Mystic Seaport's
Chantey Staff:
Barry Keenan has been writing and playing music since he was 13. Before coming to Mystic Seaport, he dabbled in all types of music, from rock, to blues, folk, to jazz; always approaching each with complete fascination and dedication. As a member of the Mystic Seaport Special Demonstration Squad, he discovered the world of Sea Music, and the power of songs at work. Since then he has had the opportunity to use these songs at sea on sailing school ships. Now, as a Mystic Seaport Chanteyman, he has the opportunity to teach this amazing art form to the public while still absorbing all of the material he can from the seasoned veterans he calls his coworkers and friends.
Geoff Kaufman is recognized as one of the golden voices of New England's folk music scene. As a member of the chantey group Stout, Geoff was present at the first of Mystic Seaport's Sea Music Festivals. Geoff has worked at Mystic Seaport as a chanteyman, interpreter and roleplayer since 1984. As a soloist and a member of the group Forebitter, Geoff has performed throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. His many recording credits include three solo albums: Fair Stood the Wind, Tree of Life and Huzza, Old Ironsides: Her Life and Times in Song.
Chris Koldewey teaches history in Binghamton, New York, in the winters and joins our staff as a chanteyman in the summers. Chris brings a wealth of knowledge of American history and an impressive arsenal of instrumental and vocal skills with him, as well as an irrepressible sense of humor.
David Littlefield has worked as a chanteyman at Mystic Seaport since 1986. As a singer and songwriter he has performed in England, Canada and the Eastern United States. His original musical compositions have been recorded by both European and American artists and his written publications include topics of local Connecticut history and American whaling.
Don Sineti has been heard in concert from Hawaii to Alaska to Germany. He also performs with the groups Finest Kind and the Morgans. Don has illustrated a number of publications on Cetaceans. He is the co-founder and past president of Cetacean Society International. Don is known throughout the folk music community as "Conan the Shantyman."
Ken Sweeney has traveled far and wide by motorcycle, homemade canoe, freight train and tall ships and has lived in innumerable places, exploring the stuff of song and legend. A singer and multi-instrumentalist, he has long been an instructor, collector and restorer of harmonicas, banjos and concertinas. Thirty years a contradance musician and dancer have found him playing dances and festivals all over the United States and abroad.
David Iler
Denise Cannella
2009 Sea Music Festival - List of Performers
Schedule of Saturday and Sunday daytime entertainment! <Download the PDF now>
Download the Concert Lineup Schedule to find out when your favorite musicians are performing.
 | Barnacle (Mary Audette, Everett Brown, Jon Cannon, Tim Reilly) Early in 2006 Everett Brown, Mary Audette, and Tim Reilly formed Barnacle -- a high energy Celtic/sea music/folk band. They appeared throughout New England at venues such as the Rhode Island School of Design, Mystic Seaport Sea Music Festival, New London's Sail Fest, Stone Soup Coffeehouse, the Wickford Maritime Festival in Wickford, Rhode Island, and at the Windjammer Festival in Camden, Maine. |
 | Bob Walser Former director of Music Programs at the Seaport, highly accomplished performer and one of the most prominent scholars in the field, now from Minnesota. |
 | Bob Webb Bob Webb has travelled internationally for three decades, performing and teaching the music sung aboard merchant sailing ships of old. He has presented shanties and sailors' songs from New Zealand to Poland and south to Cape Horn, and is hailed in Europe as "King of the Shanty." He plays the unusual MacCann-duet concertina, and he is a player and historian of the banjo. His exhibition monograph, Ring the Banjar!: The Banjo in America from Folklore to Factory is still in print after 25 years, and he is currently writing a full-length book about the seafaring history of the instrument. This is his 29th appearance at the Mystic Sea Music Festival. |
Carl Thornton
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 | Cliff Haslam Simply one of the best singers around, and an institution in his own right after three decades of entertaining crowds on Monday nights at the Griswold Inn in Essex, CT. |
 | Daisy Nell & Stan Collinson http://www.daisynell.com |
Danny Spooner Australia - ballad singer extraordinaire | |
 | Dave Peloquin Dave Peloquin, chanteyman and historic interpreter, has been singing songs of the 19th century sailor for over 30 years. Dave's clear tenor voice is one of the most well known in sea music. Founder and lead singer of the popular groups Wickford Express and Compass Rose, Dave has been a frequent participant at the Mystic Sea Music festivals. His recording studio, Night Sail Sound is dedicated to acoustic traditional music. Dave lives in Maine and appears frequently with fellow sea music shipmate, Bob Webb. |
David Kleiman A researcher, publisher and performer of traditional sea music for over three decades in New York City, David organized the precursor to our Sea Music Festival at South Street in New York City the year before the event came to Mystic Seaport.
