Old Crow Medicine Show have always treated the stage like a celebration. Frontman Ketch Secor puts it plainly. “We’re in the joy business.” It is the kind of mission statement that has followed the band since Secor launched the Grammy-winning outfit in 1998, and it comes into sharp focus on OCMS XMAS, their first holiday album and a record built on community, tradition, and a string-band stomp that never lets up.

OCMS XMAS captures everything fans have chased in OCMS’ music over the last quarter century. The revelry, the singalongs, the crackling energy that turns any room into a front porch. But the band refuses to coast. They do not settle for rehashing the classics. They rebuild them, reshape them, and write a few new ones of their own. The country blues swing of “Jolly Man,” inspired by Mississippi John Hurt, sits right next to the Zydeco lift of “All About A Baby,” each one decorated with sleigh bells, resonator guitar, harmonica, and that unmistakable Old Crow Medicine Show spirit.

They are creators, not caretakers, and the album moves with the confidence of a band that has spent decades carving its own lane in American roots music. OCMS XMAS taps into the time-honored Christmas album tradition, but it never feels bound by it. Instead, it plays like a holiday party that just keeps rolling, long after the season winds down. With the launch of their first-ever holiday Hootenanny tour, Old Crow seem ready to make this an annual ritual: a gathering built on shared joy, familiar melodies, and the feeling of coming together when it matters most.

The band also marked the season with a tribute that cuts deeper. In honor of John Lennon’s birthday, OCMS released a timely version of “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).” Secor calls it the one Christmas song he never gets tired of hearing, a message of peace and unity that still rings loud decades after John Lennon and Yoko Ono first recorded it with the Harlem Community Choir. Old Crow pass that torch to the next generation, bringing in the Purple Martin Choir from the Episcopal School of Nashville, the East Nashville school Secor founded. It is a warm, human moment: young voices and seasoned players singing together in a basement, pushing the simple idea that peace is worth fighting for.