Hard Cider

“Hard Cider” Lyrics by Caleb Bailey

The year was 1921 prohibition was the word
We lived in the hills of Nelson county in a place called Nellysford
Daddy worked an orchard and sold fruit at a produce stand
But that don’t bring much money home for a family man

Two bushels of drop apples is what he used to make the mash
He knew that she selling alcohol was the way to make some cash
The oldest of the children he said I could drive the car
And we set out to Charlottesville with a hundred jars

Hard cider, hard cider
The sweetest fruit don’t hang on the tree
It turned loners into lovers and cowards into fighters
But everyone agrees they all love my daddy’s cider
Hard cider

Share cropping for Dr. Henkel he’d work in the summer sun
He’d come home by the light of the moon and we’d make a cider run
You could buy corn liquor off anyone in tollm
but daddy had the only cider for a hundred miles around

Chorus

Revenuers busted stills by the smoke trails they made
While daddy’s cider turned to alcohol in a keg under the shade
We started in a one room shack but that was years ago
Now daddy’s just sips his cider and plays his old doctor