The girls learned the fiddle tune Whiskey Before Breakfast from Lynn and Liz Shaw in the spring of last year. Well, I should say they were introduced to it by the Shaws. Its one of those tunes that’s tricky to play until you get it-then you wonder why it was so hard in the first place.

The girls played it for Paul and he said he’d heard it before, but never really learned it.

Throughout the summer the girls would bring the tune out at every practice and play around with it. Their hopes were that by the time they met up with Lynn and Liz again they’d be able to join right in on the tune. That isn’t exactly what happened.

It was September before we got to spend time with the Shaws again. There was a fairly large group of musicians jamming and when Whiskey Before Breakfast was mentioned as the next tune the girls got ready. Chitter said “They took off so fast I was left in the dust. I couldn’t even pretend to keep up.” Chatter agreed they better practice the song some more, so the girls continued to try and learn the song on their own.

Over Christmas we really solidified our version of the song and once we all got it down pat it was so much fun to play!

My nephew Mark aka mandolin man was here for Christmas and he got to play along with us. I was so proud of our accomplishment on Whiskey Before Breakfast that I shared a picture of my notes about the song on the Blind Pig and The Acorn Instagram page.

One of my friends commented “Lord preserve us & protect us!”

I thought “Oh my goodness she’s worried about us! We don’t drink whiskey before breakfast-heck we don’t drink whiskey anytime of the day!”

Turns out there are lyrics to the song that we didn’t know about and my friend was referring to them…not to our non-existent drinking problem.

Here’s the lyrics:

Words from Mike Cross album “Live and Kickin”‘

Early one day the sun wouldn’t shine
I was walking down the street not feeling too fine
I saw two old men with a bottle between ’em
And this was the song that I heard them singing

Lord preserve us and protect us,
We’ve been drinking whiskey’fore breakfast

Well I stopped by the steps where they was sitting
And I couldn’t believe how drunk they were getting
I said “old men, have you been drinking long?”
They said ‘Just long enough to be singing this song”

Lord preserve us and protect us,
We’ve been drinking whiskey’fore breakfast

Well they passed me the bottle and I took a little sip
And it felt so good I just couldn’t quit
I drank some more and next thing I knew
There were three of us sitting there singing this tune

Lord preserve us and protect us,
We’ve been drinking whiskey’fore breakfast

One by one everybody in the town
They heard our ruckus and they came around
And pretty soon the streets were ringing
With the sound of the whole town laughing and singing

Lord preserve us and protect us,
We’ve been drinking whiskey’fore breakfast

Lord preserve us and protect us,
We’ve been drinking whiskey’fore breakfast

—————-

The song is most often played as an instrumental and that’s how we’ll continue to do it I’m sure. Give our version a listen and see what you think.

I hope you enjoyed the song! To read more about the history of the tune you can go here. From what I gather the tune is much older than the lyrics.

Tipper