![]() Gail and Ron got to spend a little more time with Michael and Tom during and after the post-show meet-and-greet. We normally dedicate this song to Jerry (Garcia). We had dinner with her and it was absolutely wonderful. Gail and her husband Ron flew all the way from California just to be here tonight,” Brewer told the Sellersville audience. And low and behold, boy do we have a surprise and a treat for you tonight. “Dale and Gail sang our song on the show. When it got to the point of in the show where they sing “One Toke Over the Line,” Brewer told the story about the song being sung on the Lawrence Welk Show, a story he and Shipley have been telling for decades. Not many people get a chance to be a fly on the wall in a situation like that.Īfter nearly three hours of sitting around the dinner table, Brewer and Shipley had to go to work. The artists all swapped stories about the music industry and I was privileged to just sit there and listen. After about 15 minutes of pleasantries, Michael invited all of us to join him and Tom for dinner before the show. They were coming to Pennsylvania.Īrrangements were made for Gail and Ron to meet Michael and Tom just after soundcheck on the day of the show. They had never seen Brewer and Shipley perform live. Gail and Ron, however, thought is was a great idea. Tom Shipley on stage at the Sellersville Theatre 1894. 2, 2016, I emailed Gail and Ron suggesting that they fly across the country and join me for the show. So when I found out in September that Brewer and Shipley were performing in my area of suburban Philadelphia at the Sellersville Theatre 1894 in Sellersville, PA, on Nov. And for good reason: She has written a one-woman play for herself, scheduled to open in April 2017, and the answer to the question is a big part of the show.Īlthough we had never met face-to-face, Gail and her husband Ron Anderson, also a Welk Show singer, and I stayed in touch via email. I eventually tracked down one of the singers, Gail Farrell, living in California, and got her on the phone, where I proceeded to ask the question: What did you know and when did you know it?īut Gail wouldn’t give it up. ![]() The question I had, and apparently others have had for many years now, is did the Welk singers, perceived as squeaky-clean, know that they were singing a song that had a drug reference in the lyrics? Many viewers also offered their comments on the video. Shipley posted the video on YouTube and it got viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. During those conversations, they both said they had searched for years for a copy of the Welk show performance of “One Toke Over the Line, finally locating it in the mid-2000s. I had interviewed both Brewer and Shipley in 2013 for Volume I of The Vinyl Dialogues about the the “Tarkio” album. Michael Brewer on stage at the Sellersville Theatre 1894. And now, the paths of Brewer and Shipley have once again crossed with the stars of the Lawrence Welk Show and one of the most unusual bits of music history from the 1970s now has an epilogue. And after the song, Welk is seen on camera saying, “There you heard a modern spiritual by Gail and Dale.” In 1971, singers Gail Farrell and Dick Dale performed “One Toke Over the Line” on the show. It got the attention of the Nixon administration, which labeled the singer-songwriters subversives to American youth because the song contained a drug reference in its lyrics.īut because it was a hit single, the song also attracted the attention of Lawrence Welk, who liked to feature popular songs of the day sung by Welk Musical Family singers on his weekly television show. That song, “One Toke Over the Line,” first recorded by Brewer and Shipley in 1970 and featured on the duo’s third studio album “Tarkio,” became an interesting and unique bit of pop culture. In their stage show, Michael Brewer and Tom Shipley are fond of telling audiences that they’re the only guys on the planet – “and probably in the universe” – who have written a song that has been performed both on the Lawrence Welk Show and by the late Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Michael Brewer, Gail Farrell and Tom Shipley met in person for the first time Nov.
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