“Rye Whiskey” is a Punch Brothers original from their 2010 Nonesuch album Antifogmatic, produced by Jon Brion at Ocean Way in Hollywood. Despite sharing a title with the old “Jack of Diamonds”–family traditional, it has no musical or lyric relationship to that song.
The lyric is a bar monologue — the narrator turning over what rye does to a room over the course of an evening, building from “rye whiskey makes the band sound better” through “rye whiskey makes the sun set faster” and arriving at “rye thoughts aren’t good thoughts, boys” and the half-confessional refrain “have I ever told you about the time I…” that never finishes. The harmonic setting sits in a minor key with chromatic b3 / b5 motion sliding under each verse, mirroring the cheerful-to-bleak pivot of an actual drunk in real time. Chris Thile carries the lead vocal; like most of Antifogmatic, the song is credited collectively to the band.
The song became a regular live feature on the Antifogmatic tour and one of the more frequently borrowed Punch Brothers originals among the next wave of progressive string bands.
