-built to suit their distinct sensibilities. “Over the years we’ve spent a lot of time and money in professional studios, but this was the first time we’d worked in our own place since back in the late ’90s, when we’d hang a microphone from the rafters and record a cassette on our TASCAM 4-track,” says frontman Ketch Secor. Co-produced by the band and Matt Ross-Spang (a producer/engineer/mixer who’s worked with the likes of John Prine and Jason Isbell), Paint This Town also took shape from a far more insular process than their past work with such producers as Don Was and Dave Cobb (who helmed Old Crow’s most recent effort, 2018’s widely acclaimed Volunteer). Not only instrumental in allowing the band a whole new level of creative freedom, that self-contained approach helped to revive a certain spirit of pure abandon. “Doing it ourselves was a lot more fun with a lot less stress or pressure, and because of that we were way less precious about it,” says Secor. “It all just felt less like a chore and more like a complete joy.”

The seventh studio album from Old Crow, Paint This Town opens on its title track: a raucously swinging anthem that fully embodies that joyful energy. With its fable-like account of the band’s carefree troublemaking over the last two decades, the track showcases Secor’s uncanny knack for packing so much detailed storytelling into a single line (e.g., “We were teenage troubadours hopping on box cars for a hell of a one-way ride”). “Our band has always drawn its inspiration from those elemental American places, where water towers profess town names, where the Waffle House and the gas station are the only spots to gather,” says Secor. “This is the scenery for folk music in the 21st century, and the John Henrys and Casey Joneses of today are the youth who rise up out of these aged burgs undeterred, undefeated, and still kicking.”

Although much of Paint This Town looks outward to examine the American experiment, Old Crow never shy away from the intensely personal. Written soon after the demise of Secor’s marriage, “Bombs Away” puts a devil-may-care twist on the classic divorce song, while the gently galloping “Reasons to Run” invokes the Lone Ranger in confessing to the emotional toll of too much time on the road. And on tracks like “Used to Be a Mountain,” Old Crow turn their lived experience into a lens for illuminating larger-scale problems affecting the modern world. “I spent about 25 years of my life very close to the region of Appalachia where strip-mining occurs, which is really dangerous work and destructive for all living things,” says Secor of the song’s origins. Partly informed by his memories of hitchhiking around coal country as a teenager, “Used to Be a Mountain” emerges as a galvanizing meditation on environmental catastrophe, boldly propelled by Secor’s frenetic vocal flow and firebrand poetry (“From the fat cats, race rats, big Pharma, tall stacks/They’re the ones digging the hole/All the way down to Guangzhou”).

In one of the album’s most potent segments, Paint This Town delivers a trio of songs that delve into matters of race and hate and systems of power, embedding each track with Old Crow’s vision for a more harmonious future. On “DeFord Rides Again,” for instance, the band serves up a gloriously stomping tribute to legendary harmonica player DeFord Bailey (the first Black star of the Grand Ole Opry, who was eventually banned from the show and left in exile). “One of the things that inspired that song was the experiences we’ve had traveling all over the world and seeing the people who take country music into their hearts,” says Old Crow upright bassist Morgan Jahnig. “It’s the entire spectrum of humanity—but when you look at the people making country music, it tends to be pretty monochromatic. If we really want to push music forward, we need to let all kinds of people have a voice.” Featuring Mississippi-bred musician Shardé Thomas on fife (a piccolo-like instrument often used in military bands), the soul-stirring “New Mississippi Flag” dreams up an insignia that truly honors the state’s rich cultural heritage (“She’ll have a stripe for Robert Johnson/And one for Charlie Pride”). “We’re living in a time in which there’s a great undoing of the mythologies that were created in order for the South to alter its view of itself, and with that undoing comes a repurposing,” Secor points out. Meanwhile, “John Brown’s Dream” unfolds as a swampy and smoldering portrait of the notorious radical abolitionist and his brutally violent attempt at rebellion.