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 | Heather Wood Was a founding member (with Peter Bellemy and Royston Wood) of The Young Tradition in England in the 1960's, a seminal and immensely influential band within the folk music explosion of that time. |
Ellen Cohn
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 | Dick Holdstock & Allan MacLeod Long time festival favorites originally from England and Scotland respectively, but prominent in the northern California folk scene for several decades. |
 | Jeff Warner New Hampshire musician-scholar presenting musical traditions from the Outer Banks fishing villages of North Carolina, to the lumber camps of the Adirondack Mountains and the whaling ports of New England. |
 | Jerry Bryant Jerry Bryant is an independent folk scholar and presenter specializing in the musical artifacts of maritime culture. For more than a quarter century he has shared the traditional songs of sailors with audiences from California to Maine. Accompanying himself on concertina, guitar, banjo, ukulele and other instruments, he presents songs that open a window on the lives of fishermen, packet rats and whalers. By researching the music he is able to add historical insights to his performances. This has also provided him with subjects for making new songs, in the spirit of the tradition. Featured on a number of recordings, Jerry has released two CDs of his own: The Ballad of Harbo and Samuelsen, and Roast Beef of Old England. |
John Roberts An incomparable anglo concertina player and singer of English traditional song, long time and ongoing partner with Tony Barrand, and an icon for many in folk music circles.
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 | Judy & Dennis Cook Judy Cook comes from the Washington, DC area where she was nominated Best Female Vocalist in Traditional Folk. She sings each year on tours to other areas of America and to the UK. Louis Killen, himself one of the most respected singers of English traditional song, said of Judy, "Her depth of understanding and storytelling ability in ballad form is rivaled only by her dedication to the music and her willingness to do her research." Judy has two CDs of unaccompanied songs & ballads, "If You Sing Songs", and "Far From The Lowlands". Her third CD "Tenting Tonight: Songs of the Civil War" was released August 2007. |
Louis Killen
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 | Marc Bernier Folk musician/singer Marc Bernier is no stranger to audiences of sea music, traditional irish music & song, American fife & drum, as well as old time and cajun music. Audiences across the United States and Europe have enjoyed Bernier's ecclectic, entertaining, and enthusiastic mix of traditional styles of music and song. An accomplished multi-instrumentalist, Bernier plays guitar, banjo, mandolin, fife, bodhran, and frottior (rubboard) with ease, skill, and soul. |
 | Martin & Phillip Hugill Phil and Martin Hugill, sons of the legendary shanty man Stan Hugill, have been playing and singing together since their teens. Although in more recent years they have pursued seperate musical projects. For many years Phil has been a stalwart singer at the Fo'c's'l Folk Club in Southampton. During this time he took the part of shanty man in the club's production of Peter Bellamy's folk opera "The Transports". Laterly he sang and played guitar with Romsey-based band "Men in a Brown Hat", a five-piece outfit playing an eclectic asssortment of music-Irish to the Balkans. Martin has played in various bands both performance and ceili around the Shropshire and Mid-Wales area, playing mainly mandolin and cittern. In addition to this they have performed together singing songs of a maritime nature in places diverse as Connecticut and Poland. Martin has taken part as a solo performer at the Mystic sea music festival. |
 | Nanne Kalma and The Hudson Crew The Netherlands - our dear Dutch friends from Liereleit and Kat n' Seil <Read More...> |
New Bedford Harbor Sea Chantey Chorus
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 | Rick Nestler http://www.ricknestler.com |
Rum Soaked Crooks (Dan Lanier, Jacek Sulanowski, Tom Goux)
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Sheri Mortimer
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 | Stout STOUT is a group of five accomplished musicians who perform American traditional tunes and songs. They also have an English and Irish repertoire and have written and perform original work. STOUT emphasizes the community and historical connections of all the music they perform. STOUT was founded in 1974 and appears at various venues in the United States as well as in Great Britain. STOUT performs frequently for the National Parks Service. STOUT has also received several arts grants to perform their music at various locations in Staten Island, New York and Long Island, New York. STOUT has recorded five albums and CD's, the latest of which is entitled "Don't You Wish You'd Been There?" which includes ten original songs written by STOUT members as well as fifteen traditional songs. |
Stuart Frank & Mary Malloy Massachustts - Stuart began the music program at Mystic Seaport in 1975 and founded the Sea Music Festival 30 years ago.
