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, 5 babe
1 You get a line and I'll get a pole
And 4 we'll go down to the crawdad hole
1 Honey, 5 baby 1 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"...

It’s on Strum Machine!

Play & sing along with Crawdad Song (or any song you type in) in any key, at any speed, with real instrument recordings. You have to see it to believe it.

Play this song on Strum Machine

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.
Family Tradition
The reference manual, with lyrics to 330 songs.
The first two 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 The ToneWay Mountain Music Collection, which offers lyrics and free Song Clips (recordings for learning the song by ear) for nearly 400 traditional songs, many of which are often heard in bluegrass and old-time jam circles. The ToneWay Project also offers songbooks, CDs, and a free online video series for learning to play music by ear. http://ToneWay.com