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Maritime Musings – July 2010
After a flurry of activity on Independence Day weekend, maritime music seems to take a vacation in mid-July. Pint & Dale are off to Michigan, and Hank Cramer is following the cowboy trail east of the mountains. It’s a good time to polish up your song and get it entered in the Songwriting Contest for the Port Gamble Maritime Music Festival. Towards the end of July, we will hear from The Whateverly Brothers and The Shifty Sailors. And there’s some great events coming up in August.
Both monthly chantey sings meet on special dates this month.
Maritime Music at the Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival
  On July 3 and 4, the Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival in Seattle will have music all day from 11 am to 6 pm, with sound by Chris Glanister. Some maritime music will be included, and it looks like a great selection. William Pint & Felicia Dale will be playing on Saturday, July 3, at 5:00 pm. The lineup on Sunday, July 4, includes Watch the Sky! at 11:00 am, Allan Hirsch at noon, Cannery Row at 1:00 pm, and The Whateverly Brothers at 1:30 pm. The festival, put on by The Center for Wooden Boats, will be at Lake Union Park, 860 Terry Ave N, Seattle.
Cannery Row is a new group to this event.  They come from Guemes Island, near Anacortes, and recorded a song for the Northwest Tugboat Tales CD. One of the members, Tim Wittman, is a talented songwriter, and the group will perform several of his new maritime songs.
The other musicians are more familiar around Seattle. Pint & Dale are a world-class maritime duo that live right here on Lake Union. Watch The Sky is a Celtic and maritime trio that specialize in outstanding and unusual arrangements. Allan Hirsch is an expert at entertaining children of all ages. The Whateverly Brothers are always good for a song, a laugh, and some tight harmonies.
In addition to all-day music, the Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival will have tours of visiting vessels, free public boat rides, activities for kids, maritime demonstrations, and a Quick & Daring Boat Race of improvised vessels quickly assembled by contestants. Historic ships like the 1889 tugboat Arthur Foss will be open for walk-on tours. And it’s all free (donations accepted.)
Northwest Seaport Chantey Sing Aboard Adventuress with Broadside
On Friday, July 2, the night before the Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival, Broadside will lead the Northwest Seaport Chantey Sing on board the 1913 schooner Adventuress, docked at Lake Union Park. This all-female group, consisting of Trapper Graves-Lalor, Carol Mesford, and Felicia Dale, may be joined by their men’s auxiliary, The Handsome Cabin Boys (Steve Lalor, Kent Mesford, and William Pint). Admission is free! (Note: This is a special date to coincide with the Wooden Boat Festival. It’s the first Friday, not the second Friday, this month.)
Budd Bay Shanty Sing Meets on a Special Date
The Budd Bay Shanty Sing in Olympia will be on a special date, July 11, because of the July 4 holiday. The sing will meet at the summer location, Boston Harbor Marina, from 7 - 9 pm. Call 866-4296 for information. In August the sing returns to the usual first Sunday date, which will be August 1. This is another free event!
The Whateverly Brothers
The Whateverly Brothers will be appearing at the Kingston Farmer's Market on Saturday, July 24 from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. The next day, Sunday, July 25, they will play at History House in Seattle from 2:00 to 4:00 pm (admission free). On July 31, you can see them at the Saturday Open-Air Market on Getchell (just south of Granite Falls) from 11:30 am to 3:30 pm. Kudos to Matthew Moeller for keeping this excellent trio booked.
The Shifty Sailors
The Shifty Sailors will be back from Prague, and playing on Saturday, July 24, at the Loganberry Festival, Greenbank Farm on Whidbey Island at 1:00 pm. The next Saturday, July 31, they will appear at Deception Pass State Park at 7:00 pm.
Watch the Sky!
Watch the Sky! will be appearing at Rhapsody in Bloom Florist and Coffeehouse in Tacoma on Wednesday, July 21 from 7-9 pm.
Deadline for Songwriting Contest is July 15
July 15 is the deadline for entries to the 2nd Annual Bob Kotta Memorial Songwriting Contest. The theme this year is tugboats. Prizes will be awarded at The Port Gamble Maritime Music Festival. See the web site to find out how to submit your entry.
Coming in August – The Port Gamble Maritime Music Festival
 The 5th annual Port Gamble Maritime Music Festival has announced its lineup: Mariide, Pint & Dale, Watch the Sky! and the Shifty Sailors. Announcements, jokes, and some semblance of order will be rendered by Spanaway Bay, the disorderly duo from the great port city of Spanaway. You can hear an entire afternoon of free music, from noon to5:00 pm, on Saturday, August 15.
Coming in August: CD Release Party for Northwest Tugboat Tales
The date for the CD release party for Northwest Tugboat Tales has been set for Sunday, August 29, from 3:00 to 5:00 pm, aboard the historic tugboat Arthur Foss. You will be able to meet some of the performers and hear some of the songs performed live.
Some Questions About Songwriting Contests and Comic Songs
Time for some maritime musing. With summer bringing on a number of songwriting contests – there’s one at the Tumbleweed Music Festival as well – it brings to mind one of my pet peeves. Why is it that the winning songs in any competition are almost always comic material? Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying those songs didn’t deserve to win. And I certainly don’t envy the judges their difficult job of sorting out the entries. But it seems to me that non-comic songs have more staying power.
Songwriting contests are not the only places this happens. Dan Quinn told me he has given up trying to write anything serious for fisher poet competitions, because the judges almost always choose comic stories. With all the dramatic or tragic tales that can be told about the sea, the contest is usually won by the cleverest jokes.
Why does this happen? I think it’s because comic songs make a bigger initial impact. Judges and audiences alike love them. But while I love a comic song as much as the next person, I get tired of them after awhile, as the jokes wear thin.
For me, a comic song goes through a cycle. The first time I hear the song, I am totally captivated by the clever wording, and can’t wait to hear it again. I totally enjoy listening to it several times. Then, my enjoyment tapers off. After a while, I mentally cringe when the song starts up, because the jokes have become so old. Then, after a long while, the song becomes just part of the wallpaper of my life, and I can enjoy it as something to sing along to because I know the chorus. (Naturally, I will never reveal to you what point your song has reached in this mental progression!)
Some of the great seafaring songs – whether they be of tragedy or adventure, of loss or victory – never seem to lose their flavor and grow stale.
The solution? I don’t really have one. Comic songs should not be put in a separate category, because if a song is good, it deserves to win. There isn’t time in a contest for the judges to live with a song to see if it wears well. We can only encourage songwriters to keep writing about topics that move them, and not to be discouraged if the songs are not contest winners. At the end of the day, the best songs will endure, if they touch something inside us, if they illuminate or expand our lives, if they tell a good story. If they make us laugh. Or cry. Or sing.
Alice Winship has been promoting maritime music events as an unpaid volunteer for various non-profit organizations, and generally advocating the cause of Northwest nautical music and maritime preservation, since 1996. She is the president of Maritime Folknet, a new non-profit organization devoted to encouraging maritime culture, especially music.
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