Old Crow Medicine Show opened their encore at the Shelburne Museum Green in Vermont on Friday with a song they had never played before: The Wedge, from Phish's 1993 album Rift. JamBase reports that the band worked teases of Tweezer in ahead of the first verse, then delivered the song as a string band piece rather than an imitation, which is the only way that cover works at all.
Geography was the whole point. Shelburne sits just outside Burlington, where Phish formed, and the Ben and Jerry's Concerts on the Green series that hosted the show is about as Vermont as a concert booking gets. Old Crow have made a habit of the gesture at this venue, having previously played Bouncing Around The Room, Lawn Boy and Poor Heart there.
The main set was built on the band's own catalogue at both ends of it. They opened with Tell It To Me and returned through Take 'Em Away and the traditional C.C. Rider, all from the David Rawlings-produced 2004 record that made their name. Four songs came from their most recent album, Union Made: Howdy Do America, My Side Of The Mountain, Lincoln Highway and Rye Whiskey.
The covers ran wider than Phish. Ketch Secor and the band played Woody Guthrie's Union Maid and Dolly Parton's Coat Of Many Colors, and closed the encore with Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth and Hank Williams's I Saw The Light. A set that moves from Guthrie to Phish to Hank Williams in one night is a fair description of what this band actually is.
Wagon Wheel closed the main set with two guests on it, Maggie Rose and Tessa Gordon, the latter the daughter of Phish bassist Mike Gordon. The pair had already joined earlier in the night for John Prine's Angel From Montgomery. Both were working the same corner of Vermont that weekend: a day later they sang 9 To 5 with Grace Potter at Grand Point North in Burlington.
For a band whose winter calendar is built around the Holiday Hootenanny run, a one-off Phish premiere at a Vermont museum is the sort of date that does not repeat. Our tour guide carries the rest of the band's dates, and the country hub has the week's other roots news.
The facts
- Old Crow Medicine Show premiered Phish's The Wedge at Shelburne Museum Green.
- The Wedge appears on Phish's 1993 album Rift.
- The band teased Tweezer ahead of the song's first verse.
- Maggie Rose and Tessa Gordon sat in on Wagon Wheel and Angel From Montgomery.
- Tessa Gordon is the daughter of Phish bassist Mike Gordon.
- Four songs came from the band's album Union Made.
- The encore closed with For What It's Worth and I Saw The Light.
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