2024 Featured Performers

Castlebay
Since 1986 Castlebay has celebrated Maine’s maritime heritage and environment, blending history, legend, and experience into their performances. Julia Lane and Fred Gosbee share maritime ballads that tell stories of triumph and tragedy, history and humor, romance and revenge, with fine, expressive vocals and Celtic harp, guitar, fiddle, and woodwind accompaniment.
Years of deep research have resulted in their book, Songs of Ships & Sailors (Loomis House Press, 2022). Their many recordings feature these songs as well as their original music inspired by the shipwrights, sailors, and fisherfolk who have established Maine as a maritime legend.
Castlebay has performed at various festivals and institutions, including Mystic’s Sea Music Festival, The Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival, The International Festival of the Sea in Portsmouth (England), and most recently, at the Campobello Fog Festival and the Fundy Sea Shanty Festival in Canada.

Seán Dagher
Seán Dagher is an active performer, arranger, and composer of music from various folk and classical music traditions: Celtic, Baroque, Medieval, Arabic, French- Canadian, and Maritime. His compositions and arrangements have been performed across Canada, the United States, and Europe. He has created shows of Middle Eastern and North African music, arranged and composed music for audio books, and has been a composer and sound designer for theatre productions.
Seán’s voice is widely known from his recordings for the Assassin’s Creed video game series, including Black Flag. His renditions of sea shanties and other songs from the games have been streamed some 70 million times. His own Shanty of the Week video series receives thousands of views a week and has a loyal following the world over.
He is a member of Skye Consort and is the co-artistic director of La Nef. Seán sings and plays Irish bouzouki, mandolin, oud, and banjo.

Jackson Gillman
While living on Mount Desert Island for 30+ years, Jackson Gillman developed a large repertoire of songs and stories with a Downeast/Acadian flavor. He now lives on Cape Cod and presents a weekly Whales, Tales & Sails program at the New Bedford Whaling National Historic Park. Past venues include Mystic Seaport, New Bedford Working Waterfront Festival, Salem Maritime Festival, Woods Hole Marine/Mount Desert Biological Laboratories, Waquoit Bay Reserve, and Cape Cod National Seashore. He has taught college storytelling courses and is often tapped by colleagues for private coaching. After performing songs and stories throughout the US and provinces for over 40 years, Jackson was inducted into the National Storytelling Network’s Circle of Excellence and received their Oracle Award in 2020.

Sara Gray and Kieron Means
Sara Grey and her son, Kieron Means, are traditional singers, instrumentalists, and song collectors, with a passionate interest in the migration of songs that crossed the pond. Originally from New Hampshire, Sara lived for several years in Scotland, and has returned to Vermont. Kieron lives across the lake in the Adirondacks.
Of all the traditional songs, the maritime songs, ballads and sea shanties are amongst their favorites. Sara’s husband, Dave MacLurg from County Derry in Ireland, was an original member of the renowned Liverpool shanty group, Stormalong John, mentored by Stan Hugill. Sara and Kieron are delighted that Dave will be with them at the Connecticut Sea Music Festival and will likely join them in maritime song.

Chris Koldewey
Born into a family with a rich maritime history, Chris Koldewey’s lullabies as a child were songs of the sea. He was raised on the North Shore of Long Island, where he was exposed to, and influenced by, a wonderful enclave of traditional folk musicians: John Roberts, Tony Barrand, Jean Ritchie, Jeff Warner, Jeff Davis, and Lou (Louisa Jo) Killen. While studying Music Education in Fredonia, NY, he solidified his interest in the presentation, collection, and enjoyment of traditional music.
He developed as a maritime performer while working in the Chantey Department at Mystic Seaport, connecting the traditional songs with their shipboard jobs. The wealth of knowledge among the staff and the resources available helped him hone his craft. Further contributions, and fulfillment of lifelong ambitions, were realized when he was able to sail and chantey on the two Barks, Picton Castle and Charles W. Morgan, at sea.

