Yes, this is a real dish. But more importantly, it’s a simple and fun tune that gets played often. Although it may sound like it was passed down by an old fiddler from up in the mountains as a celebration of backwoods cuisine - it’s not. And there is no better explanation as to how this came about than directly from the writer, fiddler Chris Germain. Chris, originally from Missouri and now living in Philadelphia, is an award winning fiddler and a master violin maker. His band, “The Hazel Nuts”, has just released (7/31/24) a new album “Uncut Gems From Missouri” that calls attention to the great fiddling legacy of the Midwest, and this tune is on that album. Here is “The Saga of Squirrel Heads and Gravy” from the liner notes: 

The Saga of “Squirrel Heads and Gravy”

"It all started sometime in the late 1970’s. I was away at college at the University of Missouri at Columbia. During breaks, I would return to my hometown of St. Louis to be with family and friends. During one of those breaks, I got together with musical buddies, Curtis and Dennis Buckhannon (aka Cousin Curtis and the Cash Rebates). Curt and Dennis had been at a music festival somewhere in the Midwest and heard a little kid (maybe 10 years old) asking an old fiddler if he knew a tune called “Squirrel Heads and Gravy." They had a big laugh about the title of a tune nobody had ever heard of. They told me the story and asked if I ever heard of a tune by that name. “Of course not!” I said.

Months later, back at college, I decided to have some fun. I cobbled together a fiddle tune, which I promptly called Squirrel Heads and Gravy. But rather than take credit, I told my friends that on a trip to West Virginia I met an old fiddler who played it and said it was the oldest tune that he knew. He played the tune for me and passed away shortly afterward.

So now there was a tune to go with the title and folks around the Midwest started playing it at jams and festivals. It caught on. Quite a few bands decided to record it as a traditional old time tune. How could I come clean after perpetuating such a lie?!? And so the myth continued for a few more decades and the tune percolated through the old-time music community. At each twist and turn, the tune morphed into something different, with a slightly different melody or key.

I eventually came clean and told my friends the true story and that I had made up a tune to go with that title. Word started getting out. Every few months, I’d get a phone call or email asking if I wrote that tune and if it would be OK to have it recorded or published. At one point, at Clifftop sometime around 2000, a guy came up to me and asked me if that was my tune and if I would play it for him. I told him, “yes, but I’d like to hear your band play it first.” We wove our way through the maze of campsites to where his band was set up. They proceeded to play me a tune that I didn’t even recognize. It was as if we were speaking two different languages.

Since then, I allowed the tune to meander through the folk process, while claiming the original version which I had concocted so many years before. What you hear on The Hazel Nuts recording, Uncut Gems From Missouri, is the original melody in the key of A with the fiddle cross-tuned AEAE. I hope that you like it."

– Chris Germain, 2024

Squirrel Heads and Gravy

The Hazel Nuts