There is something fitting about Old Crow Medicine Show landing at Bethel Woods on a July Thursday — the same ground where the counterculture made its stand in 1969, now hosting a band that has spent nearly three decades insisting that fiddles and banjos belong in the American musical conversation. The occasion is the Union Made Tour, and the Horizon Stage’s 16,000-capacity outdoor sweep through the Hudson Valley hills is exactly the scale this band has earned.
About Old Crow Medicine Show
Old Crow Medicine Show formed in 1998 in Western North Carolina, originally a group of street buskers with no obvious path into a Nashville that wasn’t particularly interested in fiddles or banjos. Ketch Secor, the band’s founder and frontman, described the posture that got them here: “Going our own way despite the odds was the only foreseeable path for fiddles and banjos in the 21st century.” That posture produced results. The band is credited with pioneering the Americana sound before the genre had a name; their song “Wagon Wheel” — built on a 1970s-era Bob Dylan song fragment — became one of the top five best-selling country songs of all time. Their album Remedy won the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album in 2015, and all nine of their studio albums have reached Number 1 on the Bluegrass Albums chart. They are members of the Grand Ole Opry.
The July 30 show supports Union Made, released June 5 via Hartland Records/Firebird Music. Produced by bassist Morgan Jahnig at the band’s East Nashville studio, the record takes stock of American identity — the band frames it as reflecting on “the people, places and stories of a country on the brink of its 250th birthday.” Lead single “My Side of the Mountain,” co-written by Secor, his wife Molly Tuttle, and Luke Combs, features Tuttle alongside bluegrass icons Del McCoury and Ronnie McCoury. The guest list extends to Evan Felker, Jesse Welles, John Carter Cash, Ana Cristina Cash, and Maggie Rose — a roster that reads less like a vanity project than like a deliberate survey of roots music’s current working generation.
About Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts occupies the historic 1969 Woodstock festival grounds at 200 Hurd Road, Bethel, NY. The Horizon Stage is an outdoor amphitheater with a capacity of 16,000 — one of the more evocative settings in the Hudson Valley for a band whose music is rooted in American history and landscape. On a clear July evening, the hillside site earns its mythology.
Tickets & Details
Old Crow Medicine Show performs Thursday, July 30, 2026, at 8:00 PM at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, 200 Hurd Road, Bethel, NY 12720. Get tickets via Ticketmaster.