No matter who played what, the song is pure Brewer and Shipley and their harmonies are spot on and quite beautiful. Garcia is credited with playing steel guitar on the Tarkio Road album where One Toke debuted but it's a bit unclear which songs he contributed to. It's been long rumored that steel guitar was played by Jerry Garcia of Grateful Dead fame, but that's been hard to confirm. The leads are played on a peddle steel guitar and it also runs under the entire song. The song features a harmonized guitar duo and bass. It's the kind of backup music Hank Williams Sr. One Toke Over the Line is a mid-speed country shuffle based on a bluegrass chord progression. But I didn't really come to that conclusion until I was an adult and I still tend to listen to the song with my little boy ears. It's pretty obvious that they want to repeat that experience and people waiting for death generally don't have sex & getting high on their minds. I tend to believe the second interpretation because in the second verse they talk about making love and how it opened their eyes. The lyrics are open to interpretation but I came to believe that it was either about making peace with God before your impending death, or reaching the decision to make positive changes in our life. In fact Lawrence Welk wasn't wrong when he called the song a spiritual. That story, as funny and strange as it seems, is absolutely true and here's Dick Dale & Gail Farrell on the Lawrance Welk Show singing One Toke* . In fact on the very day that Agnew threw down his moral gauntlet Lawrence Welk was introducing the song as proof positive that American youth embraced the Christian gospel. Of course the over 40 evangelical crowd latched onto the references to "sweet Jesus" and "Awaiting for the train that goes home, sweet Mary" and assumed it was a gospel song.
![lawrence welk one toke lawrence welk one toke](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/6e/02/01/6e0201afa03edb6ccead770ee6dc1798--lawrence-welk-musical.jpg)
The 14-40 crowd knew what it meant as did the Vice President because he called Brewer and Shipley "Subversive to American youth.". The word "toke" is defined by Miriam-Webster as " slang: a puff on a marijuana cigarette or pipe".
![lawrence welk one toke lawrence welk one toke](https://mouseintokyo.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/one-toke-cream-cheese.jpg)
The song was a one hitter for the band but it caught the attention of the entire Woodstock generation, tVice President Spiro T. The song is called One Toke Over The Line by the mid-western duo Brewer & Shipley. In 1970 at the tender age of eight I heard a song about smoking marijuana wrapped up in a catchy folk/rock tune accompanied by harmonies usually only displayed by the Kingston Trio or their contemporaries.