Old Crow Medicine Show returned to Shelburne, VT’s The Green at Shelburne Museum on Friday and used the occasion to nod to area heroes Phish. At the top of their encore, Old Crow debuted their take on the bouncy Phish cut “The Wedge,” a favorite from 1993’s Rift, even sneaking in a few “Tweezer” teases during their string-band variation on the tune. Old Crow frontman Ketch Secor and several other band members are old-school Phish fans and the outfit has a tradition of debuting Phish songs while in the Shelburne. In 2023, they played another Rift cut, “Sparkle” for the first and only time and in 2018, they performed the Lawn Boy track “Bouncing Around the Room.” Before that, they ran through both the A Picture of Nectar song “Poor Heart” and “Lawn Boy” at the scenic space in 2014. In 2021, Phish bassist Mike Gordon and his daughter Tessa Gordon also joined Old Crow at South Burlington, VT’s Higher Ground for Gillian Welch’s “Red Clay Halo.”

“Cory [Younts] had been on the road with Phish for like 200 shows, and when I was a kid, I didn’t go to nearly that many but I went to a few Phish shows and I saw the Dead twice,” Secor told Relix in 2024. “Gill [Landry]went to Dead shows—he had a couple of years on us, and he spent his teenage years in Seattle. I was 16, had dreadlocks and lived in Virginia—I went to see Phish because they were present. They played Richmond and they played D.C. We knew all the words to all these Phish songs—it was really fun to learn them again and pick ones that would work for our band. It’s part of paying homage to the places that you are.”

Earlier in the night, at the end of their main set, the ensemble also invited out Tessa Gordon and Maggie Rose, who was in town for a performance at Grace Potter’s Grand Point North Festival in nearby Burlington, for their signature tune “Wagon Wheel.”  

Old Crow Medicine Show will perform next at Ventura, CA’s The Majestic Ventura Theater on September 30.