#908. Lineage of Song “Wagon Wheel”

 Darius Rucker, 2012

Bob Dylan sketch, 1973

Old Crow Medicine Show, 2003

The story of “Wagon Wheel” is pretty well detailed (have a look at Wikipedia), but I want to write about it as an authentic version of how a song enters the popular consciousness, not just as a pop song that does well on the charts but permeates in folk fashion, so that it feels like it was always there, and always will be.

Dylan gets the initial credit, but even he’s riffing on earlier material. Bob Dylan is recognized by discerning music fans as one of the defining artists of the past hundred years, with his own belief that he was just trying to live up to earlier acts like Woody Guthrie, whom more recent generations know only through Dylan’s admiration (pop music can be fickle). Dylan’s voice, heavily criticized in recent years in its current state, has actually been a source of contention throughout his career, which is okay since his songwriting has always been his calling card and he’s been covered heavily through the years, so it’s not surprising that even an abandoned sketch ends up with a meaningful legacy.

Old Crow Medicine Show picked the sketch back up some thirty years later, completing it in its current state, around the same time Darius Rucker was trying to start up a solo career. When he first tackled the idea of being a country act, nobody took him seriously (possibly because he seemed to be lampooning the idea himself in commercials), but then started recording anyway. By his own admission he stumbled on “Wagon Wheel” almost by accident, initially unsure the material fit him. 

It ended up becoming a career-defining song, the kind country bars play so much people get sick of hearing it. 

To get to that point is improbable. Rucker first made his name as lead singer of Hootie & the Blowfish, the band credited with ruining rock music in the ‘90s, the antithesis of the grunge sound that was supposed to be the next evolution of the format but ended up dying with Kurt Cobain instead. Hootie for about a year was inescapable, and then was turned into a punchline and an afterthought. Rucker’s reinvention as a country star was a solid second act, but “Wagon Wheel” returned him to levels of success he’d previously enjoyed with Hootie, and, arguably, beyond. 

If Rucker is remembered in a hundred years it’ll be for “Wagon Wheel.” It’s very likely the song will outlive him. That’s the way these things go. It’s also done it with Dylan, with the blues artists who toyed with it previously, even with Old Crow Medicine Show.

Far too often today we tend to grow precious with our current interests, believing that if they no longer exist in the exact form we know them they’re instantly and forever ruined. But history adapts everything it remembers. That’s the whole point. If it endures it’s changed at some point, with the times, waiting for some new source of inspiration. The lineage of “Wagon Wheel” is a vivid example of that.