The duo were passing the time between shows that night by singing words back and forth to each other until a song evolved. Michael explains, "We played there a lot.  We were real bored, sitting in the dressing room.  We were literally just entertaining ourselves. The next day we got together to do some picking and said, 'What was that we were messing with last night?' We remembered it, and in about an hour, we'd written 'One Toke Over the Line.' Just making ourselves laugh, really. We had no idea that it would ever even be considered as a single, because it was just another song to us. Actually Tom and I always thought that our ballads were our forte."

"But the first time we played Carnegie Hall, we were opening for Melanie. We went over really well, got a couple encores. But we kind of ran out of songs, and for our second encore, we said, 'Let's do that new tune we just wrote.' So we did it, and Neil Bogart [Buddah Records President] came backstage and says, 'I love this. You gotta record it, you gotta put that on the album,' because we were in the process of recording Tarkio. So we said okay, recorded it, added it to the list, and didn't have a clue that it would ever be released as a single..."

"So go figure. Who would have guessed?" shares Michael. "Much less that it would end up being a classic rock song still played all around the world, in movies and stuff. It cracks me up. 'Cause we were just kidding, we were just entertaining ourselves. Other people chose to make a big deal out of it."