Bennett Konsesni
Bennett Konesni owns and runs Duckback Farm in Belfast, Maine, focusing on garlic production for seed and table, culinary herbs, and teas. In addition to farming he is an internationally-touring musician, focusing on northern fiddle and dance music as well as worksongs for field and forest, which he uses regularly on his own farm and teaches at workshops.
Bennett was raised in Maine and was naturally drawn into the strong communities of old-time music, art, and farming in the area. At thirteen he shipped as a deckhand aboard local schooners, spending five summers sailing Penobscot Bay and learning the traditional work songs of the tall ships as he raised sails and hauled anchors. Later, at Middlebury College, Bennett co-founded the student farm and spent six months studying Zulu farming songs in South Africa. He was awarded a Thomas J Watson fellowship to spend a postgraduate year in Tanzania, Ghana, Mongolia, Vietnam, Switzerland, and Holland studying worksongs of sea, field and steppe.
Bennett has given a Ted talk about his work, and speaks, teaches, and performs throughout North America and Europe as an individual and as parts of several bands.

Keith Murphy
A native of Newfoundland, Keith has been based in southern Vermont for many years now where he is a mainstay of the traditional music scene. His musical collaborations have included his work with fiddler, Becky Tracy, neighbor and traditional song icon, Tony Barrand, Irish music impressario, Brian O’Donovan, National Scottish Fiddle Champion, Hanneke Cassel, and his duo work with Yann Falquet (Genticorum).
His solo song repertoire draws heavily on the music of Newfoundland, and Eastern Canada more generally, while his arrangements are often grounded in his guitar playing, which makes use of multiple open tunings and a percussive finger style.
He is a faculty member of the Brattleboro Music Center (BMC) and the artistic director of the BMC’s Northern Roots Traditional Music Festival in Brattleboro, Vermont, which he founded in 2008. He is a featured performer on well over a dozen recordings and a guest musician on numerous others. He has four highly regarded solo recording showcasing his direct and intimate style of traditional singing in French and English. His most recent solo project is Bright As Amber (June 2023).

Daisy Nell & Capt. Stan
Daisy Nell and Capt Stan, from the shipbuilding town of Essex, MA, have been playing, performing, and recording music of the sea and shore since 1997, as a duo and with their band, Crabgrass. They have sailed their schooner from Massachusetts to Maine, accompanying themselves on guitar and banjo at gigs along the way. Daisy Nell, folksinger/educator with fifty years of school, museum, and shipboard performances, is a former school programs manager at the Peabody Essex Museum, the Chair of the annual Gloucester Schooner Festival, and Vice President of Maritime Gloucester. She teaches folk music, folk dancing, and songwriting. Daisy is the author of nine children’s books, including her best sellers The Stowaway Mouse, Tilly and the Pirates, and Capt. Stan’s Foo Foo Band.

Michael O’Leary
Michael O’Leary is a singer of traditional and contemporary songs and ballads from Ireland, Scotland, England, and North America. Originally a landlubber from South Dakota, he has soaked up songs and the sea air of Cape Ann for the past thirty five years. He has performed at the Rockport Celtic Festival, Boston Celtic Music Fest, Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival, and New England Folk Festival. He has co- hosted Celtic song and tune sessions on Cape Ann since 2008 and hosts sunset ‘sailing céilís’ on the pinky schooner Ardelle in Gloucester. He enjoys writing parodies and setting poetry to music – and occasionally old songs to new airs – and is forever inspired by these words of Brendan Kenneally, “All songs are living ghosts and long for a living voice.”

The Ranzo Boys
The Ranzo Boys are a NYC-based maritime and traditional folk trio comprised of Lafayette
Matthews (he/him), Jules Peiperl (they/them), and Lindsey Smith (she/they). Since forming in
2020, they have performed at the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival, the Peoples’ Voice Cafe,
and the South Street Seaport Museum, among others. They are dedicated to honoring a song’s
tradition while also making the folk community a more inclusive and welcoming space for all.
Their repertoire includes buzzy English harmonies, Appalachian ballads, sea chanteys, and any trad song that can be remotely construed as queer.

John Roberts
For 50+ years John Roberts has been a mainstay of British folksong in America. Best known for his partnership with fellow Brit, the late Tony Barrand, John has continually worked as a solo performer throughout the years, particularly in the areas of British Balladry and Songs of the Sea. He often accompanies himself on the banjo and concertina.
As a solo performer John has played at the Mystic Sea Music Festival, Portsmouth Maritime Festival, the San Francisco Sea Music Festival, the Old Songs Festival, the Connecticut Sea Music Festival, and the Newfoundland Folk Festival. He has also recorded extensively with Tony Barrand and Nowell Sing We Clear, as well as solo (see www.goldenhindmusic.com and www.johnrobertsmusic.com).

