“Drifting with the Tide” was written by Don Reno and Red Smiley and first recorded by them with the Tennessee Cut-Ups at King Studios in Cincinnati on 15 January 1952. It was one of sixteen sides cut that day, ten of them sacred songs, and every one carries Reno’s name as writer or co-writer. Smiley sang lead with Reno on tenor, backed by Chuck Haney on mandolin, Gopher Addis on fiddle and Jay Haney on bass. King issued it in May 1952 as the B side of “There’s Another Baby Waiting for Me Down the Line” (King 1063), and put it on the band’s LP Good Old Country Ballads in 1959.
The song is a homecoming told from the deck of a ship. The singer has crossed “the great wide ocean” and waited for his time, and as his boat draws near the harbour he expects his sweetheart to be his; a long time has passed since she made her vows, though, and if another man has her, or if she has changed her mind, he will turn away and go drifting with the tide.
Other bands took it up in the 1970s and after. Del McCoury and the Dixie Pals recorded it in Silver Spring, Maryland, in April 1976, with banjo player Bill Runkle singing lead, for Our Kind of Grass; Lost & Found included it on Sun’s Gonna Shine (Rebel, 1985); and the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band sang it on their October 1987 shows, later issued on Ragged but Right. Ronnie Bowman recorded it at Doobie Shea in Ferrum, Virginia, around late 1993 for his first solo album, Cold Virginia Night (Rebel, 1994), with Dan Tyminski singing harmony.
