The Whiskey Wars of Whiskey Bars ( a kabarett by Bremner Duthie with the songs of Kurt Weill)

Ouch…when I decided to take Whiskey Bars, a Kabarett by Bremner Duthie with songs by Kurt Weill, to the Edinburgh Fringe, I stumbled into this without any idea of how extremely tender Scottish feelings are on the subject of Whiskey... or is it Whisky. Please calm down, oh annoyed Scottish friends!

I'm bringing my show from Canada to Edinburgh and it's called 'Whiskey Bars'. Yes, with an "e" in the whisky.

The show's based around the songs of Kurt Weill—the guy who wrote Mack the Knife, among other songs. And before the Fringe has even started, I've had too many emails reminding me curtly that the correct spelling of Whiskey is Whisky, and that the Irish stole the word and added an 'E' to indicate their inferior product, and that the ignorant Americans began using the Irish spelling, (probably because there were way more Irish than Scots arriving State-side) and that adding an 'e' to the word is like adding Coca Cola to a single malt, (all right, all right, I've seen folks do that in the States and I agree it's disgusting) and that if I'm going to do a show in Scotland I should be aware of the correct spelling.

Well, normally on matters of cultural heritage I bow down and back off to the aggrieved cultures involved, but for once, I have history on my side. Because Kurt Weill wrote music theatre pieces with the brilliant Bertolt Brecht in the 1920's in Germany, and the 'Alabama Song' was one of his hits, and the title of my show comes from one of the lyrics.

You know the song—it was a huge hit for The Doors and David Bowie ("Oh, show me the way to the next Whiskey Bar…").

So this song comes from a show called the 'Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny'. It's a satire; Mahagonny symbolized the ultimate city of Capitalism, so Weill and Brecht imagined a city on the American frontier—although at that point they'd never been to America (and though the show was really a satire on 1920's Weimar Berlin).

Weill and Brecht decided that gangsters, gold-diggers, hurricanes, the FBI and lumberjacks might all meet up in this mythical Western city. And while the show is in German,Alabama Song is in English, and Weill and Brecht chosen American spelling simply because the song is set in the Wild (Weimar-tinted) West.

So…I know that Scottish Whisky is the best (though a fine single cask Kentucky Bourbon can go down pretty well), but for this one situation, my spelling of Whiskey is right.

To redeem myself, I promise to consume all the Whisky that I can once I get to Edinburgh…