John Townley
SPOTLIGHT concert & ACOUSTIC JAM
At Soho Gallery for Digital Art
Thursday, June 17, 2010
8:00 – 10:00 PM
138 Sullivan Street, New York, NY 10012
Phone: 212-228-2810
Website:   http://sohodigart.com/

Description:
Join us for the kick-off SPOTLIGHT concert and ACOUSTIC JAM series with a very special program: JOHN TOWNLEY -- singer, multi-instrumentalist, and collector (and disseminator) of maritime music and lore. This is a rare opportunity to hear John in a solo setting. Afterward, John will lead the Acoustic Jam in rousing, sometimes bawdy, always fun sea shanties and other maritime songs. Bring your (acoustic) guitar, mandolin, banjo, concertina, pennywhistle, fiddle, etc., or just bring your voice and ears. You'll be smiling all evening!

Program: Lost At Sea

Says John: Since the general sea song jam will be filled with well-known shanties and forebitters, the opening solo concert will be a collection of lost maritime songs you probably never heard, and their stories. In their time, they were popular because they had good, memorable choruses and caught the imagination of both seamen and (in some cases) landlubbers who idealized, or mythologized, the sea and the sailor. They include parting songs sung over a glass, a couple of great pieces reclaimed from the grip of the Third Reich, a few gems from Southern and island shores, and a handful of forgotten pop hits that once tweaked the seaman's musical palate around the globe in days of sail. Perhaps even a couple of modern originals to add to the genre, if there's time.

NEW LOWER ADMISSION!
* $10.00 for both John Townley's performance and the Acoustic Jam after.
* $5.00 for seniors and for students with current I.D. for the performance and Jam.
* $5.00 for the Acoustic Jam =only=. (The Jam begins at 9:15 PM. There is no discount for the Jam alone.)

John Townley was a founding member of The X-Seamen's Institute and has performed, recorded with, and produced recordings by The Press Gang, The Starboard List, Stan Hugill, Louis Killen, Stare Dzwony, and more. His recordings are on the National Geographic Society, Columbia, Vanguard, Adelphi, Folkways/Smithsonian, and other labels.

John was raised aboard a sailboat in Caribbean waters and has been singing and researching songs of the sea ever since. As founding president of The Confederate Naval Historical Society, he received the first-ever Federal award under the federal Abandoned Shipwrecks Act for leading an F.B.I. investigation and prosecution of looters of historic sunken ships. Former program developer at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia and New York's South Street Seaport Museum, his maritime research papers have been published by the Society for Historical Archaeology, Mystic Seaport Museum, and the U.S. Naval Academy.

He has served as officer, crew, performer and instructor aboard various historical tall ships in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including Polish staysail schooner Zawisza Czarny and Washington, D.C.'s Baltic trader Alexandria.

More at http://www.astrococktail.com/music.html (with sound clips) and http://www.astrococktail.com/maritimemattersinternational.html
Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=112907612071504&ref=mf