Throughout Paint This Town, Old Crow bring their spirited reflection to an endlessly eclectic sound, spiking their songs with elements of everything from gospel (on “Gloryland,” a heavy-hearted lament for our failure to care for each other) to Southern highlands balladry (on “Honey Chile,” a melancholy love song graced with soaring harmonies and swooning fiddle melodies). That deliberate unpredictability has defined Old Crow since their earliest days, when they got their start busking on the streets with pawnshop-bought instruments. Through the years, they’ve continually breathed new life into their sound by inviting new musicians into the fold; to that end, Paint This Town marks the first album to include Jerry Pentecost (drums, mandolin), Mike Harris (slide guitar, guitar, mandolin, banjo, dobro, vocals), and Mason Via (guitar, gitjo, vocals). “We were auditioning new members during the process of putting the studio together—so if you signed up to be in this band, you got handed a paint roller and a list of songs to learn,” says Secor. As they got Hartland Studio up and running, Old Crow also launched the Hartland Hootenanny: an hour-long variety show livestreamed every Saturday night during lockdown, with guest appearances from the likes of Amythyst Kiah, Billy Strings, Marty Stuart, and The War and Treaty. “The Hartland Hootenanny kept us joyous during what could’ve been a very bleak time,” Secor says. “It helped us process the experience of Covid and George Floyd’s death and all the urgent cries for change, but at the same time we talked about full moons and football and summer camp—which in a way symbolizes everything we are as a band.”

Indeed, Old Crow ultimately consider that mingling of the joyous and the profound to be the very life force of their collective. “At the end of the day, we’re still just trying to stop you on the street and get you to put a dollar in the guitar case,” says Jahnig. “Then once we’ve got your attention, we’re gonna tell you about things like the opioid epidemic and the Confederate flag and what’s happening with the environment—but we’re gonna do it with a song and dance. We feel a great obligation to talk about the more difficult things happening out there in the world, but we also feel obligated to make sure everyone’s having a great time while we do it.”

Old Crow Medicine Show’s album “Paint This Town” is available via ATO Records. Order your copy here.

WITH…

Jamestown Revival is an internationally recognized Americana/Roots Rock band from Austin, TX who affectionately describe their music as “Southern & Garfunkel.”

Jamestown Revival’s newest album, Young Man, is the band’s first album without electric guitars and their first to be recorded in a studio. With themes like coming of age and settling into an identity, Young Man was produced by Robert Ellis and Josh Block (Leon Bridges, Caamp).

The band has performed at iconic music festivals, such as Farm Aid, Coachella, Stagecoach, Lollapalooza, Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic and Austin City Limits, have been featured in publications ranging from Rolling Stone to the Wall Street Journal, and performed and toured with the likes of the Zac Brown Band, Nathaniel Rateliff, Ryan Bingham and Willie Nelson.

Jamestown Revival has released three critically acclaimed albums (Utah, The Education Of A Wandering Man and San Isabel) and two equally praised EPs (Field Guide To Loneliness, an intimate collection of songs reflecting recent times whereby human contact is limited more than ever, and Fireside With Louis L’Amour, featuring songs inspired by stories from author Louis L’Amour’s The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Volume 1: Frontier Stories.

Learn more at www.jamestownrevival.com and follow on Instagram and Facebook @jamestownrevival and Twitter @JTRevival.

