Old Crow Medicine Show’s Holiday Hootenanny is less a seasonal detour than a distillation of what the band has always done best: turning American roots music into a living, breathing group experience. Since breaking through with the juggernaut “Wagon Wheel,” the Grammy-winning collective has treated old-time string-band music not as a museum piece but as a flexible, high-energy language—one that can carry history, humor, grief, and joy in the same verse. Their records nod to Appalachia, early country, folk revivalism, and protest music, while their live shows lean hard into communion: voices raised, tempos pushed, feet moving. The Holiday Hootenanny folds that ethos into the calendar, blending carols, gospel shouts, and Old Crow staples into something closer to a secular revival than a concert. At Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, the band’s mix of virtuosity and controlled chaos should feel right at home—warm, loud, and unapologetically human, the way holiday music arguably works best.
