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Before writing their classic hit, Brewer & Shipley had quietly built a
good reputation as singer/songwriters and performers in the heartland.
After settling in
Kansas City in 1969, the duo became mainstays at
the Vanguard Coffee House in KC. On the strength of their stellar live
performances and their wonderful Down In
L.A. and Weeds albums, Brewer & Shipley became a hot ticket in
and around Kansas City. By 1970 they were selling out four
shows a night at the Vanguard, which was good for the Vanguard’s business,
but left Michael & Tom with plenty of downtime between shows. On one such
night in 1970, out of utter boredom "One Toke" was born. Michael
explained, "We played there a lot. We were real bored, sitting in the
dressing room. We were pretty much stoned and all and Tom says, ‘Man, I’m
one toke over the line tonight.’” Amused by the ‘toke’ reference, the duo
started singing words back and forth to each other until the outline of a
song evolved. “We were literally just entertaining ourselves. Just making
ourselves laugh, really. 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.' We had no idea
that it would ever even be considered as a single, because it was just
another song to us."
It may have been just another song to the Brewer & Shipley, but it came in
handy when they ran though their normal repertoire in their Carnegie Hall
debut a short time later. Michael explains, "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."
In hindsight the duo would have preferred to have a hit with a song that was
more representative of Brewer & Shipley like one of their ballads. "It
pretty much pigeonholed us and categorized us in a way that wasn't really
valid. We've written a whole lot of songs that were not like 'One Toke.’
Actually Tom and I always thought that our ballads were our forte."
Still, Brewer & Shipley are not complaining. "That one silly song we wrote
to kill some time between sets went over like gangbusters from the first
time we played it live. Who would have guessed 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. We were really
happy just to get a hit, even if it wasn't necessarily the one we would have
picked," said Brewer. "We're really glad people still
like it." |
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