ABOUT CARLY PEARCE: Fiercely rooted in the classics, the girl who left her Kentucky home and high school at 16 to take a job at Dollywood has grown into a woman who embraces the genre’s forward progression. Confident in what she wants to say, the committed songwriter has resonated with fans and caught the attention of music critics from Billboard, NPR, Rolling Stone, The New York Times touting 29: WRITTEN IN STONE (Big Machine Records) on their 2021 year-end Best of Lists. Lighting a fire with her debut album EVERY LITTLE THING and the PLATINUM-certified history making title track, Carly’s 2X PLATINUM-certified “I Hope You’re Happy Now” with Lee Brice won both the 2020 CMA Awards Musical Event and 2021 ACM Awards Music Event, plus ACM Single of the Year. She picked up her second consecutive ACM Music Event of the Year in 2022 with Ashley McBryde duet “Never Wanted To Be That Girl,” Carly’s third No. 1 and the third duet between two solo women to top Country Airplay, dating to the Billboard chart’s January 1990 inception. The song also took home 2022 CMA Musical Event of the Year and is currently up for a GRAMMY Award in the Best Country Duo/Group Performance category, marking Pearce’s first-ever nomination. Knowing it’s time to move on, she offers final reckoning of a relationship that failed and a new set of standards for the next time she falls in love with the 29 project’s final single “What He Didn’t Do,” co-written alongside Ashley Gorley and Emily Shackleton. Following the Grand Ole Opry and Kentucky Music Hall of Fame member’s sold-out THE 29 TOUR and spending the summer touring with Kenny Chesney, Pearce joins Blake Shelton’s BACK TO THE HONKY TONK TOUR in 2023. Honored as one of CMT’s 2022 Artists of The Year, the 2021 CMA Female Vocalist of the Year and reigning ACM Female Artist of the Year is clearly living out her childhood dream. For tour dates and more, visit CarlyPearce.com.

Tickets on sale, Friday, Dec. 9 at 10am. 

WITH…

CONNER SMITH was born to write songs. His mother interviewed songwriters as part of her work when he was a small child; he remembers being in her office, transfixed, listening to the tapes of the people most music lovers never saw telling the stories of where the songs came from. By the time he was 6, he was writing his own. By the time he was 9, he’d signed to BMI as a writer. 

Being so immersed in songs and where they came from, the 21-year-old Nashville native is the rarest of all things: a songwriter from the inside out. You can feel it in the wanting so much more than the surface in “Tennessee,” the way “Take It Slow” captures the innocence of young love, and you can hear it in the old school lyric twist in “Learn From It,” which just made its debut at Country Radio. As Smith just released his latest “Why I Can’t Leave”, fans are also quickly discovering “I Hate Alabama.” Smith first released the song on his social media channels and the overwhelming response prompted him to immediately release the full song on all platforms… right before Alabama  suffered a loss that ended their long-running winning streak. The Tennessean  called it a “…love song and perfect game day tune all wrapped in a catchy country melody” while Barstool Sports mused “Am I saying the Crimson Tide suffered their first loss since 2019 because of this objectively awesome song? I don’t know. I generally don’t believe in coincidences.”

While working with Ashley Gorley and Zach Crowell as a Junior and Senior in high school, the pair encouraged him to still “finish school.” So, Smith spent his teenage years leading a double life: Student in the morning, working songwriter from noon on. His dream turned into real life – with sweeping country songs that show the maturity and insight of an old soul discovered early, then given the time, tools and opportunity to master their craft as a seasoned writer and not just one more kid shuffling from writing appointment to writing appointment. Recently opening up for Sam Hunt and Thomas Rhett on select dates it was just announced he will join Ryan Hurd on tour in 2022. He has previously performed alongside some of the genre’s other top acts including Kane Brown, and Kip Moore. For more information and dates visit ConnerSmithMusic.com.  

AND…

Hailing from Wilmore, KY, country, bluegrass and gospel music influences, along with a strong love and appreciation for family have helped form the artist and songwriter that Jonathan Hutcherson is today.  He brought those influences to Nashville in 2018 and quickly started impressing songwriters and publishers on Music Row with his falsetto vocals, heartfelt lyrics and catchy melodies.  Hutcherson released a self-titled EP in 2021 that has garnered millions of streams and followed that up with the release of “Blue Collar” in the Fall of 2022 and a 2023 Winter release of “Makes A Man”.  Inspiration for both songs pulled from the honest, hardworking and hard loving people he’s always surrounded himself with.  

Look for Jonathan out on the road all over the country in 2023.