'way, 'way, 'way

Sea shanties everywhere, sea shanties like crazy. This was Festival Maritim, just outside Bremen, Germany, where the only two bands that weren't traditional sea-shanty-bands were the two bands I was with, The Cedar and Pollyanna. We had been brought in as an experiment, to see if this water-logged-and-loving-it festival would tolerate non-nautical musical offerings.

Our vehicle was too packed as we set off from Bath to fit the accordion in. A bane or a blessing, turns out we were the only band there without one. It was that kind of festival. There was a lot of "What do you do with a drunken sailor?" And a collective fashion statement by both performers and audience (including children, babies, dogs...) like this:

The late-night backstage parties sounded like this (recorded with my phone...so, sorry about the boomy-fuzziness):


And, for the grande finale, on the final night of the festival, Sunday night, allll the bands, choirs, shantyists, got up on the main stage and waved sparklers at alllll the audience members who also had and waved sparklers and sang together while a giant multi-mast ghost-ship-type-ship sailed past behind them. We sang this: (Ditto re: phone)


And the ship (in the mid-distance) looked like this):