Big Iron World is the second studio album by Old Crow Medicine Show, released August 29, 2006 on Nettwerk Records. Produced once again by David Rawlings — best known as Gillian Welch's long-time musical partner — the album deepens the collaboration that had defined the band's acclaimed 2004 self-titled debut, with Rawlings co-writing five of the tracks and Welch herself contributing drums on four songs. Recorded in Nashville, the twelve-track, thirty-six-minute record features more original compositions than its predecessor while situating them comfortably alongside Woody Guthrie's "Union Maid" and traditional public domain pieces like "Cocaine Habit" and "Let It Alone." The album reached number one on both the Billboard Bluegrass and Folk charts and debuted at number 125 on the overall Billboard 200, marking the band's highest charting position to that point.The music draws from the hardest-hitting seams of American vernacular tradition — work songs, blues, protest songs, spiritual anthems, and outlaw ballads — played with the old-time acoustic string band instrumentation (harmonica, upright bass, fiddle, banjo, slide guitar) that had become the band's calling card through years of relentless roadwork opening for country legends including Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, and Marty Stuart. Apple Music described the record as "raucous, heartfelt, and above all, fun," combining acoustic string band tradition with "the energy and enthusiasm of an electrified rock 'n' roll group," and Leeway's Home Grown Music Network noted that the songs spring "from the hardest hitting notes of America's music vernacular, tapped from sources deep in the ground but refined and redefined by fresh new voices." In 2026, to mark the album's twentieth anniversary, the band launched "The O.C.M.S. Big Iron World Tour: Back to the Roots," performing both O.C.M.S. and Big Iron World in their entirety acoustically at intimate venues across the American South, with frontman Ketch Secor noting that working with Rawlings and Welch "is what really made the magic on these albums."
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