Townley, John
The Sailor & The Mermaid
This is a rough-hewn collection of the kind of knockabout songs that seamen have always carried along with them at work and pleasure, at sea and on shore. The material is splashed together like a shanghaied checkerboard crew, and so is the recording, the first fifteen tracks a spontaneous accident in Liverpool which took just three days - with myself as skipper, mate and crew and engineer Bob Buckle as supercargo. The rest were recorded in Poland, in Warsaw and Gdansk (except for two in Liverpool, with Zawisza Czarnys performing crew), in partnership with Marek Siurawski, the original main spinner of the Polish shanty movement, still evolving and in full swing today.