A stray comment from Jayne yesterday reminded me of this wonderful band, classified by Wikipedia as folk, alt-country, bluegrass, Americana, and old-time. For a 2006 NPR interview/profile, on the other hand, they were dubbed “punk Americana.” (If you play together for ten or fifteen years, you’ve got lots of opportunities to stretch the walls of the pigeonholes everybody wants to put you in.)

They’re one of those groups with no apparent ambition to superstardom. But like many such groups, they always seem to crop up somewhere: on the concert and festival circuit, Prairie Home Companion, Austin City Limits… When Emmylou Harris was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008, Old Crow Medicine Show was on hand to sing her in.

Here’s “Down Home Girl,” originally released in 2006 on an EP of the same name and included a month later on their Big Iron World album. When I first saw it, I thought the video had been shot in New York City; more likely — and more, duh, obviously if so — it’s New Orleans.

Lyrics:

Down Home Girl
(Old Crow Medicine Show)

Well I swear your perfume, baby, is made out of turnip greens
Every time I kiss you girl, it tastes like pork and beans

Even though you’re wearing those uptown high heels
I can tell from your giant step you’ve been
walking through the cotton fields

Ohhhhhh you’re so down home girl

Every time you monkey, child, it takes my breath away
Well, every time you move like that, girl,
I got to get down and pray
Girl, you know that dress you’re wearin’ made out of fiber glass
Every time you move like that, girl, I got to go to Sunday mass

Ohhhhhh you’re so down home girl

I’m going to take you to the muddy river and push you in
So I can watch the water roll on down your velvet skin
I’m gonna take you down to New Orleans, down in Dixie land
So I can watch you do the second line with
an umbrella in your hand

Ohhhhhh you’re so down home girl…

(Ha! to the old fellow’s comment which follows the song.)