6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
FREE
The Yarmouth Shantymen began as a ‘one night stand’ when Eric Ruff, then Curator of the Yarmouth County Museum, offered to give a talk about sea shanties at the Yarmouth County Historical Society’s monthly meeting in March 1984. As he didn’t want to sing by himself, he gathered nine friends together, who practiced various shanties for three weeks then put on a show.
The Shantymen’s first performance (at the museum) was musically pretty awful (says Eric Ruff), and we thought that if we were to continue singing shanties we might call ourselves “Eric and the Rough Edges” – but we became known as The Yarmouth Shantymen.
For many years there were ten of us. Today, we’re down to six men, three of whom (David Sollows, David Mahoney and Eric Ruff) performed in the original show. The other three (Brad Fulton, Gordon Rothwell and Jim Rideout) are the ‘newcomers’ who have only been with the group for 35 years or so!
Some of our most important gigs have been performing at Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival, Bar Harbor, Maine, representing Nova Scotia. St Martin, NB for the first and second annual Fundy Sea Shanty Festival (2022 & 2023), and annual performances in Yarmouth for Yarmouth’s Sea Fest and the Coal Shed Festival, and of course, many seasons with the Maritime Museum’s Tuesday Night Tunes. This wraps up our 9th annual series!
For their music, upcoming gigs and history please visit: http://yarmouthshantymen.org