The ToneWay® Project: helping people play music


Crawdad Song [core]

You get a line and I'll get a pole honey
You get a line and I'll get a pole, babe
You get a line and I'll get a pole
And we'll go down to the crawdad hole
Honey, baby mine

Get up old man you slept too late,... (×3)
Crawdad man done passed your gate...

Yonder come a man with a sack on his back,... (×3)
Packin' all the crawdads he can pack...

He fell down and he bust that sack,... (×3)
'Twas a sight to see the crawdads back to back...

A-sittin' on the ice till my feet got cold,... (×3)
A-watchin' that crawdad dig his hole...

What you gonna do when the lake goes dry,... (×3)
Sit on the bank and watch the crawdads die...

I heard the duck say to the drake,... (×3)
"There ain't no crawdads in this lake"...

Available in these books:

Get Started Plus:
Core Songs Edition
100 songs and our acclaimed play-by-ear learning method.
Big Print Songs
Over 200 songs.
Both books feature large-print lyrics (20-point type) and include chords, historical info, jamming hints, and more.

...and on these CDs:

Five CDs, 100 songs. Recordings from the Abbott family and their friends.
Listen to sample tracks.

The MP3 collection has all 100 songs on one CD for a discount. See details.


A song from the Mountain Music for Everyone Song Collection from the ToneWay Project. Our website has lyrics to nearly 400 traditional songs common in bluegrass and old-time circles. Most songs also include a free MP3 recording that you can listen to. The ToneWay Project also offers songbooks, CDs, and resources for learning to play music by ear. http://ToneWay.com