Old Crow Medicine Show has announced the return of founding member Christopher “Critter” Fuqua ahead of their Spoleto Festival USA return on May 24 & 25. Following a four-year hiatus, Fuqua is re-joining the two-time GRAMMY Award-winning band on their current tour that will stop in Charleston for the 48th Spoleto Festival USA.
Since co-founding Old Crow Medicine Show 25 years ago, Fuqua has performed with the band on seven studio albums including the GRAMMY Award-winning Remedy. Fans know him as a songwriter and lead vocalist on favorites including “Take ‘Em Away” and “Big Time In the Jungle.”
In a press release, the band’s frontman Ketch Secor said, “it stirs me to my very soul to share the good news that my oldest and dearest friend is coming back to join Old Crow onstage. We started this band together as teenagers out of a shared love for traditional music, songwriting, rock ‘n’ roll, and the road. All these years later and we’re still harmonizing, what a joy.”
“My relationship with the band is a bit like a Saturn 5 rocket,” says Fuqua. “For whatever reason, I need to leave sometimes. I achieve an escape vector from the gravitational pull of Old Crow, then I’m off into space, orbiting, floating in zero gravity in my capsule. But I always seem to come around again, shooting through the atmosphere, my pod landing in the ocean. The boys picked me up again. I’m so glad they did. I really missed them.”
The highly anticipated follow-up to Old Crow Medicine Show’s acclaimed 2022 album Paint This Town, Jubilee was co-produced with Matt Ross-Spang and features special guests including Mavis Staples, Sierra Ferrell, and Willie Watson, who recorded with the band for the first time in over 10 years on their single “Miles Away.”
In addition to Secor and Fuqua, Old Crow Medicine Show consists of Morgan Jahnig, Cory Younts, Mike Harris, Dante’ Pope, and PJ George. Get tickets to their two-night run at the College of Charleston’s Cistern Yard on May 24 & 25 here.