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David Coffin

David Coffin has been performing throughout New England and beyond for the past thirty years. In addition to his recurring role as Master of Ceremonies for Cambridge Revels, he spends each academic year presenting curriculum-based Enrichment Performance Programs for children in schools. Familiar to audiences of north-eastern nautical museums and maritime festivals, David is also well-known for his “living history through traditional music” boat-tour of Boston Harbor. Being a descendant of the notoriously salty Nantucket Coffins, he naturally was drawn to the whaling and sailing songs of old New England. With his concertinas and whistles, and sometimes a harpoon, he will get a sharp crowd singing in no time flat. David has several recordings under his belt and has just released Last Trip Home, featuring daughter, Linnea Coffin.

www.davidcoffin.com

Great Bay Sailor

Descendents of the wildly vocal High Pukka Flying Squad, Great Bay Sailor embarks upon its fourth year as a Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival act. This year brings a few changes, as the trio expands to become a quartet. Bruce MacIntyre and Steve Carrigan will be joined by new singing friend, Mike, and will be accompanied by a fine box player. With an extensive repertoire of maritime, Irish/Scottish and ol’ timey songs, the lads continue to bring their high-energy strings and harmonies to Festival audiences. Steve is a Seacoast resident, found many a Friday night at the legendary Press Room trad sessions. Bruce has sung with innumerable groups over the years, most regularly as our own “Pavarotti of the Press Room.” Take in the wash – here they come!

Tom Hall and Linn Schulz

New Hampshire native Tom Hall has been collecting, researching, and singing folk songs for over 40 years. Drawing deep from the vast well of English, Scottish and Irish songs, he has pulled more than a few pails of nautical songs from these and other lands. His body of song includes shanty work songs and foc’sle ballads sung by sailors to while away their few leisure hours. Tom is the chief organizer behind the Great Bay Company, and for the past two decades, has been the host of the Press Room’s Friday evening Anglo-Celtic traditional music session.

Linn Schulz has been performing with Tom for over 15 years. Linn, originally from the Midwest, comes from a musical family, and grew up with an eclectic mix of tunes and songs. In the mid 80s, she began to devote herself more seriously to traditional songs and ballads. With Tom, Linn forms part of the core of the Press Room trad sessions every Friday night. Tom and Linn have worked with the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival since its inception, as volunteers, performers, and now producers of the fest.

Emery Hutchins

Over the centuries, immigrants from the British Isles have come to the Americas bringing with them their musical styles and tastes as well as their instruments. Emery Hutchins uses the concertina, bodhran, guitar, and banjo to play traditional tunes and songs from Ireland, the mountains and the sea. He performs American country music in the way it was conceived in the early twentieth century and demonstrates how these tunes are often derived directly from the songs of the Irish but influenced by other cultural and ethnic groups (particularly African-American) to create an original American sound. Emery was a member of the popular Angel Band (NH), currently tours with Two Old Friends, and has been part of the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival family since 2001.

www.twooldfriends.com

Chris Maden has been singing and playing a variety of instruments since early childhood. A native New Englander, he was lured to the Barbary Coast of San Francisco seeking dot-com plunder, but was instead shanghaied into the seedy world of sea music by a bunch of pirates from Providence, and became a regular at the chantey sings at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. He eventually escaped from exile and moved to Portsmouth in 2008, arriving at the Press Room shortly before that year's Maritime Festival. Since then, he has been pursuing maritime and traditional music more seriously and has been a most welcome singer at the monthly shanty and forebitter Press Room sessions. This will be his second appearance at the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival.

Mudhook

Seacoast residents Alan Eaton, Dave Hallowell, Mike Jeanneau and Peter Hale mix traditional shanties with instrumentals and contemporary songs of the sea in their quartet, Mudhook. Meeting at the popular Press Room trad sessions, these friends realized that their strong voices and musicianship would make a fine match. Among the four, they play two bouzoukis, three fiddles, four guitars, and the occasional bodhran, all while singing up a mighty storm. This is their fourth group appearance at the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival, though individual members have contributed to the Festival many times over the years.

Liam Robinson

Liam Robinson has been playing and performing traditional music since childhood. He is based in Lincolnshire (UK), where he has lived all his life, growing up around the fishing port of Grimsby. His singing repertoire consists mostly of traditional songs sung and collected in Lincolnshire. He accompanies himself on Anglo concertina, and is also an acclaimed melodeon player, which he took up at the age of 17. He has explored many diverse styles of music, collaborating with folk, jazz and world musicians. He has performed at festivals and venues throughout the UK, taught workshops in schools and communities, and is the director of The Mini Morris Company. Though Liam will be performing on his own in Portsmouth, he also plays in a duo with Thomas Fairbairn, and with The Pigeon English Dance Band.

Liam Robinson’s Website: http://www.minimorris.co.uk

Mark Ryer

Mark Ryer has been active in folk music circles since the mid-1970s when he started a free once-a-month Ceilidh south of Boston as well as co-founding the South Shore Folk Music Club. In the 1980s, as a trio with his twin daughters Kerry and Kelly, he performed close harmony traditional folk music at coffeehouses and festivals in the northeast. Now performing only a few times a year, he loves to host and attend singing parties with his wife Keven. His repertory consists of traditional and contemporary British and American folk music. He loves quieter ballads and maritime music - and loves to get you singing the choruses. He has performed at the Eisteddfod, Connecticut Family Folk Festival, Mystic Sea Music Festival, has been on the staff at Pinewoods Folk Music Week, the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival, in several productions of Bound for Glory with the Folk Song Society of Greater Boston and at many coffeehouses.

