You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
My name is Ketch Secor, and I play the fiddle in Old Crow Medicine Show.
I remember Operation Desert Shield.
All through the night,
every one of our favorite shows had been preempted by night vision flashes of airstrikes on Baghdad.
And at 12 years old, I knew that I was captivated, but I also knew that I thought the war was wrong.
The very next day in school,
there was a great big speech all about this new time we were living in and George Bush and his decision to put these airstrikes together.
And I remember not standing.
for whatever we sang, whether it was God Bless America or whatever it was,
and getting in a lot of trouble for it, getting pulled out of the room.
I had a really wonderful principal, and he was a sweetheart of a guy,
but he told me then, well, catch up.
The way I think about it, you love it or you leave it.
So I really came up in a love it or leave it kind of town,
and that sentiment is something that I've been wrestling with as a songwriter ever since.
Old Crow Medicine Show is a six-piece band from Tennessee who've been around since 1998.
They were inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2013,