Jacqui and Liz do a deep dive into the sea... shanty that is Barrett's Privateers (and others). Featuring interviews with legendary folk musician Garnet Rogers and TikTok sea shanty sensation Sam Pope, this episode comes with its very own playlist on Spotify (called Big Shanty Tunes).
Big thanks go out to Canadian folk music icon Garnet Rogers. He kindly shared with us some amazing stories and fantastic music recommendations. Go to his website to purchase his memoir Night Drive: Travels with My Brother about his time on the road with Stan and check out his music on his website, or wherever you get your tunes.
Thanks also to Sam Pope, ShantyTok leading light, and lead vocals on The Wellerman’s Official TikTok version of, well, The Wellerman. He gave us great insight into the current sea shanty phenomenon and was extremely charming and generous with his time. Find him on TikTok (of course), YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and wherever you get your tunes.
Thanks, as always, to our unofficial co-producer, Aaron P.
Just FYI: There's a bit of salty language in this ep, which makes sense when you think about it.
Here are the songs, articles, and that one podcast you'll hear about in this episode:
The Wellerman (Sea Shanty) - From TikTok to Epic Remix, Nathan Phillips and others (Thanks to The Kifness for putting it up on YouTube)
Barrett’s Privateers by Stan Rogers, 1977 Fogarty's Cove Music
The Canadian Encyclopedia Stan Rogers, by Chris Gudgeon, Andrew McIntosh, August 29, 2013
Hail to You, Santa Claus by Stan Rogers, 1970 RCA (Thanks to Nick Spacek for putting it on YouTube)
STAN ROGERS: An Interview at Mariposa, 1978, Reprinted from The Folk Life Quarterly, Vol. III, No 1, Summer, 1978
Stan Rogers intros & sings "Barrett's Privateers" in One Warm Line produced by Kensington Communications
Stan Rogers shows off his first guitar from the CBC Digital Archives. Stan explains privateering to the host of Canada After Dark, Paul Soles. Broadcast Date: Nov. 30, 1978
The Maritime Cultural Resource Center Is the Stan Rogers song "Barrett's Privateers" true? by Dan Conlin
Sloop John B. by The Kingston Trio. 1958 Universal Music Group.
Stand by Your Band Tom Thakkar and Tommy McNamara talk about the bands that Pitchfork attacks and your friends make fun of). The October 10, 2019 featuring Charlie Bury is all about Stan Rogers.
Ordinary Day Great Big Sea 2011 WMG (This is the song Liz heard in a Scarborough bar)
Four Strong Winds by Neil Young. 1978 album Comes a Time, written by Ian Tyson.
Sea Shanty TikTok is the perfect expression of masculinity for 2021 MSNBC opinion piece by Hayes Brown
Michael Row the Boat Ashore by Pete Seeger. Live in 1963. (Thanks to Evan for putting it on YouTube)
In the Moment of Zen clip at the end, Jacqui is singing Bluenose by Stan Rogers. It is waaaaaaay out of her range.
Jacqui Clydesdale 0:08
Hi, I'm Jacqui Clydesdale,
Liz Walker 0:09
and I'm Liz Walker,
Jacqui Clydesdale 0:11
and you're listening to Choral Fixation, where we ask, Why do people love singing together, and how do we get the non singers to join in? What are we going to talk about today, Liz?
Liz Walker 0:20
Well it turns out that as our backs were turned people were singing together.
Jacqui Clydesdale 0:24
I know isn’t that crazy? We actually have, we have breaking news on the singinging together front. [Liz makes old-timey news ticker noises] That's crazy. [laughter] I know, that never happens. We usually talk about topics at our own pace whenever we feel like it [right]. We were in the middle of recording a three-part series on protest music, and we decided to take a break and talk about sea shanties.
Liz Walker 0:43
The Wellerman. TikTok shanty. Tok, shanty? [ShantyTok] Hashtag ShantyTok.
Jacqui Clydesdale 0:49
That’s right. Tell me a little bit about what you've heard.
Liz Walker 0:50
Well, it has come out of nowhere. And between Bernie's mittens and sea shanty talk, it has that has just been overwhelming my social media, basically for the past week, [right] and so last fall I started seeing some choir friends posting sea shanties on tik tok and I thought to myself, what is TikTok.
