Yeah, it looks like there just aren't that many folks out there tearing out a tonsil doing Sea Music these days. HA HA HA!

Richard, Claire and Peter pretty much covered the San Francisco area groups but they left out a few. One that comes to mind is the lunatic elder statesman of Bay Area Sea Music, Skip Henderson, and of course the rest of the Starboard Watch. Skips ben singing this stuff more than 50 years having performed in the "Folk Scare" of the early 60s at places like the Purple Onion and Hungry Eye. And it only took Skip 50 years to make it into the big time when Disney used the hornpipe set form the CD for the Pirates of the Caribbean tavern brawl. In 30 years of performing Sea Music n Dogwatch he's the only one I know of to make enough money from it to buy a two masted schooner to play with!;)

I think the Bay Areas Sea Dogs should be included here. Steve Morales put on an amazing Pirate Festival last year with thousands of folks coming out to hear Tom Lewis, Skip & Starboard Watch, Holdstock and MacLeod and the rest of us nutcases.

I know there are groups in the Los Angeles are doing Sea Music.

It always amazes me to think Skip has been doing a weekly Sea Music gig almost every week since at least the early 80s, thats a lot of hualin on bowlines and way hey up she rises, not to mention "Leave her Johnnies".

To al of you out there doing Sea Music, it sure is nice to know the songs will get carried on by new groups and singers I count myself very fortunate to have lived at a time when I have had a chance to meet an sing with so many of the groups mentioned.

And then there was the Festival of the Sea when I was a ranger at Hyde St Pier and I was given the job of keeping Stan Hugill entertained for a couple of afternoons and evenings museum hopping and bar hopping around San Francisco and Berkeley...great memories.

Thanks Peter(Chantey Ranger) for keeping the the monthly sings going two decades later!

See yous mugs at the Pirate Festival in Vallejo,,,

Gary