Ketch Secor, the charismatic leader of Old Crow Medicine Show, dropped his new solo album, Story the Crow Told Me, earlier this summer and celebrated it with a special concert at the Station Inn, Nashville’s historic bluegrass outpost. During the show, Secor also announced his new role as host of Tennessee Crossroads, a travelogue series airing on public television.
But Secor is fully aware that his series, and other educational television and radio productions, are in danger after President Trump signed a law pulling back $1.1 billion in congressional funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps finance NPR and PBS.
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Secor is undeterred.
“It does seem like a pretty strange time to go take a job in public broadcasting, but I always did things my own way anyway,” he tells Rolling Stone during this week’s episode of the Nashville Now podcast.
Secor recalls growing up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and making his TV debut on PBS by answering phones as a sixth-grader during a telethon. Later, he became enamored of Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary and recognized the origins of popular names in his region.
“Everything was named for a battlefield — the shopping malls, the subdivisions, all named for elements of the Confederacy,” he says. “Some of it is coming back again…and some people are really happy about that. We’re in a strange new paradigm.”
Secor says his role on Tennessee Crossroads, and as an ambassador of country music, is to foster unity and introduce viewers and listeners to new cultures, even those of a meat-and-three restaurant.
“It’s by taking this camera and this microphone to a catfish joint in Paris, Tennessee, and saying, ‘So, what’s on the menu today, sir? How do you make your collard greens? Tell me what you put in the butter beans that makes it so special?’” he says.
“And if you think that that’s political, well, ok, sure. I think it’s political deciding what three you want with your meat…. To each his own,” Secor continues. “PBS is a vital part of television broadcasting. It’s where kids learn their reading, writing, and arithmetic, and I want to make sure that the next generation of kids have that same opportunity… We can be right, left, or center, it don’t even matter. This is an opportunity for us to expand our work.”
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by senior music editor Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Charley Crockett, Gavin Adcock, Margo Price, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, and Clever.
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