A Long, Strange Trip

Sometime in the late 1990s, I visited the Medieval Fair of Norman and saw a decidedly non-Medieval group singing on one of the stages. Six or seven guys with tricornered hats, flintlock pistols and long coats offered up traditional sea shanties along with their interpretations of the same.

I had just encountered for the first time the Bilge Pumps, a group performing piratical music and comedy. Most of the songs were a cappella, with a guitar every now and again or a hand drum to give rhythm. The renaissance fair circuit boasts a lot of groups like this, but many of them sing their shanties and chants with a Garfunkelian perfection of voice that doesn't sound much like the way sailors would have done it. The Pumps rarely have that problem; they excel at capturing the ale-sloshing camaraderie of the tavern table or the after-dinner grog ration.

Lineup changes have worked on the group over the course of its several albums and disappointment with 2006's Broadside Buddies kept them out of the studio except for a collection of Christmas-themed songs and sketches in 2010. But over the course of 2011 and into 2012, the current five-member version of the group worked in the studio to bring out The Idiodyssey, certainly the most professional-sounding release of their career and probably one of their best in many ways.

Craig Lutke as "Maroon the Shantyman" has been the constant figure of the band since its beginning, and over the course of their career he's become a stronger and better singer. The better songs from Idiodyssey, like "Bonnie Ship the Diamond," "Nancy Whiskey" and "The Royal Oak" have either him or Nathan Campbell ("Splice the Rigger") as leads, helped out by David Ruffin ("Harvey the Corpsman"). Campbell and guitarist Christopher Dallion ("Sharkbait Simon") team up for a great-sounding "Larry Marr," with the rest of the band providing the chorus. The extra work on production allows Dallion's guitar and the occasional percussion from Lutke to strengthen the songs on which they appear.

Lutke's always been better when he has an equally strong voice to play against, and the current lineup doesn't offer that the way the late Michael Younger ("Kailyn Dammit the Gunner") or R.L. McDorman ("E the Bosun") did during the early part of the last decade, especially on Greatest Hits Vol. VIII. But the better production helps quite a bit and makes it easy to see why the band decided to re-record some earlier numbers they'd been dissatisfied with to see if they could get a mix they preferred, as in the Ruffin-Dallion composed "The Ballad of Sam and Marie."

A quick note -- the Pumps' brand of humor ranges from low to lower and is a fine example of what used to be called "bawdy." They've rewritten several traditional shanties accordingly; the number of confessed crimes and not-illegal-but-still-depraved acts of which they boast might make many wish to keep their distance. The sensitive and easily offended might be better advised to stick to more traditional folk versions of the songs of the tall ships, but those with a little pirate in their souls should have a lot of fun on an Idiodyssey of their own.