Kick-started the New Year Celebrating with Song!

We've received great feedback about our January Sing Shanties Song Circle & Sing-Along - that night nearly 50 of us gathered at the Cotton Building on Water Street to sing shanties and celebrate our first year of monthly song circles. What a fun way to kick off the new year. Good energy all 'round. There were fifteen people sitting around the circle that were there for the first time. Welcome! Thanks to everyone who turned out for the occasion and to Mike and Val James for leading the song circle!

THANK YOU to Mike James for being the first to show enthusiasm and help kick start our community shanty sing, leading our our first song circle January 5, 2011. Thank you to Helen Gilbert and Mark Olson for your additional contribution as Sing Shanties Blog and Facebook administrators. Helen has been an awesome support throughout this past year, coming over every month from Seattle to assist in any way she can. 

Thank you to Mike James, Mike Fleming and now Jay Hagar for helping to distribute our flyers each month - it's a lot of work to spread the word...but, we are all very happy to volunteer our time to do so.

Thank you to Crossroads Music for printing our color flyers each month, the PT Arts Commission and City of Port Townsend for your endorsement and use of the Cotton Building for our community gathering in January and four other times this year. 

The songbook committee was thanked publicly for the great work they did this past year to assist Lee in bringing the songbook project to fruition and published for use and distribution before the 2012 Wooden Boat Festival - Mike James, Ellie Mathews, Carl Youngmann, Helen Gilbert and Susan Jensen for your contributions. We are enjoying the fruits of their collaborative labors. Thank you to the Friends of the Arts for making the songbook project possible with your grant. Lee also handed out certificates to those present - Mike, Helen and Mark who led a song circle this past year. Tug, your replacement certificate is in the mail! 

Thank you again to PDN's reporter Charlie Bermant for your article about our first anniversary song circle that was published on January 3. Thank you to Sheila Ramsey, show host of "Everybody Can", who interviewed Lee, Mike and Val at KPTZ the Tuesday following our January 3 shanty sing. This segment will air sometime shortly before our February 7 shanty sing.

A very special thank you, which was not made public at our January Song Circle, but is long overdue, is to profusely thank Cliff Bisch, who hangs in the shadows and sings softly, but has never missed a shanty sing. Cliff, aka DZ, comes an hour early and stays a half-hour or more later each month to haul in songbooks and much more, help set up and break down tables and chairs, then haul away what was hauled in three hours earlier and take out the trash. Without his faithful encouragement and support this monthly song circle would not be possible to maintain and sustain. DZ is Lee's husband... going on 38 years! Thank you and Cheers, DZ!

Thank you to the Courtyard Cafe for the $10 gift certificate door prize, which I believe was won by Karl Sebastian.

THANK YOU to EVERYONE who enjoys coming to our Song Circles. It's all about community where singin' is encouraged, but knot required."

I apologize if I left anyone out... everyone is important and appreciated!

I still haven't figured out how to get good photos of our indoors community gatherings, but here's the best of what I have. Maybe amongst us is an amateur or professional photographer who has nailed down how to work with such uneven lighting without a flash? I'd love a lesson. Unfortunately, these photos were taken later in the evening, after our break; some of us had to leave early. Please let me know the name of the sweet gal in the blue t-shirt, if you know her. 

Zhenya Lavy

 Helen Gilbert, Mark Olson and Tugboat Bromberg

 Mike & Val James - Song Leaders

 Sheila Ramsey and Cindi Dinan

Jay and Donni Hagar (center)

Joe Lavy

Tugboat Bromberg

Celebrating Our First Anniversary!

Thank you to Charlie Bermant for writing the following article about our first anniversary shanty sing, published in the Peninsula Daily News on January 3, 2013.

Sea Shanty Song Circle to celebrate first anniversary
By Charlie Bermant
Peninsula Daily News

PORT TOWNSEND — In January 2012, a loose coalition of sea chantey enthusiasts decided to meet each month to sing songs of the sea.

A year later, the group has developed into a monthly gathering that goes a long way toward keeping the tradition alive.

“It has exceeded our expectations,” said Lee Erickson, one of the organizers of the gatherings.

“At first, we thought we might meet every other month, but the people who attended said they wanted to meet monthly.

“It's a family-friendly night where no one has to have a great voice,” Erickson said.

Preserving traditions

“The people are just giving a little bit of themselves in order to preserve the traditions,” he added.

The Sea Shanty Song Circle and Sing Along celebrates its anniversary from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. today at the Cotton Building, 607 Water St.

Port Townsend musician Mike James, who led the first song circle, will lead the anniversary celebration.

The gathering is held the first Thursday of every month, aside from September, when a chantey sing-along is held in conjunction with the annual Wooden Boat Festival.

The evenings begin with everyone sitting in a circle. In turn, participants can either lead a chantey or pass to the next person.

The chanteys, many with multiple verses in a call-and-response format, were published this year in a collected lyrics book and will be on hand during the event.

The impetus for the gatherings came after the 2011 death of Stephen Gottleib Lewis, a Port Townsend resident who had a huge collection of chanteys he was attempting to preserve for posterity. The book, which was published last summer, contains 141 pages of lyrics from Lewis' collection.

The enthusiastic response also prompted a location change. The first gathering was held in the coffee shop at the Northwest Maritime Center, 431 Water St. The crowd spilled out into the Chandlery, which caused a move upstairs to the maritime center's meeting rooms.

After a few months, the upstairs rooms were no longer available because they were being rented out with increasing frequency, so the song circles now alternate between the Port Townsend Community Center and the Cotton Building. 

To read the full article, click here.
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.