The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #171822   Message #4213217
Posted By: cnd
09-Dec-24 - 10:02 AM
Thread Name: ADD: Survivor Leave - songs by Ken Stephens
Subject: RE: Origins: Survivor Leave (Ken Stephens)
Well I tried my hand at a biography, but I was able to find scarce little information about him besides his songwriting. I've been unable to find a birthday or birthplace, but Stephens has lived in Southampton since the early 1980s. He was in the group Solent Breezes by 1987, and has also performed in the groups Spindrift and Windwytch, and most recently as a duo called Bosun's Call with Geoff Payne, Fiona Murfitt, and Sophie Wright. He's performed as recently as 2020. He seems to have been particularly well regarded in the Polish shanty scene, where he performed periodically in the 1980s-1990s. Below is a list of known songs, with source info if not listed above. I've also found a handful of lyrics, which I'll be posting separately.

4 O'clock On Thursdays
Atlantic Conveyor
Birkenhead Drill
Diamonds Dancing
Drowned Horses of Ameland (listen)
Fluke Alley
Grease the Ways
Herzogin Cecilie (listen)
Ike Hvaal
Machine Madness
Magnificent Muskoga
One More Pull Boys [1] (listen)
Rattle the Winches / Rattling Winches [2] (listen)
Rainbow Warrior [3]
Seawheels
Shellback
Ships In Bottles [4]
The Stones Of Eling Mill [5]
Survivor Leave
Tides Away
Working On a Foreign Sea [2] (listen)
Wreck of the Clarendon

[1] Ten Years Before The Mast (The Exmouth Shanty Men), NOT ON LABEL ESM006 - 2017
[2] I Thought I Heard The Old Man Say... (Compagniezangers, Shanty Jack & Ken Stephens), Bakkerji CD BCD 970419
[3] Cztery Refy - Ken Stephens
[4] Almost Live (Ken Stephens & Cztery Refy), AKZ 05 - 1991
[5] The Flour Of The Forest (Various Artists), Forest Tracks FT1017 - 1980