According to the fifth song on their first Christmas album, seasonal shenanigans in Old Crow Medicine Show’s family are boozy and raucous. Step aside Santa because “Grandpappy's been a-brewing since before the war” and is “the best bootlegger for a Georgia mile”. The result is the riotous barndance fiddlin’ of “Corn Whiskey Christmas” (which brings “good cheer to all the gals and the fellas). I’m in!
The song is a highlight of OCMS XMAS, a 13-track set which showcases the light-hearted side of a Nashville outfit who’ve been at the forefront of the US bluegrass revival for over two decades. This December they’re creating Irish jigs about the Krampus (“a mean old goat with horns on his head”) but, over their career, they’ve proved themselves as capable of writing Sixties-style protest songs about everything from gun violence to political apathy. In fact, the “Herod was in the White House” reference in “Bethlehem PA” might be thus construed, in a song which resets the Nativity to working class Pennsylvania.
While there are standards on board, a passable version of Lennon & Ono’s “Merry Xmas (War is Over)” and a hokey “Holly Jolly Christmas”, the band clearly want their own crack at nailing chunky, lyrical “holiday” numbers. They don’t succeed every time but there are enough. Some are for exporting to cheesy advent playlists, notably schmaltzy, catchy, tinselly love song, “North by Northeast”. Some deliver a likeably maudlin county’n’western take, as with the elegiac “Grandpa’s Gone”. And quite a few more are prepped’n’ready for the inadvisable hoedown that results from interspersing beer, wine and Baileys, at speed, for five or six hours.
The latter include the whopping “Breakin’ Up Xmas”, the similarly zesty “December 26” and, of course, that good ol’ “Corn Whiskey Christmas”. Old Crown Medicine Show (and this writer) raise a glass in the reader’s general direction.
Below: Watch the video for "Corn Whiskey Christmas" by Old Crow Medicine Show
