Bob Webb - Sea Shanties, Cape Horn

October 2008

Great news is in! The Board of Directors of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu voted at the 11th hour to transfer ownership of the four-masted ship Falls of Clyde to a non-profit organization that intends to save her from being scuttled at a dive site. This is likely the last four-masted, full-rigged ship in a restorable state, and the only surviving example of a sailing oil tanker (the ship was built in Scotland for general merchandise, and later converted to carry oil from California).

Now the hard work begins. The Friends of the Falls of Clyde will be looking for financial support and for volunteer assistance to get the ship rebuilt. We all know by now that President Bush's theory of "trickle down" from above hasn't worked, and that means that the dollars and pennies we "middle class" folks can scrabble together are very much needed by the ship. I am working to find out how donations may be directed to the new organization: stay tuned!

Breaking news: the Maritime Heritage Network has just selected From Salthouse Dock as its featured CD at their website. Check them out: http://www.maritimeheritage.net

Eagle's Whistle Music has released Waiting for Nancy: Old-time Country Duets, which features the hammered dulcimer and fretless "banjer" artistry of Curt Bouterse, my long-time musical partner in San Diego, California. http://home.earthlink.net/~curt_bouterse/ Curt and I play a variety of gourd banjers, minstrel banjars and conventional banjos, as well as dulcimer, autoharp, guitar, khaen (a Thai bamboo mouth-organ) and Jew's Harp. The track list includes many old-time favorites, like "Mississippi Sawyers" and "Sweet Sunny South," a sea song: "A Long Time Ago," and some rarely-heard material from our individual repertoires. I think it's a unique album, unlike anything else on the market. You can order it right here, by visiting the Recordings page.

You'll also find our new release of my 1995 sea-shanty album From Salthouse Dock, featuring Stormalong John and "Shanty Jack" of the U.K. I'm happy to say that the newly-remastered CD is much improved over the original 1995 cassette release, and includes three previously unreleased shanties from the Liverpool session. If you've heard, or own the cassette, this new CD is so much cleaner and clearer sounding, I'm astonished. A tip of the cap to Scott Elson at Acadia Recording Company in Portland, Maine www.acadiarecording.com for making that happen.

I think you will enjoy hearing the songs of the shantyman presented as they might have been heard aboard square-rigged merchant sailing vessels of the 19th Century. With the great Liverpool shanty group Stormalong John, and the legendary "Shanty Jack" of Hull as the "crew," we sail through 19 of the most famous (and infamous) shipboard work-songs and off-duty "main-hatch songs" from the Days of Sail. And there are three contemporary songs of the sea, including two in the old style written by Yours Truly.

Sing Out! Magazine has hailed From Salthouse Dock as one of the best shanty albums performed in traditional style, that is, close to what shantying sounded like in the 1800s. As an "added bonus," the new CD features three tracks that were not included on the cassette. Visit our Recordings page for details.

Many of you have asked if I planned to make my albums available as MP3 files on the Internet. I'm happy to say that we have signed a contract with Digstation.com to carry Full Circle: The Solo Banjo Sessions. Now, you can immediately download your favorite tracks simply by going to http://www.digstation.com/AlbumDetails.aspx?albumid=ALB000005005 and follow Digstation's easy pathway. You can hear portions of each track, download the ones you can't live without; or you can download the entire album for less than the cost of the CD. It's a great way to get banjo music on your iPod or other take-it-with-you audio devices!

As I've mentioned before, there's a lot of good news about my new banjo CD Full Circle: The Solo Banjo Sessions. My old friend Mary McCaslin has paid me a fine compliment, which you can read on the cdBaby.com page that is linked to my new album. And Monika White has written a wonderful review in the Los Angeles folk-music magazine FolkWorks, www.folkworks.org. Also, for as long as it’s on their ever-changing website, the Bath-Brunswick (Maine) Times Record newspaper has done a fine feature on banjos and my playing, with an internet slide-show of several banjos I used on the CD: check out http://www.timesrecord.com/website/archives.nsf/56606056e44e37508525696f00737257/8525696e00630dfe0525732b00730668?OpenDocument to find the article "Banjo Man," written by Troy Bennett, who is himself a "banjo man."

Full Circle and all of my CDs can be purchased right here by clicking on the "Recordings" tab. If you prefer to buy CDs through cdBaby, my CDs are available at their website, http://cdbaby.com/found?allsearch=bob+Webb&submit=search.

Right here where you are now, there's a new page devoted to the banjo and its history as America's "own" musical instrument. The Sea Shanties and Cape Horn pages are devoted to the lives of seamen who crewed the great merchant sailing ships of the 19th Century. You can learn about the shanties sung by sailors to coordinate the heavy manual labor on deck, and the "main-hatch songs" that helped to pass their off-duty time on long voyages across the Seven Seas. There are other arcane facts about seafaring, too. For example, did you know that the famous Rhode Island Red chicken came to be after a rooster from Asia was brought to New England aboard a sailing ship?

Take a trip south’ard to Cape Horn, the place of hoodoo and fear for generations of deepwater sailors bound between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. And you can obtain CDs of shanties and sea songs and old-time fiddle and banjo tunes to enjoy at your own pursuits, whether they be gardening, house painting, open-road journeys, or even sailing to "Cape Stiff!"