We also had a great time at the Mystic Sea Music Festival, myself, JudyB and Jim Saville (Shantyfreak). We're still in Mystic having elected to recover at Judy's motel before heading North. Well, we did only average about 4 hours a night of sleep and if you're not actively singing, you tend to doze off in that condition.

Our crowd has increased with the addition of Mike Kennedy. We're going to do some more recording of Mike when we get back to Maine.

Everything went well at the Festival. Most importantly for our priorities we got to launch The Complete Poetry of Cicely Fox Smith, official for sale at the Festival, along with my CDs and songbooks. And Jim and I got to share some workshops (with the storytellers) where he would recite some of her poems and I would sing some of them. The storytelling stage was set up in the Figurehead Gallery. So we always had an attentive audience. The acoustics were wonderful and the folks who wandered in certainly got a treat. We also enjoyed our talks with the storytellers, adapting what we were doing to the theme of each workshop from Shipwrecks to True Adventures.

Judy has hundreds of photos that she primarily took of singing at the Boat Shed Stage; it will take me some time to edit and post a sampling on my Facebook page. I also have a set I will entitle "Mystic Reflections" shot early one morning when the water in the harbor was perfectly calm.

Once I get home I will babble on about other performers, the symposiums, the late night shanty shouts at the German daqnce hall and the even later singing at the YTB.

Our plan now is to find the new Kitchen Little for breakfast, south of Town nest to its Marina. Then we'll head North to Gloucester and join the gang for singing more sea songa at the Dog Bar. Ray and Judy have kindly offered to put us up for the night. Then Tuesday we finally return to Maine.

Everyone else is now stirring their stumps and are ready to go!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble