Thanks for the encouragement, gang.

Here's a more detailed review from Gardi, one of the Gloucester gang that attends the monthly Press Rooms shanty/forebitter sessions:

"Well, I had an opportunity to listen to Old Sailor-Poets: Sea Songs.

I'm impressed!

I promised that I'd be honest if not kind so take it or leave it, from my level of experience.

I'm not normally impressed with live music, with one exception, that being Barry Finn. His voice in performance has qualities that don't show up in Fathom This. When a musician works in studio to produce an album, the results, after mixing, tweaking and editing are usually far superior to what one hears live. Old Sailor-Poets Sea Songs is a good example of this.

Although the jacket suggests that your hope is for your album to be used as reference to your fellow chantey singers, I find the album has a wonderful quality of "listen-ability", and is something I wouldn't mind just playing on the ship's stereo as I went about my tasks or in the car stereo as I drove along.

The mechanics of the recording are great! The output amplitude is pretty solid. The vocals and instruments are well balanced and the studio quality is good, so good that I'd almost like to hear just a bit more reverb to off-set the lack of "room-ring".

I particularly like your idea of putting music to sea-poetry and making a project of it. You should stress this more, especially when performing these pieces live."

Cheerily,
Charley Noble