Jacqui Clydesdale 1:14
[laughter] The interesting thing about the way that this singing together is happening is that TikTok actually lets you do it with people so somebody can post a song that they sing by themselves. And then there's the duet with me function right and people can just hit that and then either sing along with them together or add a harmony, which is what seems to be happening.
Liz Walker 1:37
Mm hmm, yeah, it's like karaoke in your car except it's on the internet for everybody to see.
Jacqui Clydesdale 1:43
Lots of fun ways to play around with it...
Liz Walker 1:45
Right and so we've seen these videos that have got you know they started off with one person and then they've got dozens of people participating, each one, each one layering in their own line of music.
Jacqui Clydesdale 1:57
And some of them sound really incredible and they end up having these really full sounds. yeah people I think are really responding to it, particularly the weatherman song, which was posted. It was posted by a few different people at first but the one that really took off was postman from Glasgow named Nathan Evans, he posted a very sort of bare bones version of himself just singing the melody, and then the layering of the harmonies on top of it. Oh, boy...
Nathan Evans and others 2:25
There once was a ship that put to sea/The name of that ship was the Billy of Tea/The winds blew up, her bow dipped down/Oh blow, me bully boys, blow
Soon may the Wellerman come/ To bring us sugar and tea and rum/One day, when the tonguing' is done/We'll take our leave and go (chorus repeats)
She’d not been two weeks from shore/When down on her a right whale bore/The captain called all hands and swore/He'd take that whale in tow/Soon may the Wellerman come/To bring us sugar and tea and rum...
Liz Walker 3:04
Jacqui, what is the first rule of singing together?
Jacqui Clydesdale 3:06
Blend with the person next to you and don't stand out or the choir director will yell at you. [That's right.] But, like, but going back to all the stuff we talked about in our first protest music episode, get your voices synchronized and your breathing synchronized and start producing some, what do you call it?
Liz Walker 3:25
Oxytocin. You're starting to feel warm about people, makes you feel really good to sing together makes you feel really good specifically to harmonize just really feels really good.
Jacqui Clydesdale 3:39
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Walker 3:41
What is the second rule of singing together, right now,
Jacqui Clydesdale 3:43
Right now. No, no singing together right now.
Liz Walker 3:46
So as we were describing on TikTok, you can layer your voice in on a multi-layered track already so your voice, your hearing your voice with all those other people and I was really wondering if just that alone, gives you a little, little hit of oxytocin.
Jacqui Clydesdale 4:01
Yeah I think it absolutely does. I think even just listening to it does, right. That deep rich bassy-ness, I think, hits. So it's almost physical, like it feels like it rattles your bones a bit.
Liz Walker 4:11
I was thinking of the video, that sort of drone-y sound that was in the music that I played in in that first protest episode of the Sardinians. Yeah, I was thinking of that, yeah, I was thinking about the Sardinian vocal tradition, and which has a real, really bass-y almost drone-y effect. [Right.] I was reminded of that listening to these, these TikToks.
Jacqui Clydesdale 4:35
Yeah, for sure. And speaking of regional variants, I think that's actually a great segue into what we're going to talk about in this episode, which is Canada's own sea shanty. The emblematic sea shanty of Canada: Barrett's Privateers.
Jacqui Clydesdale 4:55
Okay, so Liz I'm about to email you a picture [Okay] or text you I guess. Tell me what you see, describe who you see in this picture,
Jacqui C 5:04
I love it.
Jacqui Clydesdale 5:05
who those people are, what they. Where do you think they are and [Oh my god] what they were just doing.
Liz Walker 5:11
There we go. So this is a picture of you and me and our friends, Aaron and Robb, and we are outside of a pub called Hurley’s in Montreal and it is probably 1995.
Jacqui Clydesdale 5:26
Yep, I would say that's about right.
Liz Walker 5:28
It's wintertime we're wearing winter coats, and I remember this night very well despite everything that happened.
Jacqui Clydesdale 5:33
I don't know how that's possible, but okay.
Liz Walker 5:36
I just remember we had a great night we were in the, we, we were kids who for some reason went to these Irish pubs, and we went for the music and we went for the beer and we had a great time singing and pounding our beers on the table, and it was the 90s.
