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Gordon Bok

Gordon Bok grew up around the boatyards of Camden, Maine. In his early years, he worked on a variety of vessels, from passenger schooners to yachts, learning tunes, sea songs, stories, legends and ballads from the people he worked with. Where he couldn’t find songs that matched his experiences or needs, he began to write his own, and has kept up a lively flow of poems, songs, stories, choral and instrumental works. Gordon has performed extensively in the US, and in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. He has appeared on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, and his music has been used in a number of films. His legacy includes over thirty recordings featuring his own compositions and folk tunes from around the world. His extensive repertoire provides a rich well to draw upon for his concerts; he has never sung the same solo concert twice.

www.gordonbok.com

Alison Lee Freeman

Alison Lee Freeman is a 21st century chantey singer with an extraordinary voice easily heard over gale force winds. In performance the vivacious balladeer sings a cappella or accompanies herself on guitar. Freeman performs regularly in Maine, Massachusetts, and Newfoundland at a variety of diverse venues such as The Maine Maritime Museum, festivals, coffeehouses, restaurants, clubs, and assisted living facilities.
She mixes traditional songs of the sea with newly renovated folk songs. Join in on the chorus for a journey back in time and learn history the old fashioned way through entertaining songs and stories. After too long an absence, we welcome Alison back for her third PMFF appearance.

www.sparloft.com

Great Bay Sailor w/ Jim Prendergast

Descendents of the wildly vocal High Pukka Flying Squad, Great Bay Sailor embarks upon its fifth year as a Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival act. The quartet is composed of singers Bruce MacIntyre, Steve Carrigan, and Mike Blair, along with box player Paul Semprini and noted strings man Jim Prendergast. Guitar, bodhran and Irish whistle are also brought into their shows. With an extensive repertoire of maritime, Irish/Scottish and ol’ timey songs, the lads continue to bring their high-energy strings and harmonies to Festival audiences. The singers can be found many a Friday night at the legendary Press Room trad sessions, and collectively, have decades of experience singing with innumerable other groups. Take in the wash — here they come!

Tom Hall and Linn Schulz

New Hampshire native Tom Hall has been collecting, researching, and singing folk songs for over 40 years. Drawing deep from the vast well of English, Scottish and Irish songs, he has pulled more than a few pails of nautical songs from these and other lands. His body of song includes shanty work songs and foc’sle ballads sung by sailors to while away their few leisure hours. Tom is the chief organizer behind the Great Bay Company, and for more than two decades, has been the host of the Press Room’s Friday evening Anglo-Celtic traditional music session.

Linn Schulz has been performing with Tom for 20 years. Linn, originally from the Midwest, comes from a musical family, and grew up with an eclectic mix of tunes and songs. In the mid 80s, she began to devote herself more seriously to traditional songs and ballads. With Tom, Linn forms part of the core of the Press Room trad sessions every Friday night. Tom and Linn have worked with the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival since its inception, as volunteers, performers, and now producers of the fest.

Emery Hutchins

Over the centuries, immigrants from the British Isles have come to the Americas bringing with them their musical styles and tastes as well as their instruments. Emery Hutchins uses the concertina, bodhran, guitar, and banjo to play traditional tunes and songs from Ireland, the mountains and the sea. He performs American country music in the way it was conceived in the early twentieth century and demonstrates how these tunes are often derived directly from the songs of the Irish but influenced by other cultural and ethnic groups to create an original American sound. Emery was a member of the popular Angel Band (NH), currently tours with Two Old Friends, and has been part of the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival family since 2001.

www.twooldfriends.com

Charlie Ipcar was born and raised in mid-coast Maine. Accompanying himself on 5-string banjo or Anglo concertina, he has performed solo at festivals, folk clubs, coffee houses and house concerts in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. Since the early 1990s, he has also performed sea music with his group Roll & Go. In 2008, Charlie was a featured performer and workshop leader at the Mystic Sea Music Festival. A major project that Charlie has helped complete is an on-line anthology of all the known published works of the early 20th century British poet Cicely Fox Smith. In 2010, he published a songbook titled Sea Songs of Cicely Fox Smith, primarily featuring his own arrangements of Smith’s nautical poems for singing. Charlie has recorded four solo CDs and three more with Roll & Go. His most recent CDs are 2009’s Sailortown Days and 2010’s Look Out!

www.charlieipcar.com; www.rollandgoseasongs.com

Knockabout

Ballads, chanteys and songs of the sea are the mainstay of Knockabout. Colin de la Barre, Barry O’Brien, Rose Sheehan, Audi Lane, Peter and Joanne Souza have spliced together many nautical tunes that represent both new and old world music with a wealth of knowledge and talent. Vocals and harmonies are a major part of performances mixed with knowledge and lots of good fun. Colin’s unique ability to harmonize is his true talent that surfaces at every performance. Barry plays the mandolin and guitar as he leads songs and chanteys. Rose plays the melodeon, and her ballads, sea songs and chanteys are exceptionally well presented for all to enjoy. Audi has been singing since her childhood in church choirs, school musicals and in small groups. Joanne primarily sings soulful sea songs and ballads with meaningful messages of loss, life and humor. Peter plays the guitar and sings chanteys from the golden age of sail. All members of Knockabout reside in Gloucester and Essex, MA.

