Drinking That Wine
“Drinking That Wine” is a sea chantey.
Alternate names
- Drinking of the Wine
External links
Liner Notes
“Drinking That Wine” is track 4 on Shower Chanteys, recorded 27 June 2018 at Mill Pond Music Studio.[1]
“Drinking That Wine” is a net-hauling chantey, used by menhaden fishermen off the mid-Atlantic North American coast.[2] These fishermen were almost all African-American, and their chanteys generally draw from gospel and from other worksong traditions, including field songs, rail-building songs, and chain-gang songs. The net-hauling chanteys are unusual in that the work is not done while singing—the fishermen will pause between lines to actually haul up a section of net. The song gives a chance to reset their grip, spread the net out, and prepare for the next pull. During the pull, between sung lines, is “chatter”—sometimes encouragement, sometimes trash-talk.
I think I first heard this song from The Johnson Girls; my version is influenced by them, but also the Northern Neck Chantey Singers, a group of men who actually did this work with these songs when they were younger, and other great interpreters of this tradition including Bob Walser and Ken Schatz.
While this song is attested for use as a net-hauling chantey, there’s really nothing fishing-specific or even ocean-specific about it; it is a straight-up spiritual, that happened to have a good rhythm to use for the task. That’s one of the things I like about chanteys; they can be so amazingly musically diverse.
References
- ↑ “Drinking That Wine,” recording by Chris Maden. MusicBrainz.
- ↑ Bob Walser, “Drinkin’ That Wine.” bobwalser.com.
