Right. So a lad emailed me last week — Conor, sound man, plays a bit of bodhrán — and he said, "Seamus, I tried to lead Whiskey in the Jar at a session in Galway and it FELL APART in the chorus and I want to know why." And I read that and I just nodded at the screen like an eejit, because I have been that man. We have ALL been that man. You start grand, you're up the mountains, you meet Captain Farrell, everyone's leaning in. And then you hit the "whack fol the daddy-o" and suddenly there's eleven different versions of it coming back at you and half the room is on the wrong syllable. It's chaos. Lovely chaos, but chaos.
So here's everything I know. And I know a fair bit, because I've ruined this song in more counties than I'd care to admit.
First thing. The key. Don't overthink it but DO think about it. Most fellas reach for G or D because that's where the guitar lives, and that's grand, but here's the catch — the verses of Whiskey in the Jar sit fairly low and comfortable, and then that chorus JUMPS up. "There's whiskey in the jaaar-o." That's the bit that gets you. If you pitch your verse too high to be cosy, by the time you're shouting the chorus you've nowhere to go and you're up on your toes wheezing. So pitch the VERSE where it feels nearly too low. Boring, even. Trust me. The chorus will reward you. I sing it in D and I'm no tenor, I'm a fella from Ennis with a head cold most of the year, and it works.
Now. Tempo. This is where people go wrong and they go wrong in the FUN direction, which is they take it too fast. Whiskey in the Jar is a march, not a sprint. It's got that swagger to it — the highwayman swagger, the I-robbed-Captain-Farrell-and-I'm-not-sorry swagger. You lose all of that if you're galloping. Keep it steady. Let the words land. "I counted out his money and it made a pretty penny" — you want people to HEAR that, to grin at it. If you're racing, it's just noise with a tune attached.
Then there's the matter of the nonsense. The chorus. The famous "whack fol the daddy-o, whack fol the daddy-o" — and look, I need to be honest with you, this is the bit that separates a session that's having a good time from a session that's actually TOGETHER. Because there are versions. Oh, there are versions. Some say "whack fol the daddy-o," some say "whack for my daddy-o," some say "whack fol the diddle-o," and the Thin Lizzy crowd remember it slightly different again, and don't even get me started on the "musha ring dum a doo dum a da" lot — that's a whole other regiment of confusion that some people fold in and some people don't.
Here is my advice and it is the only advice that matters. PICK ONE. Out loud. Before the song. I'm not joking. If you're leading, you say to the table, "Right lads, it's whack fol the daddy-o, none of yer diddle-o nonsense," and you say it with a smile, and everybody laughs, and then everybody SINGS THE SAME THING. The disaster Conor described in Galway? That's not a singing problem. That's a not-deciding problem. The room can sing anything as long as the room agrees what it's singing.
And the claps. People ask about the claps. There aren't official claps, this isn't liturgy, but if a clap's going to happen it happens on the "WHACK." You land on whack, the table lands with you, it's deadly when it's tight. Don't conduct it like yer man at the Proms. Just hit the whack hard yourself with your voice and the hands follow. The hands ALWAYS follow if you commit.
One more thing, and it's the thing I care about most. This is a story. There's a man, there's a robbery, there's a woman called Jenny (or Molly, depending who you ask — another version, see, the song is RIDDLED with them), and she does the dirty on him with the water in his pistols. It's funny. It's a bit sad. He ends up in jail going on about how he'd love to be back rambling. SELL it. Don't just produce the noises. Lean into "but the devil take that woman, for you know she tricked me easy." Get a bit wounded about it. The crowd comes with you when you mean it. They can always tell when you don't.
If you want the actual words to study before you stand up, have a read of the lyrics and the full Whiskey in the Jar entry over in the songbook — I put the history in there too, the murky bits, the who-wrote-it-first arguing, all of it. And honestly a lot of this same advice carries straight over to leading the Rattlin' Bog itself, which is the song this whole shrine is built on. Decide the words, hold the tempo, mean it. That's the whole game.
That's it from me. Go and frighten a session.
Slán go fóill, BogLord2002 (Seamus)
P.S. — Rattlin' the cat does not care for Whiskey in the Jar. The MINUTE I hit the chorus he gets up off the windowsill, gives me a look like I've personally insulted his mother, and stalks off to the kitchen. Eleven years of this. Every time. A critic, that cat.