If for some reason, music lovers were not sated after Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway’s opening set, then Old Crow Medicine Show’s two-hour, dancing-in-the-aisles headlining turn must’ve done the trick.

With cross-pollination galore – beginning with Ketch Secor hitting the Highway stage early in the evening and ending with the Golden boys and girls becoming temporary Medicine men throughout the night – the July 9 double bill in suburban Dayton, Ohio’s, Rose Music Center was an Americana bonanza. And even as MT&GH earned two standing ovations – the house PA started blasting music after the second to ensure an encore didn’t delay the Old Crows’ gig – OCMS quickly proved itself one of a few band that could follow Tuttle and hold its own.

Three hours after it began, the show wrapped with the bands’ combined power – 11 musicians in all – on “Helpless” and “The Weight.” Tuttle fronted the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young track and co-led the latter Band number, which found various Medicine men handling other verses.

“Put the load right on me,” they sang in unison to place a perfect capper on a perfect evening of music.

It was a Tuesday but Secor repeatedly said it felt like Saturday. And it did seem like the weekend was in full swing. 

Equal parts tent revival, vaudeville show, old-country hoedown, slapstick comedy hour and rock ’n’ roll extravaganza, an Old Crow Medicine Show show is for the audience a bit like being a pinball in play as band members switch instruments – three musicians manned the kit and Secor alone played harmonica, mouth harp, fiddle, guitar, banjo, keyboards and ukelele – and styles and genres as easily as regular folks swap hats. 

And the band did that, too.

So it went that OCMS played CSNY’s “Ohio” and dedicated it to an audience member new to the concertgoing experience; mocked Morgan Wallen’s country bonafides while gathered, unplugged, around a single, old-time mic; engaged in three-fiddle reels with help from Golden Highway’s Brownyn Keith-Hynes; and preached the healing power of music, weed and community when the musicians briefly stopped rushing around the large stage festooned with a backdrop emblazoned with an OCMS-branded big-top. Meanwhile, a roadie augmented a few numbers with drum-major-worthy baton twirling and tossing and contributed squeezebox to a few tunes to boot.

Secor cracked wise with Southwest “O-H-Ten” banter about the breeze coming off the interstate between rambunctious originals like “Tell it to Me,” “Alabama High Test” and “Dixie Avenue” and such covers as “Great Balls of Fire,” “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” (with Tuttle) and an Dayton-centric version of “Hang on Sloopy.”

And, yes, OCMS played “Wagon Wheel.”

While the Medicine men were chatty, Golden Highway let the music do the talking as the quintet – fiddler Keith-Hynes, banjoist Kyle Tuttle, the namesake guitarist, bassist Shelby Means and mandolin man Dominick Leslie – lined the front of the stage and struck rock-star poses between leg kicks and head bangs with sassy attitude that matched Tuttle and Means’ sequined miniskirts. 

Tuttle covered the Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow” and Juice Newton’s “Queen of Hearts” (the song never sounded so good), celebrated individualism on “Crooked Tree” and waxed romantic for grass on “Down Home Dispensary,” “San Joaquin” and “Dooley’s Farm.” The latter featured the type of lengthy mid-song jam that one might expect at a Billy Strings gig and left concertgoers to wish the Highway went on just a little bit longer.