Music

I also have a decent collection of nautical music. That's tricky, though. Much of traditional nautical music consists of sea chanties. They're okay for a listen or two, especially if you know the historical context of them and can imagine the men doing the different jobs represented by them. For repeated listenings, however, I find them pretty boring. I prefer a little more variety in tune, rhythm, etc. My favorites are songs that tell stories.

Schooner Fare, from Maine, is one of my favorite groups. They haven't done much recently, though, and probably won't. They turned more toward Irish music in recent years and cut down on touring. A couple of years ago, one member, the bass player, died young. We did get to see them at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago a few years ago. Not only do they have good music, but they're funny, too. Some of their better songs include The Day of the Clipper (the funny story about that is that it sounds so much like a traditional sea song, people have assumed that it is, to the extent of recording it under a different title and misattributing it), Portland Town. The Mary L. McKay, and many many others, some written by them and some traditional.

Stan Rogers, the Canadian folk singer, had a lot of good sea songs, too. He died back in the '80s, I believe, in a fire on a airplane. He did write some good ones, though: White Squall, The Bluenose, The Mary Ellen Carter (although I like the way that Schooner Fare does that one better).

For Great Lakes songs nowadays, there's Lee Murdock, who does a variety of things. He's concentrating on lighthouses more than ships these days, it seems , but he has written a few and seems to be good at finding excellent songs written by others.

Oh, and of course, the best-known singer doing nautical songs is Jimmy Buffett. He's gotten away from sailing as a central theme to some extent, but the oldies are still good.

There's a whole group that I'm only beginning to sample: younger people who do songs about sailing, cruising, living aboard, etc. With the World Wide Web, they are able to get a larger audience and sell more to the rather specialized audience who are interested.