Gloucester Shanty Festival Artists

We’re FRIGGITT, a 3-piece shanty band from landlocked Wiltshire, founded twelve years ago by Chris Turpin at Swindon Folksingers Club. The current band members have been performing together for eight years and are Chris Turpin – vocals, bass and ukulele, Ted Shaw – vocals, guitar, ukulele and harmonica and Allan Allsopp – vocals, bodhran and guitar.

We perform all kinds of shanties and other songs with nautical connections, both unaccompanied and with instrumental accompaniment. Our repertoire includes traditional songs, songs by contemporary composers and original songs by the band members.

Although sea shanties sometimes deal with serious subjects like shipwrecks and loss we think of them basically as good-time music and we love to have fun and get the audience to join in.”

High & Dry is an all male shanty group based in and around the Mendips, singing a range of traditional sea shanties, sea songs and other folky offerings

We specialise in close-harmony arrangements and although we both play instruments in recent years we have leaned more towards using unaccompanied arrangements in order to emphasise our harmony style.

So where do we fit in the music genre? We consider ourselves deeply entrenched somewhere in the multi-faceted world of folk music and like many performers select material from both traditional and contemporary disciplines. A good song is a good song irrespective of the era or discipline in which it was created. Our main target is to find songs that have a good interesting content that will hopefully carry an audience along and encourage them to get involved.

One of our main interests is maritime themed music and it was this interest in maritime music that has led us into a most interesting and challenging period of our singing life.

Local folk legend and expert herder of Morris Men Bill Taylor with be performing alongside the lovely Rebecca Kay performing traditional and contemporary songs and ballads, rich vocals, warm harmonies with guitar accompaniment.

https://www.facebook.com/rebilduo/videos/3387347221386963

The Shropshire Boatmen are a shanty crew who sing to keep alive the connection between our inland waterways and the international seafaring trade.

Simon The Shanty Harpist brings his own absurdity to the 7 seas with tales about submarines that roll down Devon Villages and disguised girlfriends on board. The trad shanties are given a bit of an edit along with overboard sailors and a sailor who is afraid of water. There aren’t that many harpist in this genre and this one is certainly all at sea!

The Steepholmers are a sea shanty group that formed in Weston-super-Mare in early summer 2018, with a little help from a certain popular video game with a nautical theme (seriously). We perform a range of popular sea shanties while always remaining keen on learning new ones to enhance our repertoire. Some of us like dressing up a bit – think tricorn hats and the ‘Poldark’ look you won’t be too far off – and we are now performing in public for community groups and at our regular monthly ‘Shanty Night’ in the Fork ‘n’ Ale .

The Harry Browns of Bristol are possibly the UK’s most longstanding purveyors of sea shanties and songs of the sea. They have been performing for over thirty years and have sung at many major maritime festivals across the UK and Europe.

The group pride themselves on the quality of their sound, their sumptuous harmonies and arrangements and for paying respect to the maritime traditions and the courage of those who put to sea. They like to sing either acapella or accompanied with fiddle and guitar.

Blackthorn Buskers are a five piece multi-instrumentalist electric harmony folk band based in Gloucestershire. Our songs come from around the world and include traditional and modern folk songs along with some original material. We have five singers, three of whom are well known around the folk clubs as soloists in their own right. You can expect to hear unaccompanied harmony traditional songs and sea shanties along with fully accompanied songs. Our aim is to provide a lively and varied fun night of music for all.

The Gloucester Diamonds has been a well-known shanty group for several decades. The latest line-up includes the original founder member, Rod Penlington, on guitar,  Paul and Mel Carter on vocals and Flash ( AKA Les  Griffiths) more vocals.

Rod is very well known on the folk scene for powerful sea shanties, traditional and contemporary ballads and humorous songs. He has run shanty sessions at festivals across the country, and is always ready to provide a lively tune on the English Concertina or chromatic accordion.

Paul has a long experience in singing with the performance group, the Rough Diamonds and adds great harmonies. His wife Mel has a lovely voice and has recently joined the group.

Flash has been singing almost as long as Rod and is a well-known character on the folk scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5rocqVytao

On Saturday 4th June, the Cotswold Male Voice Choir will include rousing seafaring songs from their extensive repertoire. For over 70 years the Choir has been entertaining audiences at charity concerts, weddings and corporate events. Choir members say it is a “Win-Win” formula because they are doing something they love while helping good causes at the same time.

The choir is based in Cheltenham’s Dean Close School but performs throughout Gloucestershire and neighbouring counties. Venues vary from large to small, from concert halls to village halls and all sizes between. If you are interested in singing, come along to a Wednesday rehearsal night. There is no audition and you do not need to know how to read music. Moreover, you will be made very welcome. People are often amused to learn that a choir of 50 men is managed by half a dozen ladies.

Baggyrinkle sing in three-part harmony with some of the songs accompanied by the concertina and their programme complemented by the occasional instrumental piece.

The group currently consists of nine members, (eight performing and one female to keep the boys in order!) who come from all walks of life and have been brought together by their love of folk music with the emphasis on maritime material, of course.

Most of the Baggies’ repertoire is traditional, although contemporary songs also feature – some of them penned by group members Dave Robinson & Matthew Ross – and Welsh language songs are also beginning to make an appearance.

Baggyrinkle was formed in April 1994 with the initial role of hosting the Swansea Maritime & Shanty Festival.  The group has since represented their city at its Cockles & Celts Festival.  Swansea is twinned with Mannheim and the crew was invited to the German city to provide entertainment at their prestigious International Rowing Regatta on the Rhine.

https://www.facebook.com/151367098207004/videos/1300607777005589

We are a crew of mates who just love to sing traditional working shanties along with more modern maritime songs and Bristol sea shanties.  Our mantra is “Fun and Friendship, Melody and Mirth”; we sing anything with a good tune or a good lyric, but our overarching aim is to enjoy ourselves and entertain.  We give our time for free to support Festivals or charity fundraising events.