Chris Maden has been singing and playing a variety of instruments since early childhood. A native New Englander, he was lured to the Barbary Coast of San Francisco seeking dot-com plunder, but was instead shanghaied into the seedy world of sea music by a bunch of pirates from Providence, and became a regular at the chantey sings at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. He eventually escaped from exile and moved to Portsmouth in 2008, arriving at the Press Room shortly before that year's Maritime Festival. Since then, he has been pursuing maritime and traditional music more seriously and has been a most welcome singer at the monthly shanty and forebitter Press Room sessions. This will be his third appearance at the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival.

Mudhook

Seacoast residents Alan Eaton, Dave Hallowell, Mike Jeanneau and Peter Hale mix traditional shanties with instrumentals and contemporary songs of the sea in their quartet, Mudhook. Meeting at the popular Press Room trad sessions, these friends realized that their strong voices and musicianship would make a fine match. Among the four, they play two bouzoukis, three fiddles, four guitars, and the occasional bodhran, all while singing up a mighty storm. This is their fifth group appearance at the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival, though individual members have contributed to the Festival many times over the years.

www.mudhook.net

Proper Ladies

An heroic Pirate ballad, a lament for the dead, a prayer for safety at sea... Just a few of the rare gems sung by The Proper Ladies (Anabel Graetz and Deborah Goss) as they recreate music sung by and about the “Ladies on the Shore” — wives and daughters of the sea captains, officers and sailors who went to sea. Women who stayed behind, and even a few who went along, come to life through their own stories. For PMFF the Ladies will also be incorporating the work of Portsmouth’s native son, Poet Laureate Thomas Bailey Aldrich. And don’t forget the “Ladies of the Dock” who worked near the harbor in the saloons and brothels. Anabel and Deborah, joined by Lynn Noel, will present a set of songs from that seamier side of Maritime life as well. The Proper Ladies are pleased to return to Portsmouth and to be singing in the Festival for the first time.

John Roberts

John Roberts developed his interest in folksongs at high school, when a group of friends decided to form a folk club. As a graduate student at Cornell University, John met fellow student Tony Barrand, and the two, sharing a common heritage and interest in folksong, started their continuing partnership in 1969. Their recording Across The Western Ocean is still regarded as a classic documentary of the songs of the transatlantic packet ship trade. As well as performing with Tony, John has also continued to develop his art as a solo performer. With concertina, and banjo, he sings the traditional folksongs of his native Britain in a manner that is at once authentic and authoritative. His most recent solo CD of sea songs, Sea Fever, has received critical acclaim.

John Roberts Website: http://www.goldenhindmusic.com/

Mark Ryer

Mark Ryer has been active in folk music circles since the mid-1970s when he started a free once-a-month Ceilidh south of Boston as well as co-founding the South Shore Folk Music Club. In the 1980s, as a trio with his twin daughters Kerry and Kelly, he performed close harmony traditional folk music at coffeehouses and festivals in the northeast. Now performing only a few times a year, he loves to host and attend singing parties with his wife Keven. His repertory consists of traditional and contemporary British and American folk music. He loves quieter ballads and maritime music — and loves to get you singing the choruses. He has performed at the Eisteddfod, Connecticut Family Folk Festival, Mystic Sea Music Festival, has been on the staff at Pinewoods Folk Music Week, the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival, in several productions of Bound for Glory with the Folk Song Society of Greater Boston and at many coffeehouses.

Bob Stuart

Bob Stuart has been performing in the mid-coast region of Maine for the past 30 years, playing guitar and banjo and singing in music venues up and down the coast. He has sung with various groups including The Pewter Ring, The January Men, and Circle of Friends, and he presently performs sea chanteys on board the Schooner Jenny Norman out of Rockland Harbor. He also performs with his daughter Megan and her husband Dodge Rogers in the group Old Town Road. Bob is a prolific song writer whose songs have been recorded by many notable recording artists. His style of writing has been honed by many years singing English and early American traditional music, mainly having to do with the maritime traditions. He has recorded four CDs — a sea chanty CD, an instrumental recording of banjo tunes, and two CDs of primarily his own compositions.

http://www.myspace.com/bobstuartmusic

Jeff Warner

Jeff Warner is a singer of traditional American and English folk songs. He presents musical traditions from the lumber camps of the Adirondack Mountains to the whaling ports of New England. This music — rich in local history and a sense of place — brings us “the latest news from the distant past.” Community songs, banjo tunes, 18th-century New England hymns, spoon-playing and sailor songs highlight his amusing and informative programs. Jeff is one of the original producers of the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival.

“Providing more than just rich entertainment, Jeff will leave you with a deeper appreciation of the land you live in.” —Caffé Lena, Saratoga Springs, NY

www.jeffwarner.com

Bob Webb

Bob Webb presents the music of seafarers, loggers, railroaders and other folk heroes and heroines. His specialties are shipboard work-songs (“shanties”), and off-watch sailors’ favorites (“forebitters” or “main-hatch songs”). A singer, instrumentalist and raconteur, he is an expert on the rare MacCann-duet concertina and also plays Southern mountain tunes on the banjo. Audiences take delight in joining his choruses: his music has been acclaimed from New Zealand to Poland! Bob has recently re-released his 1995 classic From Salthouse Dock on CD, and has a new release, Sounds Like Old Times, with musician and friend Dave Peloquin.

“His expertise on the five-string banjo and the concertina wins him many fans among musicians, and his dramatic and unusual vocals make for great listening. . .” —Newport Folklore Society, Newport, RI

www.richmondwebb.com

To see who has performed at previous years’ festivals, click here.

The Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival is funded by the generous donations of local friends, businesses and companies and by fans of maritime music from all over. We warmly thank you all for your support over the past ten years – and look forward to the next ten!!