Ken Schatz

Ken Schatz of New York City is well-remembered by PMFF audiences, having appeared here in 2002 as part of NexTradition, and in 2009 with Finn & Haddie. He is a powerful singer, as well as being an arranger of traditional/roots music – sea songs and chanteys, gospel, blues, ballads, and worksongs. His singing credits include concert performances and teaching workshops for Mystic Sea Music Festival, Old Songs Festival of Traditional Music and Dance, Washington Folk Festival, Workum Chantey Festival (Netherlands), and dozens of others. Ken performs regularly at folk clubs, festivals, and concerts in the US and abroad, and is presently recording his first solo CD.

www.kenschatz.com/folksinger.html

Bob Stuart

Bob Stuart has been performing in the mid-coast region of Maine for the past 30 years, playing guitar and banjo and singing in music venues up and down the coast. He has sung with various groups including The Pewter Ring, The January Men, and Circle of Friends, and he presently performs sea chanteys on board the Schooner Jenny Norman out of Rockland Harbor. He also performs with his daughter Megan and her husband Dodge Rogers in the group Old Town Road. Bob is a prolific song writer whose songs have been recorded by many notable recording artists. His style of writing has been honed by many years singing English and early American traditional music, mainly having to do with the maritime traditions. He has recorded four CDs — a sea chanty CD, an instrumental recording of banjo tunes, and two CDs of primarily his own compositions.

http://www.myspace.com/bobstuartmusic

Ken Sweeney

A familiar presence on the folk scene since the mid seventies as an energetic harmonica and banjo player, singer, and workshop leader, Ken Sweeney took up the English concertina in 1983 and has been sharing his concertina playing techniques (in traditional Irish tunes, and song accompaniment) at such events as The Northeast Squeeze-In, NEFFA, and the Sea Music Festival at Mystic Seaport Museum in his native CT since 1989 (when he also joined the museum’s chantey staff). His playing can be heard on Tapping The Tradition, his instrumental CD of New England contradance tunes. This year marks Ken’s fifth Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival appearance since 2002.

kensweeney.webs.com/

Three Sheets to the Wind

Three Sheets is a Gloucester (MA) chantey/sea music group. Many of the crew have years of established song and sea history to offer and they roar up a storm of song and good cheer wherever they go. Audiences in ports and towns all over the Northeast coast have enjoyed the power vocals and terrific harmonies of Three Sheets — and the performers have a great time, too... as will be seen! The group can be heard every Tuesday evening as they host the popular shanty sessions at Cameron's Restaurant in Gloucester.
The singers and players who make it all possible include: Peter and Joanne Souza, George and Alex Thompson, Gardi Winchester, Rose Sheehan, Colin de la Barre, Barry O’Brien, Tim Perkins, Martha Bowen, Leslie Wind, Tony Hilliard, Jim Milone, Steve Willard, Kevin Quinn, Graham and Jan Walker, Roger Hussey, and Gary Foreman.

Jeff Warner

Jeff Warner is a singer of traditional American and English folk songs. He presents musical traditions from the lumber camps of the Adirondack Mountains to the whaling ports of New England. This music — rich in local history and a sense of place — brings us “the latest news from the distant past.” Community songs, banjo tunes, 18th-century New England hymns, spoon-playing and sailor songs highlight his amusing and informative programs. Jeff is one of the original producers of the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival.

“Providing more than just rich entertainment, Jeff will leave you with a deeper appreciation of the land you live in.” —Caffé Lena, Saratoga Springs, NY

www.jeffwarner.com

Bob Webb

Bob Webb presents the music of seafarers, loggers, railroaders and other folk heroes and heroines. His specialties are shipboard work-songs (“shanties”), and off-watch sailors’ favorites (“forebitters” or “main-hatch songs”). A singer, instrumentalist and raconteur, he is an expert on the rare MacCann-duet concertina and also plays Southern mountain tunes on the banjo. Audiences take delight in joining his choruses: his music has been acclaimed from New Zealand to Poland! Bob has recently re-released his 1995 classic From Salthouse Dock on CD, and has a new release, Sounds Like Old Times, with musician and friend Dave Peloquin.

“His expertise on the five-string banjo and the concertina wins him many fans among musicians, and his dramatic and unusual vocals make for great listening. . .” —Newport Folklore Society, Newport, RI

www.richmondwebb.com

Workshop: Sailors’ Bethel

For the third consecutive year, Barbara will lead this informative sing-along on Sunday, assisted by Jeff Warner. From Hong Kong to Hawaii and from the Great Lakes to Glasgow, sailor’s, seamen’s or fishermen’s bethels offered sailors safe sleeping quarters while in port, hot meals, clean clothing, and – most importantly to 19th-century reformers – religion. Brief comments on the history of the bethels will punctuate an energetic hymn sing. The entire congregation is urged to join in!

Also appearing in 2010 will be Celeste Bernardo, of Sharon, MA,
and the S. S. Chanteens, of New Haven, CT.

To see who has performed at previous years’ festivals, click here.

The Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival is funded by the generous donations of local friends, businesses and companies and by fans of maritime music from all over. We warmly thank you all for your support over the past ten years – and look forward to the next ten!!