Jacqui Clydesdale 5:50
Yes, that's right. It was the nineties. [laughter] [It was the nineties] And wasn't it well and the Celtic Tiger was raging, and Michael Flatley and the Lord of the dance,
Liz Walker 5:58
Oh my lord, yes.
Jacqui Clydesdale 5:59
was you know spinning his magic and sort of all things, Irish, were taking a front seat and
Liz Walker 6:07
Roddy Doyle.
Jacqui Clydesdale 6:08
Yeah, yeah, we're having a... Great Big Sea. [Yes] And so there was plenty of Celtic style around, and [Yeah] we had a good time singing songs. I mean a lot of those songs I knew in part because my parents, who are Scottish immigrants, would sing them. And so I already knew, like tons of those songs, and one of the ones that kept coming up, was [both] Barrett's Privateers.
Liz Walker 6:30
A highlight of every night, honestly, because [laughter] what would happen is that they'd be playing the songs and then someone would come up with Barrett's Privateers and the entire room would sing along. [Yeah, for sure] with the words that they knew.
Jacqui Clydesdale 6:43
That's right. But the interesting thing about Barrett's Privateers and the lyrics particularly, we'll get into that, is that Barrett's Privateers actually tells you a mini version of the story just in the response part. Like, just Barrett's Privateers is a sea shanty. A lot of the songs like Wellerman, for example, is not technically a sea shanty. It's a song of the sea, [right] but it doesn't have the call and response that Barrett's Privateers has. [Oh] so very Barrett’s Privateers has a line, then a line that the audience repeats, [right] and then two more lines, and then sort of like the mini encapsulated story, the beginning and the end, all wrapped up. So let's take a listen to it now.
Liz Walker 7:28
Okay.
Stan Rogers 7:29
Oh, the year was 1778/ (How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now!)/A letter of marque came from the king/To the scummiest vessel I'd ever seen/God damn them all! I was told we'd cruise the seas for American gold We'd fire no guns-shed no tears Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier The last of Barrett's Privateers Oh, Elcid Barrett cried the town (How I wish I was in sherbrooke now!) For twenty brave men all fishermen who Would make for him the Antelope's crew God damn them all! I was told we'd cruise...
Jacqui Clydesdale 8:14
Let's talk a little bit about Stan Rogers. The man who wrote it. [Yeah] The Canadian folk music legend. What do you know about Stan Rogers?
Liz Walker 8:20
He was tall and bald. [Yeah] He was six foot four. [Yep] Bald as a cue. Big beard, big voice, who tragically died in an airline accident in like the early 80s. [That's right] So a career cut short, but the legend has grown [absolutely] in the, in the 40, almost 40 years since he died, I mean there's a Stanfest which is a Stan Rogers Folk Festival out in Nova Scotia. [mmmhmm] I think he's considered the king of regional folk music in Canada.
Jacqui Clydesdale 8:50
Absolutely, it's really interesting to me because when I was doing some research, one of the lines that I came across in the Canadian Encyclopedia online no less said he is perhaps best known for the rousing acapella anthem. Northwest Passage. And I love Northwest Passage I think it's beautiful, but it's really interesting to me that that was the song they picked because [right] the song that I most closely identify him with is Barrett's Privateers, [yep] and whether or not that's his best song, that's a different thing, but Stan Rogers was born in Hamilton, Ontario, he isn't actually from the East Coast, but his mum was from Canso, Nova Scotia and he spent a lot of his summers there. [right] So, Stan Rogers was actually, you know, an upper Canadian who went down home.
Liz Walker 9:36
He went up the road,
Jacqui Clydesdale 9:37
He went up the road, exactly. So he began his professional career in the late 60s, and he did the folk club circuit. But what's really interesting which I did not know which I discovered from doing some of this research is that he was originally, he was signed to a couple of different record labels, and they tried to get him to do some stuff that really was not in his wheelhouse,
Liz Walker 9:59
Like?
Jacqui Clydesdale 10:00
well, he's doing, he started doing a novelty songs
Jacqui Clydesdale 10:09
you can just google it it's Stan Rogers hail to you Santa Claus,
Liz Walker 10:12
you can recognize his beautiful voice there, even if it's a dumb song.
