For women, a tricky factor in the early days of Canadian settlement was the fact that they were not legally entitled to own any money or property if they married. Women at the time were more like livestock, a dependent child or a pet than fully human individuals with their own aspirations and accomplishments.
In many cases, this was a devastating state of affairs. In the colonies, drug and alcohol abuse was rampant. Miners often spent every penny of their income in taverns and brothels or disappeared altogether, leaving their wives and children in desperate poverty.
Susanne Vigneault shared a story while we were gardening together. She told me about of a woman she’d read about whose husband was one of these men. Unable to provide for herself and her children, her indigenous neighbours took pity on her family and brought her enough food to keep her family alive. The story stuck with me.
This whole song came to me in a dream. I couldn’t recall most of the lyrics when I woke up at 2 AM to write it down, but I got the feel of it down.
I recorded this song with Anne-Louise Genest on banjo and Tiffany Nelson on bass at Jayme Langan’s Poplar Sound Studio.
Booze, Liquor and Booze
Music and lyrics by Kerri Coombs
Well I once met a man and I met a couple more
And I met a couple other men too
But the only lover-man I ever came to adore
Had a little bit of trouble with the booze
Well he asked for a dance and he asked for another
And he danced me right out of my shoes
And he won my heart, my liquored-up lover,
In between those bottles of booze
Booze, booze, liquor and booze,
Catches up a woman when you’re pitchin’ woo
We spent all our gold and our silver too
On booze, liquor and booze
Well be begged for my hand and he begged for the other
And he begged for my two lips too
When the wedding day came all I got from my mother
Was “keep him well away from the booze,
“Booze, booze, liquor and booze,
Take it from a woman with nothing to lose
He’ll spend all your gold and your silver too
On booze, liquor and booze”
Well I popped out a baby and I popped out another
And I popped out a couple more too
And he never could tell the one from the other
On account of that accursed booze
Booze, booze, liquor and booze,
Made it so he couldn’t tell his hat from his shoes
He spent all our gold and our silver too
On booze, liquor and booze
He was gone for a week, he was gone for another,
He was gone for a month or two
And me and my babies had to fend for each other
While he spent all our money on the booze
Booze, booze, liquor and booze,
Went into town and what did he choose?
He spent all our gold and our silver too
On booze, liquor and booze
Well I once heard a knock and I heard another knock
And I once heard a couple more too
When I went to the door, on the porch was a cop,
Said “Your man finally died of the booze”
Booze, booze, liquor and booze,
Might as well slip a man’s head through a noose
He spent all our gold and our silver too
On booze, liquor and booze
Booze, booze, liquor and booze,
Might as well slip a man’s head through a noose
He spent all our gold and our silver too
On booze, liquor and booze
Creative Commons Attribution License
About the Artist
In her youth, Kerri created a prodigious repertoire of over 60 original songs, nearly all of them relating to how she felt personally and how her relationships were going. Despite positive feedback, college radio appearances and numerous gigs in folk clubs, festivals and songwriter showcases, her well of youthful angst eventually ran dry. Unsure what else there was to write about, she spent the next decade collecting and performing traditional songs from a wide variety of genres and cultures. This project is an integration of her “songwriter” and “traditional music” backgrounds.