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The Festival features maritime and ethnic music that relates to the commercial fishing industry.
Send press packet and sample recording to:
Working Waterfront Festival
c/o CEDC
PO Box 6553
New Bedford, MA 02742-6553.
This year, the Working Waterfront Festival welcomes several new participants, brought to the festival through the New Bedford Whaling Museum's participation in a program called ECHO. ECHO (Education through Cultural and Historical Organizations) is a federally funded project, directed by the Department of Education that connects cultures in Massachusetts, Alaska, Hawaii and Mississippi. Many of these connections were created by the whaling industry in the 1800s. Sharing the Harvest brings to New Bedford two traditional subsistence whalers and hunters from Barrow, Alaska (Joe and Nancy Leavitt), and two subsistence farmer/fisherfolk from Choctaw, Mississippi (Pearlie Thomas and Trudy Jimmy) to share their stories of harvest, their traditions of bead and clothing making and their tales of survival. Jonathan Perry, Senior Tribal Cultural Resource Monitor for the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head will demonstrate traditional Wampanoag maritime skills.
Early in 2006 Everett Brown, Mary Audette and Tim Reilly formed Barnacle, a high energy Celtic/nautical/folk group. Now joined by Jon Cannon, they have appeared throughout New England at venues such as Rhode Island School of Design Museum; Mystic Seaport Sea Music Festival in 2007, 2008, and 2009; Stone Soup Coffeehouse, and at the Windjammer Festival in Camden, Maine. They have been nominated as one of Motif Magazine's top new acts of 2009. The group consists of flautist Mary Audette, multi-instrumentalist Everett Brown, fiddler Jon Cannon (also of Sharks Come CruisinÕ) and percussionist/bones player, Tim Reilly.
Jon Campbell owned a workboat before he owned a car. In those days bay scallops, clams, and quahogs, flounder and lobsters were abundant in the coastal ponds and Narragansett Bay. Regulations were few and the commercial fisheries were still represented by independent men in wooden Eastern Rigs.
For the past 25 years Jon has been writing and performing music based on the wide range of experience available to those people living in coastal regions, the tourists, the cuisine, the fisheries, cranky Yankees and an assortment of humorous and poignant characters.
Jon has been a recognized Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Folk Artist since 1982, and he has been involved in a large number of recording projects both as performer and producer. He is presently retired from a 25 year career in the motion picture industry, and yes he did work on the Perfect Storm, in addition to many more major releases.
To fill in the blanks, Jon's musical activities in the last year have ranged from Camden Maine to Kodiak Alaska.
Dave grew up in Alaska, in several Aleutian villages, with Kodiak being home town. He's been a lifelong fisherman, earning a full share on a Kodiak seiner by the time he was twelve and purchasing his first boat soon after. He skippered his first Bering Sea King crabber at 23, the youngest Bering Sea king crab skipper, at that time. He has trolled the west coast for salmon and Albacore, otter trawled for bottom fish, and fished Alaska for Black Cod and Halibut, King Crab, Tanner and Dungeness Crab. He currently fishes salmon out of Kodiak AK, and is gearing up for crab.
Dave started writing poetry in the late 70's "long before I heard anyone else write anything about commercial fishing." He's been published in numerous trade papers, magazines and newspapers and has a byline in a quarterly, the Columbia River Gillnetter. He was featured in the documentary Fisherpoets and on Good Morning America. A regular at the Astoria Fisherpoet's Gathering, Dave has also performed in Elko Nevada at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering and at events from fish fries to a sculpture dedication for the world renowned artist Mia Lin.
The Good Old Plough is a singing group specializing in the songs of the New Hampshire hill farm. Their material ranges from hymns and fuguing tunes written in the eastern frontier of the late 1700's-- to the triumphant somgs of the hey-day of upland farming in the decades before the Civil War--and then to the poignant Grange songs of the late 19th and early 20th century as the farm life largely passed from the New England scene.
Their program chronicles the rise and fall of the upland New England farm from a variety of source materials--old hymnals, early newspapers, sheet music, and Grange songbooks, among others. Listeners have the opportunity to gain a deep understanding of the richness and depth of our farm heritage.
Singers Tom Curren, Fred Ogmundsson, and Donald Towle have presented their musical program to hundreds of audiences across New England over the past 23 years, singing at historical societies, church gatherings, schools, fairs, and Old Home Days throughout the region. In addition, the group has made featured appearances at Canterbury Shaker Village, Musterfield Farm, the New Hampshire Farm Museum, and the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. The Good Old Plough was the subject of an essay on public television's "New Hampshire Crossroads" and appeared on the nationally televised program "Good Morning America" in 1992.
Grupo Fuerza Quichelence took the local Mayan community by storm when they formed a band five years ago. The band includes Alberto Rodrigues, Humberto Chach and Ubaldo Chach on keyboards, Felipe Dubon and Ramon Ramos on vocals, Andres Lopez on drums, Domingo Chach on percussion and dancer Jesus Riz.
