- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 27
In the beginning, there was Quinn’s Lighthouse!
If you are new to sea shanties, then the name "Quinn’s" might not mean anything to you. But if you’ve been around for a while, you’ll know it as an institution started by Skip Henderson and the Starboard Watch. Skip kept watch over shanties in the Bay Area for over 35 years and authored “Billy Bones,” a shanty sung by many groups that sing the tradition. Additionally, he wrote a hornpipe used in the second installment of “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Arguably, Skip and his band put the little-known Quinn’s Lighthouse on the map.
Skip passed in 2020 from complications arising from Covid, leaving a sizable hole in the traditional sea music scene here in the Bay Area. His band had many musicians come through, but one of his anchors over the years was a man named James Dean Nelson. “Jim” was one of Skip's best friends and is a stalwart in the shanty scene now. His “pipes” (vocals) are unmistakable, and his banjo licks are synonymous with surly sea music!
When Covid hit, Quinn’s was shuttered, and along with it, the house band, the Starboard Watch. A budding Irish folk musician, entertainer, and intermittent member of both the band and the audience, Micha, came together with Jim and the remaining members and began playing in front of Quinn’s on the patio, masked and distanced, and began streaming the music to the community to keep hope alive as the proverbial ship was sinking. With each monthly stream, Micha joked that the crew was “Shipwrecked,” and the name just began to stick.
A talented and adoring fan of the shanties (and now Micha’s fiancée), Amanda Lewis, collaborated with Micha on a logo of the world’s most famous shipwreck hitting a Covid virus, and the rest is history! In 2021, sea shanties blew up with Nathan Evan's TikTok rendition of “Wellerman,” and when the Covid restrictions eased, we began to pack the room at Slainte. It turns out new and enthusiastic audiences could now resonate with centuries of being locked away in a ship’s hold for long periods of time.
Jim is our fearless frontman, and he is backed by guitarist John Palme, bassist Steven Strauss, and whistle (and “bosun mate”) Micha, who navigates the shows with his infectious enthusiasm. Behind the scenes, Amanda helps navigate our promotion and has been instrumental in bringing the stream to a worldwide audience. When she began writing lyrics on a dry erase board, magic happened in the room, and we quickly realized that this was bigger than “performing”; it was a “collaborative” endeavor with our audiences.
We view the “Shipwrecked Shanty” as singing WITH the people as opposed to AT them. While audiences have intuitively done that in the past, now we gave the tools to new audiences to become infected with the shanties themselves. With Jim’s performance prowess, Micha’s bouncy enthusiasm, John’s guitar licks, and Steve’s standup bass keeping the heartbeat, the Shipwrecked Shanty is unlike anything you’ve experienced. It is an experiential, anachronistic, musical voyage through maritime history that Shanghai’s an audience away from modern-day divisiveness and brings everyone together with a common theme: we’re all in this boat together.
...and as the Titanic sank, the band played on!
