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MUSIC
Navigating new waters
With Bristol hosting its first sea shanty festival this month, we thought it was a pretty good time to catch up with the city’s lockdown folk sensations The Longest Johns – now working on an album with Decca. Going viral on TikTok may have provided a bit of validation, but they’ve always been playing the long game. Words by Jeremy Blackmore Universal Music Group Jenni Champion??????
The foursome feel fortunate to have had the platform of their viral success to leap from. Photograph: James Hole/Universal Music
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ea shanties are a centuries-old part of Bristol’s seafaring tradition, but in a capella band The Longest Johns this traditional form of folk music has found a new voice for the TikTok generation. The city’s new folk sensations have reinvigorated the sea shanty, navigating new waters of collaborative online platforms to digitally perform and engage with fans around the globe in times when people have been unable to get together in person. During lockdown they rode a fresh wave of popularity on the social media platform TikTok, scoring a top 40 single and signing global deals with Decca Records and live touring agency United Talent. The group’s version of Wellerman – a New Zealand whaler’s song written in the early 19th century – has been streamed more than 60 million times and sat comfortably at the top of the UK and Global Viral Charts earlier this year. Its chart success saw it become the first entirely a capella sea shanty to make the UK Official Chart Top 40. The song’s protagonist shares the group’s hopes for better times ahead; something everyone has, no doubt, been able to relate to during the pandemic. 24 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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OCTOBER 2021
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Jonathan ‘JD’ Darley, Andy Yates and Dave Robinson had been friends for some time when they first came together out of a mutual love of traditional folk songs and shanties at a barbecue in 2012. “That just happened to be the day when we’d all been listening to sea shanties just kind of by accident, really, and we started talking about it,” remembers Dave. “We thought we could give it a go and then just sat in the corner of someone’s garden, tried to work out parts and then started off at local pubs, talent nights and open mics. It just spiralled from there.” Sea shanties were once commonly sung as work songs, typically in call-and-response fashion, to accompany and coordinate rhythmical labour involving group efforts aboard large merchant sailing vessels. Some of these songs told tales of voyage and exploration. JD explains that it was listening to the song Northwest Passage by the late Canadian folk musician and songwriter Stan Rogers that really connected with him and helped him understand the power of this folk tradition. “There’s something about the way that it was written, and the fact that it’s taking on this wonderful story that’s more than just some thoughts and feelings, put down on paper. It’s
