Old Crow Medicine Show

When I was younger, I used to think you knew you were getting old when your favorite music was the stuff in the dollar an album rack with the skill saw slot cut into the cardboard album covers to prevent jacking up the retail price of discounted vinyl albums. Among those treasures I leaned to appreciate Lightnin' Hopkins, Freddy King and Memphis Slim.



I remember those days, when Country music was like a hidden cocaine habit, something you listened to behind closed doors, lest one of your sophisticated contemporaries hear it tickling eardrums and massaging your soul. It was a guilty pleasure, that you had to have lived a while, experienced a few heart aches, and faced the trials of life stone cold sober to understand. It was what one tweed jacketed intellectual and country music aficionado I knew called "the music of life."



Tonight, on the eve of Thanksgiving, with my son back at home, we stayed late into the night listening to each other's music. He has developed a fondness for a new breed of country music, one which I was oblivious to, as well as the likes of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. I listened with skepticism at first, then I realized........ The stuff is good. The music of life continues to live.