For better or worse, I have been a professional entertainer for the last 30 years. I never set out to be one. Heck, I never even sang in high school or picked up a stringed instrument until I was in college. But all the stars fell into place and voila! – I’ve been playing and singing for three decades now.
In the old days we did some pretty big gigs. We opened for The Kingsmen, The Sons of the Beach and kiddy entertainer Tim Noah. In fact, the kids booed him off the stage, wanting us to come back and entertain them. Take that Tim. We were pulling down $400 a night regularly, which is what the bands here in Florida get on a good night now. We were making this 30 years ago, so I think we were bigger than we really realized.
We were the only pirate band in the Northwest, for all I know, the entire country at the time. Now they are a dime a dozen. I have seen my share of them. Some are better than we are now, some a lot worse. Often the ones that are worse are more well known because they market their arses off and we never have.
But this isn’t about how good we are or were or a comparison between bands. Rather, it’s about the sham of so called “pirate music” and how everyone says they are playing period music, but really aren’t.
We make no such pretense. We play updated versions of songs of the sea. It can be based on a traditional song, such as Rolling Down to Old Maui, or it can be a more modern tune influenced by the sea, such as Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl).
There is a simple reason for this. Well, a couple of reasons, actually. First, the songs we think of as being period to the Golden Age of Piracy are mostly whaling songs. They came about during the GAoW (Golden Age of Whaling), not GAoP. Second, the traditional versions of these songs are about as exciting to listen to as watching a whale be harpooned.
And yet, when we go to entertain at a festival, it is our group that is looked down upon because we freely admit that almost all the songs performed at the festival are indeed not period and didn’t exist during pirate times. As such, if we’re going to do them, why not make them more exciting and entertaining? If the audience tunes you out because the song is dull, what’s the point of doing a song in the first place>
I only have to point to two groups — Pint and Dale and Great Big Sea — as examples of this. They do amazing versions of period songs. Real toe tappers, some of them, such as Great Big Sea’s version of Captain Kidd. I have seen a couple thousand people jump to their feet and scream the lyrics in unison. You will never see this happen at a pirate festival.
I personally enjoy going to these events and doing our renditions of period songs. The crowd loves them. The died in the wool re-enactors hate them. They ask if we know how to play “Rolling Down to Old Maui” and we say sure. They pull out their concertinas (which weren’t invented until 1829 by the way – more than a hundred years after GAoP) and get ready to join in. We hit the first note and take off with our uptempo take. They sit aghast, then get a bit smarmy. They cop an attitude because we’re not doing it period style. Well, guys, you’re not playing an instrument that is period either, so get over it.
I find this all a bit amusing, of course. We don’t play period instruments. We don’t pretend to. The modern guitar wasn’t around in pirate days, neither was the tenor guitar, which was developed in the 1920s so tenor banjo players could still find employment in bands that no longer needed a banjo sound.
The only one who plays a period instrument in our band these days is Angelina, who has a fiddle.
As for period songs, if you took away all the “period” songs that were actually work songs from the whaling days, you could count them on one hand. And men of the sea rarely if ever sang work songs in the bars around town. Instead, they sang salty songs about women or the popular tunes of the time, just like we do at karaoke. Have you ever heard someone sing the Wal-Mart song everyone at Wal-Mart sings in the morning in a bar? It’s a damned work song. No one wants to hear about work when they’re drinking.
I’ve learned a thing or two about entertaining over the years. You don’t choose material that is entertaining to you. You choose music that the audience will find entertaining. If you aren’t playing to the audience you may has well be over in a corner doing the nasty with your squeezebox. In fact, that may be more entertaining than playing music that the audience doesn’t really enjoy.
I’ve seen this same problem with street musicians. The ones who do their own thing have nearly empty guitar cases. Those that engage the audience and do music they like make a decent living.
I think the entertainers in the pirate world could take a page from them. After 30 years of playing in venues large and small, I can read an audience like a book. If I start to lose them I can switch it up on the fly. We have held an audience for five hours straight, playing everything from nautically-inspired tunes to old time sing alongs. We have refined the list over the years, dumping songs that didn’t work and adding new ones. We don’t limit ourselves to one type of music because it can get boring.
That lesson I learned from my brothers’ band oh, so many years ago. They wanted to do nothing but novelty songs, things like Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport. The novelty quickly wore off. Perhaps the so called pirate bands could learn from them as well. The novelty wears off very quickly.
Out on the Treasure Coast, learning some new Gordon Lightfoot – a real pirate,
– Robb