Old Crow Medicine Show, Long Forgotten - 10/2/26 - Fresno, CA - Warnor's Theatre

The Long Forgotten is a bluegrass band FROM FRESNO and they’re pretty good. They came on stage first and played for 30-45 minutes. There’s three of them, and each of them played at least three instruments. Imagine a bluegrass trio, and that’s exactly what they are. They’re good musicians playing fun music and vocally harmonizing. 

One of them had a Lou Hazel shirt on. I’m pretty sure he was the sound guy for Lou’s show the other night at the Tower Theater Lounge. He also played literally every instrument on the stage. In order of appearance, the instruments he picked up were mandolin, then the fiddle, then banjo, then standup bass, and finally the guitar. And was constantly rotating amongst them all. I think they said his name is Patrick O’Brien. Hopefully these guys play more shows in Fresno, because I'd love to see more of them.

Old Crow Medicine Show (OCMS from here on out) was the headliner, and they put on a headliner worthy performance. There were seven musicians on stage. And they constantly rotated through various instruments. Putting down a harmonica and picking up a banjo. Swapping a mandolin for a guitar. At one point there were three of them with fiddles. Then there was a guy playing stand up bass and kick drum simultaneously. It would take an entire blog post (only a slight exaggeration) to name all the various instrument combinations they had, but each person on stage played at least three instruments and most of them played at least five.

They are all great musicians and they all brought a lot of energy. The piano player ran off the stage at one point and danced with a little girl in the crowd, then ran up an aisle, before running back down it and then jumping back on stage. Although, there was a moment or two when I had a hard time telling if the energy was sincere due to the theatricality of the stage antics from the singer. He was fun, and he put on a show, but it was maybe just a little bit over the top. However, to his immense credit, it worked. He managed to get people up out of their seats and dancing, which is a huge accomplishment in a venue with seats.

Speaking of the venue, Warnor's Theatre is stunning. It's so beautiful inside and it deserves to be packed. OCMS is also a band that deserves to play to a packed house. However, the venue was maybe 15% to 20% full, which is an outright shame. I don't know where the failure lies, but in a city like Fresno, in a region like the Central Valley, we should be able to sell out Warnor's Theatre for bands with the stature of OCMS. Is it bad advertising? Is it sheltered people terrified of downtown? Is it lack of parking? Is it something else? Whatever the reason(s), it should never be as bad as it was for OCMS. I feel a little bit better about the whole thing knowing that they're going to be headlining Hardly Strictly this weekend, and there they will get the crowd size they deserve. At the very least this was a low-stakes opportunity for them to do one last run through before heading up to SF.

The show itself is basically what you'd expect from OCMS. An old-time string band with a high energy blend of bluegrass, folk, country, Americana, etc. They seemed strongest when they were doing the full string-band thing, with an instrument lineup that consisted of (from left to right) a steel guitar, stand-up bass, mandolin, fiddle, guitar, banjo, and another banjo. It sounded beautiful. They did a tribute to Dolly Parton and also covered For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield.

They ended their main set with Wagon Wheel. What a special song it is. It's catchy. It's comforting. It's romantic. It's timeless. It's the achievement of a lifetime. Only a very select few people in the history of humanity have written songs that have had the widespread exposure that Wagon Wheel has enjoyed. People will be playing it at bluegrass shows or at country shows or rock shows for as long as there are bluegrass shows or country shows or rock shows. They'll be playing it in bars or around campfires. They'll be playing it in their living room to their sweethearts. They'll be learning it when they first begin playing an instrument. For as long as people have music, they will be playing this song. And in almost every one of those instances, the people listening to the song are going to join in and sing along with it because the lyrics have become part their subconscious. It's one of those songs that you'll hear enough over the course of your life that you just intrinsically know the words. It's an eternal part of the American songbook. What must it feel like to write something like that? How could they know at the time that they were going to turn a chorus that Bob Dylan threw away into one of the biggest songs not just in recent memory but of all time? I mean, when you write a song like that you have to know you've come up with something special. But you can't know it's going to become one of the biggest, most widely played songs of all time. They created something that has brought joy to tens of millions of people and will bring more joy to hundreds of millions more people in the decades and centuries to come. They should be incredibly proud.