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| Talitha MacKenzie A former employee at Mystic Seaport and South Street Seaport museums, worked as deckhand and shanty-singer under sail on square-rigged ships "Unicorn" and "Young America". After recording her first solo album, Shantyman!, she moved to Edinburgh, where she recorded the Gaelic albums Mouth Music, Sòlas and Spiorad. Her repertoire includes shanties and dance songs from all over the world and her latest album, Indian Summer, explores the connection between Celtic and Native-American cultures. She currently lectures at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama, in Glasgow.
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 | Les Bouthilliers Best known for their trio Serre L'Écoute, with whom they have recorded songs from Québec and Brittany on the albums Chansons des bords du St-Laurent, Fortunes et Perditions and Buveurs Philosophes. Robert, a collector and ethnologist, has gathered much of their repertoire on fieldwork expeditions in Québec, Acadia and France. His daughter, Gabrielle, is not only an accomplished singer in many languages but also plays piano/ accordion and performs with the World Music group Strada. Together their voices are powerful and expressive -- they will speak straight to the heart no matter what the language. |
 | The Ancient Mariners The Ancient Mariners, Connecticut, Fife & Drum Corps, was founded July 4, 1959 by Roy Watrous, a Guilford native with a passion for the sea, who recognized the possibilities of forming a musical group with a nautical theme. With the ring of the fife & drum in his ear, and the haunting melodies of the chanties from the days of the square rigger, his vision of the Ancient Mariners became a reality. <Read more...> |
 | The Clancy Legacy Aoife Clancy, Robbie O'Connell and Donal Clancy, all first cousins, first performed together at a workshop called "The Clancy Legacy" during the New York Irish Arts Week 2006. They immediately began to receive offers to do other concerts together and decided to keep the name The Clancy Legacy. They are currently putting the finishing touches to their first CD together for release in the fall of 2009. |
 | Walter Askew Walter's love of history and study of oral traditions led him to work at several museums including San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, where he sailed the Hawaiian Chieftain (a 105ft topsail ketch), and the scow schooner Alma (a craft unique to the San Francisco Bay) and crewed on Delaware's state ship the Kalmar Nyckel. A regular performer at San Francisco's Festival of the Sea with his band Salty Walt and the Rattlin' Ratlines, he has completed his second tour of Europe playing at festivals and folk clubs: England (Scarborough.s Seafest), The Netherlands (Scheepvaart Museum), and Germany (Festival Maritim). He has shared the stage with acts such as Lou Killen, Tom Lewis, The Johnson Girls, Holdstock & Macleod, Hughie Jones, Richard Grainger, Maree De Paradis, and many others. At home in San Francisco he performs regularly and hosts a monthly session at Edinburgh Castle Pub, where he works to maintain the authentic voice of the traditions he represents while making this music accessible to a new generation. |
Come for a night concert, come for the day, or come for the weekend, no matter how much time you have you don't want to miss the sights and sounds of the 30th annual Sea Music Festival at Mystic Seaport! Mark your calendar June 11-14, 2009.