Book Ketch For an event

Ketch Secor is an acclaimed musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Grammy-winning band Old Crow Medicine Show. With a deep understanding of American roots music, Secor has dedicated his career not only to entertaining the masses, but also to preserving and revitalizing traditional folk and country music. As the founder of Episcopal School of Nashville and published children’s book author he has demonstrated his commitment to nurturing young minds. As the producer and co-host of the documentary Louder Than Guns, he has proven leadership in fostering a sense of purpose and community. He is a charismatic speaker with a talent for storytelling, drawing on his extensive experience in the music industry, his knowledge of American history, and his passion for education, social justice and cultural heritage. Secor’s engaging presentations explore the intersections of music, history, and activism, offering audiences a unique perspective on the power of art to shape society.

Among the organizations and events for which Ketch has delivered speeches and presentations are Belmont University, Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Metropolitan Nashville Public School Strings and Band Clinic, Middle Tennessee State University, Nashville Public Library Literary Weekend, National Association of Episcopal Schools Annual Convention, Pensacola State Community College, Phillips Exeter Academy, St. Andrew’s Sewanee School, St. George’s Episcopal Church of Nashville, TEDx, Tennessee Governor’s Early Literacy Foundation, The Southern Criminal Justice Association Annual Convention, The Steinman Foundation, University of Mississippi, and University of the South.

Ketch is the new host of Nashville PBS’s original series Tennessee Crossroads. He has been a featured guest on programs including CNN’s The Assignment with Audie Cornish, CNN Tonight, Ken Burns’ Country Music Documentary, KRCW’s Left, Right and Center, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, NPR’s Morning Edition, NPR’s World Café, PBS’s Clean Slate with Becky Magura, and PBS’s Conversations with Jeff Weeks and more.

Country Music is Not What You Think/Will the Circle Be Unbroken in Sudanese

An oration with numerous songs, including one in Kiswahili, and a variety of instruments. The craft talk highlights the unpredictable formation of one of America's most beloved musical genres, from its deepest roots across the Atlantic in Europe and Africa to the shores of the new world, and details how every American ethnic group has a distinct role in its construction. Country pioneers like Johnny Cash and Charlie Daniels found their contemporary counterparts with Nashville’s newest arrivals, African immigrants, and refugees. But without recognizing Nashville’s cultural appropriation of influences uniquely African, Country music runs the risk of erasing its own history. “Will the Circle Be Unbroken in Sudanese” was first delivered at Nashville TedX in 2019, the same year as the premiere of Ken Burns’ “Country Music” for which Secor served as advisor, historical consultant, and featured speaker.

All of American music comes from the same place. It’s just sort of where it ends up. And country music is one of the destinations. You have the banjo, which comes from Africa. And you have the fiddle, which comes from the British Isles and from Europe. And when they meet, they meet in the American South. And that’s the big bang. – Ketch Secor

Friction is a good way to look at the music. Because of this rub between white and black. Country music comes from the South because this is where slavery happened. – Ketch Secor

You take black music; you take Country music. You got the same goddam thing altogether. – Ray Charles

Louder Than Guns

An oration with musical accompaniment about building plans for a new blueprint on gun reform using a bipartisan approach built on listening and compromise. What began as a New York Times Opinion piece bloomed into a documentary film following Old Crow Medicine Show to four key American cities where this blueprint of gathering together the disparate ends of the ongoing 2nd Amendment debate was enacted before, during, and after each concert. Along with filmmaker Doug Pray, and famed journalist David Green (NPR) the film features music, travel, commentary, news clips, and a lot of hard-hitting conversation between the many opinions on the topic of gun reform. “Louder Than Guns” will premiere in Fall 2024, fostering similar conversations throughout America.

Ever since the Covenant School shooting, I have been putting myself on the front lines of this effort to better protect communities, families, and especially children, from the tragedy of gun violence. – Ketch Secor

The Big House

An oration with musical accompaniment about a childhood fascination with jail and criminality further propelled by Country music, only to find that the other side of the bars isn’t as poetic as the songs would suggest. Delivered at The Southern Criminal Justice Association’s annual convention in 2019, University of Mississippi in 2019, and Pensacola State Community College Lyceum Series in 2023.

From my earliest days, songs about criminals and bad men formed my understanding of criminality in powerful ways; almost immediately there blossomed in me a deep empathy for the killer. While songs of bad men were a near constant in my childhood true crime was something I had the privilege of being unaccustomed to. But that all changed by the time I discovered the big house. – Ketch Secor

The Princeton Cut

An oration about growing up the son of an educator and returning to my family roots by founding the nation’s newest Episcopal elementary school. Delivered at the National Association of Episcopal Schools annual convention in 2018.

My father made schools and I made music (and bands and records and concerts) and these things - schools and music - are not incongruous. Rather it turns out they are very nearly one in the same. What it took to make it successfully through a 20+ years in the music business was exactly what I needed to start the nation’s newest Episcopal school. Because what it takes to start a school is faith and talent, personality and belief, determination, and lots of luck. When combined, these also happen to be the prerequisites for music stardom. Now, just because you start a band and sing at the Grammys does not mean you’re a natural at school-building. It doesn’t matter where the apple falls, it’s from whence it came. To the extent to which I admire my many musical heroes, few of them, even the greatest, ever started a school. But few of them, even the greatest, had a father like mine. – Ketch Secor

A Message In A Returnable Bottle

An oration about heroes, heartaches, and finding your pathway through life using your dreams for a polestar. Delivered at University of The South Stowe Artist in Residency in 2020, St. Andrew’s Sewanee School in 2020, and Middle Tennessee State University in 2021.

Messages in long ago strewn bottles keep coming back ashore to me. Some I don’t even have the slightest recollection of hurling into the sea. But the shores of my mind are littered with these messages. They’ve all come back to me. I have seen a return on investment in dreams, prayers, and longings, shoots of green appearing in long fallow fields, the bearing of a new crop of fruit upon vines long withered. – Ketch Secor

A New Link In The Chain

An oration about coming of age in a New England boarding school. Delivered (virtually) at Phillips Exeter Academy in 2020.

Phillips Exeter Academy gave me a lot of things. It gave me a clear sense of how the Beat poetry movement of the 1950s was a response to free form jazz music coming from Black night clubs in New York city tempered by the rapid growth of consumer culture brought on by post-war prosperity. Exeter gave me an ability to speak German and to read Rilke and Brecht and Thomas Mann in their native tongues. It helped me to know the art of the Han Dynasty, to identify warblers, to write co-sign formulas on the backs of parabolas; but most importantly, what Exeter gave me was a banjo. – Ketch Secor