It’s been nearly 16 years since Old Crow Medicine made their Roanoke Rapids debut in November 2010. 

And we hope “Y’all All Come” back sooner on your next go-round.

It’s fitting that OCMS brought its Union Made Tour here Friday night.

It’s been just over a month since we celebrated the 250th anniversary of this nation and just shy of four months since we celebrated the 250th birthday of the Halifax Resolves. 

Union Made is an American album by an American band and is their birthday gift to our country.

Hands down, their performance will be remembered as the best show of 2026 at Weldon Mills Theatre.

Coming out after a sterling performance by opening act Presley Haile, OCMS set an energetic, almost punk-like vibe as the band opened with back-to-back cautionary tales — Tell It to Me and Alabama High Test.

They paid homage to an often-overlooked liquor with their Union Made song Rye Whiskey.

As the band’s birthday gift to America, Union Made is hardly stars and stripes, but neither is it overtly political.

The jabs taken in this album are more subtle, for instance covering Merle Haggard’s Rainbow Stew. “When a president goes through the White House door / Does what he says he'll do / We'll all be drinkin' that free Bubble Up and eatin' that rainbow stew,” OCMS frontman Ketch Secor sang as the audience at WMT whooped, hollered, clapped, and sang with him.

Secor paid tribute to Crystal Lee Sutton, a.k.a. Norma Rae, as the band played a rousing version of Woody Guthrie’s Union Maid. “There once was a union maid, she never was afraid / Of the goons and the ginks and the company finks and the deputy sheriffs that made the raid,” he sang.

While some may call them a bluegrass band, OCMS is a little harder to pigeonhole. We call it old-timey string band music with an edge, as evidenced by the energy and drive this group has.

There is the beauty of The Last American Waltz, in which Secor encouraged the audience to dance, and then there is the powerful cover of For What It’s Worth, which many recognize by the opening lyrics, “There’s something happening here.”

There was never a moment during this show that the audience seemed to disengage from the band. OCMS made that difficult to do, playing many numbers right at the edge of the stage.

Since this is an American album by an American band and a gift to this country, it felt natural for the band to sing God’s Got It and, as their final song of the evening, I Saw the Light, with Haile returning to the stage to sing with them.

The show certainly gave the audience a very American vibe as the band took us down the Lincoln Highway and sang about life on My Side of the Mountain. “It's an old draft mule with a heavy load / It's a sawmill rippin' right through them chinquapin oaks / It's five generations in a church pew singing for the Holy Ghost / That's the way of life on my side of the mountain.”

And if any song shows how much this band respects this country — a country that has helped catapult them to the top of the Americana charts — it’s the toe-tapping Howdy Do America. “Maybe you're from Montana or up in Indiana, Oklahoma, Arizona, down in Alabama / Wavin' out the window at the land we love / Howdy do, America.”

No OCMS show would be complete if the crowd favorite Wagon Wheel wasn’t played. A joint effort between a Bob Dylan bootleg called Rock Me, Mama and the creative genius of Secor, the standard brought the audience out of their seats as the last number before two encore songs.

We were thankful that BarnBurner Promotions was savvy enough to book this band for an evening at WMT.

It’s been nearly 16 years since OCMS has been to Roanoke Rapids, and we hope “Y’all All Come” back soon — Editor