Ahoy there! Whether you’re just a wee scallywag or an old salt, your day will most certainly improve by donning a tricorn hat and eye patch and singing a sea shanty or two. You’ll be lucky this Talk Like a Pirate Day when a new album of original piratical songs sets sail from Tom Mason and the Blue Buccaneers. Digital editions of If You Want To Be a Pirate: Songs for Young Buccaneers is available now for a few doubloons, from Amazon, iTunes, and direct from the captain’s quarters. Physical CDs are available now.
Tom Mason and the Blue Buccaneers is a wild band of Nashville musicians who dress like pirates and play a rollicking mix of piratical sing-alongs, rousing historical rave-ups, Afro-Cuban tinged ballads, Cajun sea shanties, and bluesy Irish jigs, all celebrating the days when the seas were ruled by great sailing ships. If You Want To Be a Pirate is their fifth studio album, inspired by the band’s legions of younger hearties from their tours through North America, Europe, Australia and beyond. Favorites of the tall ships and pirate festival circuits, the band will perform for the fourth time in a row at Pilgrimage Music and Culture Festival, and they plan to invade more ships and stages in the coming months.
The songs are enhanced by multilayered instrumentation – from accordions to violins – and jolly harmonies. If You Want To Be a Pirate launches with the aspirational and welcoming title track. Next up, the song “It’s a Lot of Work To Be a Pirate,” confirms the deck-swabbing reality of life aboard a bilgey sailing ship. Listeners meet “Kristofer the Kindly Kraken” and “The Parrot of a Pirate,” a and a curiously “Invisible Crew.” There’s no sign of rum (exactly) in the kids’ version of the Blue Buccaneers hit “In the Drink.” While quite a rowdy bunch, Cap’n Tom and his crew bemoan the state of the world’s oceans and “messy humanity” when “You Can’t See the Treasure through the Trash.” Meanwhile, all “lusty lads” and “lively lasses” can instantly “Talk Like a Pirate” (a song written with Talk Like a Pirate Day co-founder John “Ol’ Chumbucket” Baur). Time moves swiftly in a pirate’s life. Before you know it, you’re “Sailing On” with the wind.
Tom Mason and the Blue Buccaneers have been performing together since 2010. Over the past few years, they’ve performed kid-friendly shows at libraries and other venues. The idea of recording songs for kids surfaced in response to the audience. “As a band of pirates, we’ve spent a lot of evenings getting adults to get in touch with their inner child,” explains Mason. “I thought it was high time we helped kids do the same. It’s natural for both children and adults to be self-conscious and fearful, and all that shyness melts away when people pretend to be pirates.” For more information and the latest concert news from Tom Mason and the Blue Buccaneers, please visit www.tommason.net, and join the crew on the band’s Facebook page.
Credit: Sugar Mountain PR.
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