Originally from El Quiche in Guatemala where they worked as farmers, many of the musicians have worked in New Bedford's fishing industry. Their repertoire includes many popular styles of Latin music including cumbia, corridos and kebradita. Grupo Fuerza Quichelence plays regularly at area clubs and has been featured at the Annual Mayan Festival.
April Grant has been performing songs and stories since the age of five, when she told her first traditional tale to a campfire group at Nickerson State Park. She is currently a student at UMass Amherst, pursuing a history major. Her musical interests include traditional ballads, British music-hall songs, songs of the Civil War and American Revolution, and contemporary parodies. One of her own songs, The Lady of Northampton, is featured on her CD of the same title. She has performed songs and stories at the New England Folk Festival in Massachusetts, the NOMAD Festival in Connecticut, and the Portsmouth Maritime Music Festival in New Hampshire. As well as performing with her mother, Sue, she loves to go kayaking and to dig up tidbits of New England history.
Sue Grant has been singing in public since her first summer at Girl Scout camp. Her career as a biologist includes two summers working for the Systematics-Ecology Program at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, and over thirty years teaching in the Biology Department at Holyoke Community College. Her fascination with marine life led to her making many soft fabric sculptures of sea creatures to use in classroom teaching. Since retiring in 2005, she has poured her creative energies into writing new songs about sea life to well-loved tunes. Sue and April's CD, Songs of the Sea Creatures, includes original songs about creatures such as starfish, barnacles and even the man-o'-war, as well as traditional ballads of the dangerous life of the whalers. Married to Don Grant, Sue enjoys running, camping, and going to folk music festivals with him and April.
The Iron River Singers are a well known northern style native singing group. The members are made up of a number of native nations including Chippewa, Wampanoag, and Abenaki. The original members started singing together when they were between 11 and 13 years old and have now performed around the country for over 20 years. The Iron River Singers have won many contests across the nation as well as internationally. Look for their up coming record release in 2010.
Formed in 1997, The Johnson Girls are the leading all-woman maritime song group in the world. Sea chanteys and songs, as the first real "world music", captured their imagination. Just as sailors who were heavily influenced by the songs they heard while traveling the world over, each of the Johnson Girls brings a special style to the ensemble. Their extensive repertoire of both traditional and contemporary material includes sea chanteys and work songs of other traditions, African-American, Canadian, Caribbean, Irish, French, Italian as well as songs from the inland waterways and fisheries. Widely acclaimed for their powerhouse performances of rousing work songs, sensitive renderings of haunting ballads and laments, and hair-raising harmonies, The Johnson Girls dazzle audiences wherever they perform.
They have headlined at Portugal's Festival of Ports in Lisbon; Britain's Sidmouth International Festival, Warwick Folk Festival, and Broadstairs Folk Week; and New England's Mystic Seaport Sea Music Festival. In 2005 they were featured at La Fete Des Chants de Marins in Quebec, the Philadelphia Folk Festival, San Francisco Maritime Museum's Sea Music Festival, and the Strontrace Shanty Festival in the Netherlands.
Jim McGrath has been performing for over 30 years. His repertoire includes original songs as well as sea chanteys, Irish and British Isles Ballads and American traditional and contemporary songs which he has performed on ships and in concert halls and saloons in Ireland, Germany and across the Eastern seaboard. In 1972, Jim crewed on the Brigantine Black Pearl where he served as the official "chantey man" as part of Operation Sail, one of the first international sail training events. He also worked briefly on a stern trawler, an experience which he says, "Gave me great respect for the folks who make their living in the commercial fishing business!" Often joined by his band the Reprobates, Jim recently released his second solo CD with Wepecket Island Records. The CD which is entitled Red, Right Returning features North American nautical songs, seven original and six traditional.
Among authentic cowboy poets active today Joel Nelson is considered by his peers, working cowboys, and the ranching community to be one of the best. Joel's repertoire of poems includes many of the traditional classics of the cowboy poetry genre, and he is an outstanding composer of contemporary cowboy verse in the classic style. He is an extraordinary reciter, known for delivering poems in a straightforward and dignified manner. Whether he is "telling" his poems in an auditorium or a bunkhouse, his audiences are transfixed by the power of his delivery, knowing that here is a man who truly knows whereof he speaks. In addition to being highly respected for his own artistry Joel has been very active in the cowboy culture "revival". He helped found the Alpine Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering in 1986, the second oldest such event after the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, and has been supportive of other such events throughout the West. He has been a generous and modest mentor to numerous young poets and horsemen. Unlike others involved in the cowboy poetry revival of the mid-1980s, Joel has not given up his cowboy life to become a "professional" entertainer, but has chosen to continue living on ranches and working as a highly respected horse trainer and cowboy. He and his wife Sylvia work side-by-side horseback operating the 24,000 acre Anchor Ranch near Alpine where they raise Corriente cattle. Joel is the personification of "the real deal." (and the true definition of a cowboy). Joel's recitation of cowboy poetry classics and his original poetry can be heard on his CD, "The Breaker in the Pen," the only cowboy poetry recording ever nominated for a Grammy Award. Joel is one of eleven people to receive a 2009 National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The award honors America folk artists for their contributions to our national cultural mosaic.