Jacqui Clydesdale 10:16
I mean he has said in interviews like this ridiculous like [right] they did not know what to do with me.
Liz Walker 10:21
But you can, you, but you can imagine that they wanted to do something because he has such a beautiful voice and such a presence.
Jacqui Clydesdale 10:31
Let's talk a little bit about him moving into the folk music tradition, right so he started working on Sylvia Tyson's radio show, Sylvia Tyson, was a part of the popular Ian and Sylvia folk music duo out of Canada, he was on john Allen cameras show and he did a bunch of different things and then around 1973, his brother Garnett, who plays the guitar and fiddle and flute and provides beautiful harmonies. He became his primary sideman, and they performed at a bunch of folk festivals. Folk festivals, now take us to the creation of Barrett's Privateers now I'm gonna read you a little story. [okay] This is from an interview that Stan gave to the folk Life magazine.
Liz Walker 11:20
Oh, the days when there were magazines devoted to folk life.
Jacqui Clydesdale 11:23
Yeah, I know this is from Digital folklife. org. Then there's the monster Barrett's Privateers when was that written and Stan says at the Northern Lights Folk Festival in 76. I was hanging out with the Friends of Fiddler's green that bunch of loonies and the interviewer says, I've heard of them, and Stan says rightly so, they're very sick men, and the interviewer says tam kirundi is going to come, I think, I think the interviewer is Scottish because he says Tam Karen is gonna come after you will lumbers helper Stan, and then Stan says, He knows what I think of him. He knows I love him. He also knows that I think he's totally crazy. At any rate, I was hanging out with all those guys, they'd rather sing them eat almost rather sing them drink. And they were hanging out in their rooms, all into singing sea shanties. I love the parts, it was great fun, but I wanted to sing lead and have them sing the harmonies for a change. But I didn't know any of these songs, because I was a total neophyte and traditional music, still am, for that matter, so I went back to my room. And I thought over a story, a poet friend had told me about Nova scotian privateering in the time of the American Revolutionary War. I got this little bit of a tune running through my head and 20 minutes later I had Barrett's Privateers written down. [Whaaaat?] I know so Barents Privateers is basically his Jolene.
Liz Walker 12:42
Oh my god like a gift of inspiration
Unknown Speaker 12:44
I went back to the room where the friends all were and said, Hey, I got a new song and Tom Kennedy said, Ah folk Rodgers is going to make us cry again. and I said no no you don't understand this is a different kind of song. So I started singing it, and by the time I got to the second chorus, they were all crowded around, reading the page over my shoulder and singing perfect bloody harmonies. [laughter] So I knew that the song has satisfied my desires. [laughter] I never expected it to go beyond that point, I just wanted a song that I could sing lead on that night. Since then it has taken off.
Liz Walker 13:16
Oh my gosh, that's an amazing story. So, when he writes this. He writes a monster hit by accident kind of out of spite inspiration, whatever you want to call it, and then it takes off
Jacqui Clydesdale 13:27
Well, it doesn't it doesn't. I think it's still mainly, I think it's still mainly popular on the folk circuit at first, certainly through the 70s and into the early 80s, I think,
Liz Walker 13:38
because I guess there wasn't really a place to hear this on the radio.
Jacqui Clydesdale 13:41
Yeah, I mean CBC is playing him a bit but like he never, he never cracked into commercial radio right he started recording albums and the first album that he recorded in 76 has Barrett's Privateers on it.
Liz Walker 13:53
That's Fogarty's Cove right.
Jacqui Clydesdale 13:54
Fogarty's Cove. That's right, that he recorded independently because nobody else knew what to do with him.
Liz Walker 14:01
Right. Right.
Jacqui Clydesdale 14:02
But I mean, he recorded that in the basement studio of Daniel Lanois
Liz Walker 14:07
Oh right, in Hamilton
Jacqui Clydesdale 14:08
Legendary Canadian yep legendary Canadian folk musician,
Liz Walker 14:13
so he's touring I guess the the way that this song is getting out is by touring he's playing at folk festivals playing in bars playing, where we can get a gig.
Jacqui Clydesdale 14:21
That's right.