Brewer and Shipley’s Mike Brewer (‘One Toke Over the Line’) Dead at 80

Mike Brewer, who partnered with Tom Shipley in the folk-rock duo Brewer & Shipley beginning in the late ’60s - best known for their 1971 hit single, “One Toke Over the Line,” has died.

The news of his passing at age 80 at his home in Missouri, was announced by Shipley. The latter had visited “my friend of 65 years and musical partner for over 60” three days earlier at a hospital in Branson.

By the mid-’60s, Brewer had relocated to Los Angeles and formed a band with Tom Mastin, Billy Mundi (later of the Mothers of Invention) and Jim Fielder (who became an original member of Blood, Sweat and Tears).

When Brewer became a staff song writer for A&M Records’ music publishing company, he reunited with Shipley and they began writing songs together. The pair recorded a debut album for A&M but ultimately moved back to the midwest, settling in Kansas City, Missouri.

Mike Brewer was born in 1944, in Oklahoma City, Okla. While in high school, he played in a rock ‘n’ roll band with Jesse Ed Davis, a native American who went on to perform with such stars as Taj Mahal, Eric Clapton and John Lennon, among many others. After graduating, he traveled the folk circuit performing in coffee houses. Though he met Shipley in 1964, they didn’t become musical partners until 1968.

They were soon signed to Kama Sutra Records in New York and their second album for the label, 1970’s Tarkio, featured “One Toke Over the Line,” written a few years earlier, as its lead-off track.

During this interview Mike Brewer tells us all about his life and that famous track.