Rye Whiskey

 

Once upon a time I was a folk singer.

Sort of.

Once upon a time, therefore, I was a guitar player.

Sort of.

Tonight after two or so years I picked up my guitar for the first time in that hiatus .

My fingers remember the chords.

My brain remembers the rhythms - got through Maryann swimmingly - but my calluses are gone.

That makes guitar playing challenging.

It used to be, after an extended hiatus - a few weeks, or months - the callus memory kicked in at once, and even at the outset of returning to playing, I had some hardness between my fingertips and the strings of my guitar.

And without that hardness - calluses - guitar playing is squishy-sprangly.

Squishy-sprangly was the rattling sort of sound that I was able to produce tonight on my guitar friend of 57 years as I picked her up and played her tonight.

I was back to being 16 years old, sitting on my bed and trying to finger the chords from Nick Manloff's chord wheel.

As was the case then, I have no calluses.

I know the chords now, but I have lost the calluses.

All of the preceding is what Heath Onthank used to call "vintage McKeehan".

In this case it's a prologue.

It's a prologue to what it is that I might be trying to say.

And that is that after Maryann, the next song that came to mind was Rye Whiskey which is a folk song that, I think I remember, came out of the Lomax collection.

It's a fascinating song to me because it is many songs.

I can only remember three of them currently.

If I remember correctly they are Rye Whiskey, Waggoner's Lad and Barbary Ellen (Barbara Allen).

I'm pretty sure there are several more.

Anyway, after doing Maryann I switched to Rye Whiskey/Wagoner's Lad.

Here is the brief poem that unfolded - I couldn't remember any more of either of its components.

Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, rye whisky I cry;

If I don't get rye whiskey I surely will die;

Hard luck is the fortune of all women-kind;

They're always controlled, they're always confined;

Controlled by their parents until they are wives;

Then slaves to their husbands for the rest of their lives.

I ran out of rememberary at the point of the women being slaves.

The "rye whiskey" refrain is the chorus and more four-line couplets are needed to finish the poem/song.

I'll get back to you with a You-Tube video when I get the calluses and the poem finished.

It'll be a good song.