- So now that we're talking about crabs, we're talking my life.

Yeah.

All right.

I wasn't born on the Eastern Shore, but my family goes back to 1635.

But I was born on the Chesapeake Bay, spent my whole life on the bay.

And my father and my grandfather were boat builders, which sounds kind of romantic, but kids growing up, it wasn't romantic because you had to maintain those boats.

You paint the bottom of it.

You got to paint the bottom of them.

So we always had six or eight boats on Warren balls in the water.

And every year we would have to take them up one by one and clean the bottom of the boat and paint the bottom of the boat.

And so I had three brothers and we absolutely hated it.

When our dad came home from work and he'd say, "Well, go grab the copper paint and the scrapers and load up the cinder blocks and timbers.

We've got to go down and start working on painting the bottom of the boat."

And we just hated that.

So we'd haul everything down and we'd go when the tide was coming in.

And as the boat, my dad would go out and row the boat to the shore.

And as the tide came in, we would put cinder blocks and put a timber across at the bow and the stern.

And as the tide came in, we'd just keep building up like a cradle under it until you reach high tide.

And then the tide would start going out, so it would start dropping down.

And as soon as it got about a foot under the bottom of the boat, that was our queue.

And we all had to dive under and get right under that boat.

And there were no goggles on and you had to start scraping all those barnacles and slime and muck, sea squirts.

And we're under that boat scraping all that stuff.

It's all over you.

And so you had to get everything scraped and cleaned and then start painting and you had to be done before the tide came back in.

So we're lying on the sand, we got paint all over us and all that yucky stuff all over us and it was no fun.

But anyway, the tide would come back in, we'd float the boat off and that would be it for the day.

And we would complain and snorl and everything, but we had the best childhood of our lives out on those boats.

We did.

And my dad and my grandfather allowed us to use them whenever we wanted to as long as we didn't turn the motor on.

We had to row everywhere.

So we had a wonderful, wonderful time growing up on the Chesapeake Bay.

So I wrote this song, it's called It Ain't No Fun to Paint the Bottom of a Boat.

And when I told my older brother, I had written this song and he said, "But why?"

- When a boat's in the water for a year or so, a lot of skinky stuff on the bottom road takes a lot of work to keep it afloat and it's a nasty job painting the bottom of a boat and it ain't no fun painting the bottom of a boat.

My brothers and I, we always dreaded the day when our daddy came home from work and he'd say, "Grab the copper painting and the scrapers to tender blocks and timbers.

There's work to do."

So we'd haul everything down to Willaby Bay on the Chesapeake where our boat sitting for lay.

And then would begin a nightmarish chore, scraping and scraping and scraping some more.

Sea squirts, barnacles.

It all grows back in a very short time because when a boat's in the water four years or so, oh a lot of skinky stuff on the bottom road takes a lot of work to keep it afloat.

It's a nasty job painting the bottom of a boat.

And it ain't no fun painting the bottom of a boat.

Lying in the wet sand, painting our hair underneath the boat suspended Up in the air.

We've got to work fast because it won't be long.

The tide will be turning coming back strong and we'll begin another nightmarish chore hauling and hauling and hauling some more.

But at the end of the day when work was done, we'd smile knowing we would have plenty of fun on those boats in the water for a year or so.

The skinky stuff on the bottom would road.

It's a lot of work to keep it afloat and some mighty fun at playing on a boat.

It's a lot of fun at painting on a boat, but it ain't no fun painting the bottom of a boat.

There ain't no fun painting the bottom of a boat.

No, it ain't no fun painting the bottom of a boat.

No fun painting the bottom of a boat.