“There are so many positive health benefits of singing in a group together, and really so few opportunities to do that,” Fletcher Gailey-Snell said. “All you have to do is show up early, get a lyric book, read the lyrics up on the projector, and we’ll teach you everything.”
Once a month, hundreds gather to blow the roof off an Ottawa brewery, belting out songs that originated hundreds of years ago on distant seas.
The singalong sea shanty night often ends with a thundering rendition of Stan Rogers’ Northwest Passage, a favourite among the four-man Bytown Sea Shanty collective and a loyal contingent of sea shanty enthusiasts that has grown considerably in recent years.
Some in the crowd are expat Maritimers, while others simply love a good swashbuckling, high-sea song.
A bold few, too, join the four-man group on-stage, leading the crowd in their own favourite songs.
“I think a big part of it is a free, accessible thing, and we make it look fun,” Fletcher Gailey-Snell of the Bytown Sea Shanty Collective said in an interview. “We make a big effort into growing it as a community, instead of trying to grow fans. That’s a big thing for us.”
Anyone who is brave enough to lead the group is welcome on stage. If not, your voice can join in with the crowd.
“We’ll learn the chorus to whatever song you want to sing,” he said. “And there’s nowhere else in Ottawa that does that.”
A public singing event, free to attend, is something of a rarity. Here, sea shanty singers don’t need the technical expertise required to join a choir, to spend a lot of money on a concert ticket or the gumption to perform solo at a karaoke bar.
“There are so many positive health benefits of singing in a group together, and really so few opportunities to do that,” Gailey-Snell said. “All you have to do is show up early, get a lyric book, read the lyrics up on the projector and we’ll teach you everything.”
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The group has focused on making the events as barrier-free as possible: no cover charge, accessible via public transportation and, above all, really fun.
“It’s not a quiet, sit-down concert, not a church reverence experience. It’s an easy, free way for people to have a great time on a Friday or Saturday,” Gailey-Snell said. And, with the rising cost of everything from groceries to concert tickets, “right now, that’s really important. Having accessible events in our community is really important.”
The Bytown Sea Shanty Collective got its start some decades ago with its four founding members attending Ottawa’s Canterbury High School, which offers specialized arts programs. There they started singalongs at high school kitchen parties. All four members went their separate ways for university, but they ended up back in Ottawa with their families.
Gailey-Snell said he first pitched the idea of hosting informal pickup singing nights in their living rooms back in 2019 with about a dozen friends and family gathering around coil-bound songbooks. But the monthly tradition was sidelined during the COVID-19 pandemic, until spring 2022, when restrictions were largely lifted.
“I said, ‘I bet there’s this just-under-the-surface community in Ottawa that would love to sing along with us, if we did it in public,’” he said.
The first singalong was held at Dominion City brewery in summer 2022, with about 25 attendees. Since then, the group has moved to a bigger space at Beyond the Pale Brewing Company’s west Centretown location, regularly packing the brewery with hundreds of attendees.
As the monthly events have exploded in popularity, it’s common to be packed shoulder-to-shoulder, with the brewery sometimes turning people away at the door once the two-storey venue has reached capacity.
“It’s very humbling,” Gailey-Snell said. “I’m not super surprised, but every time there’s a big crowd, and now it seems to be every single time, it’s awesome. It’s like pinch-me moments for everyone.”
The Bytown Sea Shanty Collective may inspire hundreds to sing along, but they don’t consider themselves rockstars.
“None of us are doing it for money. We’re doing it for joy,” Gailey Snell said. “And the joy doesn’t come from having fans, it comes from making friends.”
They also host an annual fundraiser each December, raising money for the Dalhousie Food Cupboard.
“Building community feels like the idea of, ‘good grows exponential good,’” he said. “People feel good doing good things. You make it easy for them to do it.”
Gary Caines is the organizer of the Fundy Sea Shanty Festival, an annual event in St. Martins, N.B., that brings together sea shanty groups from across North America to perform at the Bay of Fundy.
He’s tracked the explosion of popularity in sea shanties in recent years, ever since a remixed rendition of The Wellerman went viral on TikTok in early 2021, amassing millions of views and sparking other spinoff songs.
“I’m not surprised,” Caines said of the resurgence in popularity of the centuries-old work songs.
“There’s an infectious nature to shanties. You listen to the group do a few verses, and there’s a good chance you’ll be able to join in.”
The repetitive work songs, with catchy rhythms and sometimes eyebrow-raising lyrics, were first sung during the heyday of sailing in the 18th and 19th centuries, when large, wooden ships with tall masts were crewed by men from different walks of life.
“One person can’t raise a sail. 10 people can’t raise a sail unless they all pull together,” Caines said. “They decided to sing, to have fun, with naughty lyrics and funny lyrics, and they all knew which syllable to pull on.
“They heaved together and hauled together because they knew it was the best way to get through the voyage. Getting through life is the same.”
The Bytown Sea Shanty Collective’s next shanty night is April 25 at Beyond the Pale Brewing Co.
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