Hosted and organized by the Schooner Ernestina, this 43-member chorus was created in 2001, and is made up of some of the Ernestina's most vocal volunteers. The repertoire includes a variety of chanteys and songs that reflect the rich maritime heritage of New Bedford, and the region. Sea Chanteys were traditionally sung as work songs on board sailing ships both as a way to pass the time and as a means of helping establish a rhythm for various types of work aboard the ship.
As a sampler of musical traditions connected to New Bedford Harbor and the New England seafarer, their performances feature the chanteys of the Yankee sailor, along with the ballads and ditties of global mariners and coastwise fisherfolk in North America, the Cape Verde Islands, and the British Isles.
Captain Bob Quinn, lobsterman, mailboat operator and storyteller, has been steeped in the lore of coastal Maine since he was a child. Quinn is a fifth generation descendant of Samuel Quinn, Jr. of Eagle Island in East Penobscot Bay. His father, Erland "Cappy" Quinn, worked in the boatyards of Camden and fished out of that harbor, developing a reputation as a local historian. Cappy's brother, Carl "Bonney" Quinn, worked with him, and was known up and down the coast as a musician and raconteur who wrote nautical poems with a humorous bent.
Bob Quinn grew up lobstering and fishing with his father and uncle, learning seamanship aboard the herring pumper Beryl, and immersing himself in the Maine Island lore and local legends he learned from residents of the innumerable coves along the coast. He also absorbed the poems of his Uncle Bonney, and it is his recitations of these poems, along with his colorful commentary, for which he is best known. Bob eventually moved to Eagle Island and assumed the caretaking of the family homestead. He has recorded two dozen of his uncle's poems, and spends many evenings regaling neighbors and guests at the farmhouse with Uncle Bonney's poems and his own salty stories.
One Saturday in November of 2002, in a three family tenement on Jewett Street in Providence, RI, I heard the song Spanish Ladies for the first time while watching the film "Jaws" on television. At that moment, I discovered a musical history that was a genuine to New England—something I had been in search of for years.
In December of 2003 Seth Forden joined in on bass guitar and vocal harmony. In the fall of 2004, Ed Wenzl came aboard as drummer. Paul Dube began playing accordion in 2006 shortly before we recorded "Live at Jake's" at Jake's Bar and Grill on Richmond Street in Providence, RI. In late summer of 2007, Eric Wohgemuth joined in on banjo and Jonathan Cannon on fiddle. In 2008 we released Four Years Before the Mast, our first studio recording.
The mission of Sharks Come Cruisin is to shed light on these forgotten songs, to remind us of a day when music and work went hand and hand, and most importantly, to bring people together to holler, shout, and sing along to songs of drinking and sinking.
The Souls of the Sea Band sings about the lives and experiences of the fishermen of the North Atlantic. The original, musically diverse songs are unique interpretations of life around the working harbor. The group of nationally acclaimed musicians, singers and songwriters are based in America's oldest seaport, Gloucester Massachusetts, and perform throughout the Northeast.
The trio consists of guitarist and lead singer Allen Estes, a long time performer and former songwriter for the Merit Music Corp in Nashville, TN; former Stompers lead guitarist, Sal Baglio, who has opened for The Beach Boys; and fiddle player Matt Leavenworth, whose virtuosity is legend throughout the New England states. Frank Tedesco writes the lyrics.
Three Cats and a Dog is a trio of musicians (and a sheepdog in spirit) who appear regularly around Cape Cod and Eastern Massachusetts. They perform a lively and eclectic mix of Celtic, American and Canadian fiddle tunes; bluegrass, traditional country songs (especially those by Hank Williams); as well as some swing, blues, jazz, and acoustic old time music. The band consists of Richard Gregory-Allen on fiddle, mandola, viola and backup vocals; Jim Shaw on guitar, banjo, dobro, soprano saxophone and harmony vocals; and John Alden on upright bass, button accordion, guitar and lead vocals.
Three Cats and A Dog is happy to play almost anywhere! They regularly play for weddings and private parties, for concerts, festivals and contradances, and in restaurants and taverns. And while as a trio they are a popular high-energy contradance band, they are also a complete "contradance kit." John is a wonderful dance caller, who can interest advanced dancers, but he really specializes in getting beginners and "non-dancers" involved. He teaches and calls an interesting variety of New England contra dances, square dances, mixers and even silly party dances.
Ana Vinagre is one of the area's best known, and most respected Fadistas. Born in Portugal, she immigrated to New Bedford as a young woman with her husband Jose. Both had been members of folkloric dance and music ensembles and they have continued to perform at area Portuguese restaurants, community events, and in festivals and concerts around the nation. They take great pride in their culture and enjoy teaching American audiences about the tradition of Fado music, a genre that developed in the port city of Lisbon and was performed at waterfront clubs and bars frequented by sailors and seamen.