Our recurring new music feature Origins gives musicians a place to share exclusive insights into their newest release. Today, Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show breaks down the bluegrass ensemble’s latest single, “Bombs Away.”
Old Crow Medicine Show’s new album, Paint This Town, is due out April 22nd via ATO. Today, the Americana band are previewing the LP with the raucous single “Bombs Away.”
“Bombs Away” is, first and foremost, a song about divorce, as frontman Ketch Secor tells Consequence. But that doesn’t mean the barnburning fiddle number — and Paint This Town as a whole — is anything to cry over. The track, which Secor wrote shortly after his own marriage dissolved, is brimming with the euphoria of new beginnings, a tongue-in-cheek tale of throwing caution to the wind and starting over.
Paint This Town marks the first album Old Crow recorded in their own custom recording space, Hartland Studio in East Nashville. That sense of hominess translates into the album’s sound, which feels effortlessly personal while still staying true to the band’s bluegrass roots.
“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 in a press statement. “It all just felt less like a chore and more like a complete joy.”
Joy permeates “Bombs Away,” a freewheeling jaunt that perfectly embodies that sense of freedom. “I don’t mind if I lose my mind/ If I can’t learn to fly, let me fall, bombs away,” Secor hollers on the song’s chorus.
Watch the “Bombs Away” performance video and read Secor’s full Origins of the track below.
Preorders for physical copies of Paint This Town are ongoing.
