The Fisherman's Friends posted a short clip of one of their performances today on Facebook. That gives me hope that they will survive the tragic death of member Trevor Grills last winter, and return to the stage. Their tour manager was also killed in the accident at the venue where they were setting up for a performance.
Until I heard about The Fisherman's Friends, all I knew about sea shanties I had learned in primary school when the music teacher came around, once a week, and we sang folk songs. I don't, in fact, recall any shanties; I recall some Australian stuff, the famous kookaburra song every English-speaking schoolkid seems to know, for instance.
About two years ago, I saw a TV advert for prepared fish that featured a bunch of burly guys singing, identified as The Fisherman's Friends. Then a friend posted on FB that she felt The Fisherman's Friends had sold out by making the advert. And then I got a mailing about the DuMaurier Festival in Fowey. On it was the notice of a performance by--ta da!-- The Fisherman's Friends.
I still really didn't know sea shanties. And a friend was upset about the group selling out. (I figure artists in any genre have to make a living somehow, so I wasn't upset about them singing about fish. Now if it had been for an oil company or some other harmful outfit....) I figured it might be a good night out and so I booked what turned out to be the very last two tickets available. The seats were horrible, up among the rafters, packed in like pilchards, hot. Before the performers took the stage, I was thinking about how and when to sneak out.
But that concert was magic. To borrow a line from some old movie or other, they had me at hello. It was the imposing presence, perhaps, of all that handsome testosterone projecting into an expectant audience, most of whom seemed to know the group quite well. Or maybe it was the jeans and work shirts; who ever performed dressed like that? Elton John would be having the vapours. Even Mick Jagger would be having the vapours. And don't even think about Yo-Yo Ma, to whom black tie is de rigeur.
The music was fine and fun, and the singers were real people. They said they would hang around afterward to have a pint at the festival pub with whoever cared to join them. I wish we had, but it was a long drive home.
We were hooked, though. We booked their concert at Theatre Royal in Plymouth the following fall. Then we went to one of the free performances on the Platt at Port Isaac the next summer. It is not for just anyone that I would force myself to walk up a cliff that would better serve as a ski run. And then we booked their next concert, meant to be in the April just past, in Plymouth.
It didn't happen because of the dreadful accident that took the life of one of their members, the singer of "The Last Leviathan," Trevor Grills. "The Last Leviathan" is not a sea shanty; it's a song about the environment, and it always--ALWAYS--made me cry. And that, too, was magic.
It was magic when I saw Nureyev dance Swan Lake in Atlanta in the early 1970s. It was magic meeting The Chieftains in Fort Lauderdale in the 1980s. It was magic seeing the work of a friend, the late Robert Steed--a member of the Ashcan School--on display at the Brooklyn Museum. It was magic seeing The Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre perform in Plymouth three years ago. I had seen them many times in New York, and had even seen the great Judith Jameson dance in "Revelations." But Plymouth was more magic than that; I have never, ever felt more appreciation in an audience, and it was deeply satisfying to be part of it. All this is easy to explain. It's more difficult to explain my affection for a bunch of regular guys from (mostly) Cornwall who sing simple songs well.
Maybe it's the bass voice of Jon Cleave, or his walrus mustache, or his wise-arse delivery of the group's patter. Or the almost Art Garfunkel-like lyrical appearance of another member. Or the fact that the oldest member, about 80 by now, taught many of them eons ago when all of these well-into-middle-aged men were schoolboys.
I read the book The Fisherman's Friends when it was published 18 months ago or more. It was entertaining, especially the part about swimming in Port Isaac Harbour before such things as sewage remediation had become a fact of Cornish life, and pushing quite unsavory things out of one's way so as not to get a mouthful. Scatology is often fun; look, for instance, at Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which is chock full of it.
I've been wondering how, and even if, the group is going to surmount their grievous loss. I'm hoping they will conclude that they must, that singers must sing. Still, they have loyal fans, and I expect we all want them to heal well, even if they should cease to sing.
But I can't imagine it, really. I can't imagine the air not being filled with those fine a capella voices tossing joy and memories into the clear Cornish air of the Port Isaac platt. I can't imagine the sadness of knowing there would never be another CD, or another fine evening of song and shared camaraderie at a venue someplace in England.
I'm hoping for more magic moments. I'm hoping for a magic moment when I can book tickets once again to a Fisherman's Friends concert...knowing full well that the remaining singers have surmounted some significant feelings of loss, have cried, have asked why...and understanding that in the end, they realized that through all things, their art matters. Their songs matter. Their friendship...so generously shared with the rest of us...matters. I hope it happens, their return to singing. I'm still not counting on it.
But I am clinging like a limpet to the ray of hope that arrived on my computer screen today when they posted a snippet of one of their performances at Glastonbury. I looked for it on YouTube but didn't find it, and it wouldn't load from FB.
I did find one of their performances at the Minack Theatre. That performance brings together many arts: song, the accomplishment of the theatre itself, the brainstorm of creating a theatre on a cliffside above the sea, the gardens that surround the theatre. So I offer it to the gods of healing and the gods of song, hoping it will soon be propitious for The Fisherman's Friends to honour their lost member and tour manager with songs for all of us who also grieve.
But if not, they are loved all the same.
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