In May of 2014 I had a great time playing banjo and singing with Saint Petersburg's "Shanty Choir Mir" at the SCF Black Sea Tall Ships Regatta while the ships were in port at Sochi, Russia. As the official shanty group of the tall ship "Mir" we were slated to bunk aboard here. BUT... she's a Russian naval training vessel, and our group has English, Scottish, and American members. Apparently that's a no-no when Mir is in Russian waters... or something.
But sometimes the plans of mice and men turn out better than originally conceived. In this case, the cloud had a silver lining: the Spanish wooden schooner "Atyla". The captain, only 25 years old an the youngest in the tall ships fleet, took our 9-piece group aboard for the weekend. The jolly, semi-piratical young crew lavished us with paella and sangria. One of the crew lavished certain attentions on our pretty young fiddler-ess, which were reciprocated if absence at rehearsal counted for anything. And that made for a fun verse for this tune!
Rather than me repeat the whole spiel here, check out the song's page on my site. You can listen to a stream of the song there, and if you like it, you can buy it on Amazon, iTunes, or CD Baby. I will donate all sales proceeds to Doctors Without Borders (msf.org). The tune is up on Spotify as well. I can't tell you where because Spotify blocks traffic from Russia. But if you listen to music there, try to find it and play it... all playback royalties will also go to support the work of MSF.
