Review: Old Crow Medicine Show offers serious tonic of songs

“Paint This Town,” Old Crow Medicine Show Due to the group’s name, good-timey tempos and comically frantic vocals, Old Crow Medicine Show can be mistaken for a hee-hawing string band not to be taken seriously. “Paint This Town” is indeed a party starter, but there are also powerful songs about racism, drugs, the abolitionist movement, environmental degradation and the Mississippi flag. “DeFord Rides Again,” sung by drummer Jerry Pentecost, pays tribute to pioneering but long-forgotten Black country music artist DeFord Bailey. While the band delivers those tunes at a furious pace, “New Mississippi Flag” is a bold ballad that movingly summarizes the state’s complicated history in three minutes as it recalls “rattling chains” and those “who died on the road to change.” Old Crow does find time for fun.