Gavin Atkin's weblog for the sort of people who like looking inside boat sheds. It's about old boats, traditional boats, boat building, restoration, the sea and the North Kent Coast
It’s taken quite a while – but here’s my 16-track online album of largely traditional songs, The Running Tide.
I think it’s an album of magnificent songs for singing sailors, and I hope as many of you as possible enjoy them through listening and perhaps learning some of them for yourselves!
No really – a good singer is one who persuades you that the song they’re delivering is a good one. And a good song is worth learning. So I hope you agree these are songs for singing sailors…
Fancy a weekend of sailing, shanties and sea songs aboard the fabulous Medway-based sail training ship Morning Star in a few weeks time?
Boarding is at 6pm on Friday 29th May 2015 at Chatham Maritime Marina and disembarking is at the same place at 3pm on Sunday.
You’ll learn to sing and sail you go, using old hauling and heaving shanties, as well as raucous songs of ‘Jack Ashore’ and haunting homeward bound melodies sung by sailors past and present.
The costs are £144 under 26 years and £180 over 26 years; all meals from supper on day 1 to lunch on day 3 re included, along with use of life jacket, waterproofs and boots, and all sailing and singing tuition.
For more information contact the Morning Star folks at support@morningstar.org.uk .
Two more sample recordings of songs from my temporary bedroom recording studio: John Connolly’s widely sung Fiddler’s Green, which is today so beloved by real-life fishermen, accompanied by my pre-war Hohner Erika melodeon, and the classic broken-token-my-love’s-a-sailor-but-he’s-been-gone-seven-years piece The Dark Eyed Sailor, which like many people I learned from the singing of Fred Jordan.
The eventual aim is eventually to make a CD – working title ‘Songs for singing sailors’ – that will hopefully be available through the usual commercial channels. We’re months away from that result, but I hope these samples tickle someone’s fancy!