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Old Crow Medicine Show

Though it has more than its share of local legends and jam-band-festival heroes, the music scene in and around Ithaca has never really broken a big national act. Except, perhaps—and this may be stretching it—for Old Crow Medicine Show, whose members were assembled from that roots-rich musical soil by fiddler and vocalist Ketch Secor in the late 1990s. It’s a stretch because, like any old-time (or at least old-timish) band worth its salt, Secor and company quickly hied out of town, first north into Canada, then pulled by their musical predilections south, to North Carolina. There they had the good fortune to play before and win over flatpicking virtuoso Doc Watson, who booked them to play MerleFest. Since then the band has traveled a sharply rising road to fame and, one hopes, fortune. In the band’s breakout hit, “Wagon Wheel,” Secor sings “I was born to be a fiddler in an old-time string band,” and Old Crow Medicine Show is sincere in its recreation of old-time music; its repertoire reaches far deeper into the American songbook than most acts affecting the style, and its originals offer more than a history lesson. Now appropriately based in Nashville, Old Crow Medicine Show is worthy of the praise that’s been heaped upon it. Let’s consider the band a homegrown treasure.

Doors 7pm, show 8pm. Town Ballroom, 681 Main Street (852-3900, townballroom.com).

$20 advance, $22 at the door. All ages.