Ship’s Company Chanteymen
Established in 1996 in the Chesapeake Bay region (Washington DC-Baltimore- Annapolis), the Chanteymen perform for a variety of venues, large and small, stage or strolling. As the mercenary musical arm of Ship’s Company, a 501c3 not-for-
profit historical reenactment group, they specialize in the 1798-1815 period, but are also adept at traveling up and down the timeline to the golden age of piracy, colonial America, American War of Independence, American Civil War, and WW1.
The Chanteymen help keep chantey singing alive in their community by hosting three monthly chantey sings. Several members are also currently sailing seamen, mates, and masters.

Nicole Singer
Nicole Singer is a musician, teacher, organizer, and artist in western Massachusetts. A former deckhand and shipboard educator aboard Mystic Whaler and Clearwater, she sings chanteys, foc’sle songs, pub songs, and any song that gets people singing together! Nicole is the Program Director of CDSS’s Harmony of Song & Dance Week, a co-founder and organizer of Youth Traditional Song Weekend, co-author of the CDSS Folk Sing Starter Kit, and former Chair of folk music and song programming for NEFFA. She can be found singing, teaching, and dancing at festivals, camps, house concerts, and pub sings around the Northeast, sometimes with her dog, Tugboat. Singer is her real last name. When she’s not singing, Nicole is a public school art teacher.

Tom Lewis
No stranger to the erstwhile Sea Music Festival in Mystic, and happy that the tradition continues, Tom’s repertoire – from traditional shanties to songs fashioned out of his own seafaring background – recruits his audience for a voyage by turns reflective, dramatic, and humorous. Born in Northern Ireland, Tom’s Celtic heritage is obvious in his clear, strong voice, evoking quiet sorrow for a fisherman lost to the sea just as honestly as it powers out a shanty “to be heard above the gales.”
With songs that have become folk standards, sung wherever great choruses ring out, Tom accompanies himself on button accordion and ukulele, but it’s that powerful vocal style, infectious humour, and quality of entertaining that keep audiences returning.

The Vox Hunters & Flannery Brown
Armand Aromin and Benedict Gagliardi (The Vox Hunters) and Flannery Brown are musical symbionts that sprouted from a mutual loam. Soon after, they began to hum in sympathy, eventually buzz in synchrony, and now whomp with full-lunged abandon. Like a lively fungus on the branches of tradition, they nourish themselves on its ancient heartwood and burgeoning boughs-to-be. They are the Pope’s frown, a wagon of porcupines, that cup of tea next to the worm bin. They sing for you and each other. As for the birds? Especially so.

Bob Wright
Bob is a multi-instrumentalist whose songs celebrate harbors, oceans, and their people. He was a Folk Fellow for The Working Waterfront Project sponsored by NYSCA (New York State Council on the Arts) and is currently working on a NYSCA-sponsored illustrated book with music. An award winning songwriter, his songs are covered and recorded by other artists, appear in documentaries, school curricula, etc. He is a proud member of Local 1000 Traveling Musicians Union and has been a truck driver, high school teacher, commercial diver, US Navy veteran, and many other things that sneak into his songs. Bob co-hosts the monthly shanty session at the Noble Maritime Collection in Staten Island, NY with Jan Christensen.

Traditional Maritime Skills Demonstrations by:


The Dirty Blue Shirts
The Dirty Blue Shirts is an experiential history collective of living historians, scholars, and artists who know that uncovering history is dirty work. Its members worked together on the front lines of Mystic Seaport Museum for nearly 20 years in the Chantey and Roleplaying Programs and on the Special Demonstration Squad, where their blue shirts got the dirtiest. Now, they bring customized, museum-quality programming to historic sites throughout New England, offering presentations and workshops on environmental history, blacksmithing, fiber arts, woodworking, historical dress, original and traditional music, immigrant history, theater, and, of course, maritime culture and history.