New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
$10 Tickets benefit the Festival and our Year-Round Education Programs. The Working Waterfront Festival presents a Festival Sampler, Friday, September 26th from 7:30-9:00 pm at the historic Seamen’s Bethel (15 Johnny Cake Hill). The ten dollar ticket helps support the free Festival and year-round programs. Seating is limited; tickets will be sold at the door, with advance tickets available through the Festival web site.
Designed to whet the appetite of festival goers, the evening will feature songs, stories and poetry presented by performers who hail from fishing communities in Newfoundland, New England, Seattle, California, and Alaska.
- Local favorites, The Beans will be joined by Dan Lanier to perform traditional and original maritime music.
- Bob Quinn, a lobsterman, mail boat driver, and storyteller from Eagle Island in Penobscot Bay, Maine, carries on a family tradition of recitations about island life originated by his Uncle Carl “Bonny” Quinn in the 1930s.
- Bridget Fitzgerald, who was born and raised in Connemara, an Irish speaking area in County Galway, is a master of the old style singing known as Sean Nos.
- Dano Quinn, Captain of the SS Legacy, a replica Victorian style steamer on the Columbia River, is an award winning storyteller specializing in tall tales.
- Matthew Byrne, making his Festival debut, hails from Newfoundland and is heir to a repertoire of traditional ballads from Placentia Bay, many of which he learned from his mother, father, uncle, and great uncle.
- Rob Seitz, who fishes out of Morrow Bay, California, writes poetry about his work and life and joins Festival regulars, Dave Densmore, an Alaskan fisherman and poet, and Jon Campbell, who pens original poetry and songs about commercial fishing and coastal communities.
As always, the Festival brings together a unique array of music, storytelling, and poetry. Performances include traditional sea chanteys and music reflecting the fishing industry’s ethnic diversity as well as songs, stories, and poetry about commercial fishing and the sea often performed by musicians who work in the industry or are part of a fishing family. In addition to the performers taking part in the Friday concert, the Festival line-up includes many other performers.
Making their first festival appearance, North Sea Gas is a trio presenting traditional tunes and songs from lochs and coastal communities of their Scottish homeland. Local legend Ana Vinagre performs Portuguese fado, a tradition which grew up in the port city of Lisbon and speaks to the Portuguese involvement in commercial fishing in the old country and the new world.
Charlotte Enoksen, who grew up in a New Bedford fishing family, writes poetry about the home front. Brian Robbins, a former lobsterman whose column Bearins’ is a mainstay in Commercial Fisheries News, will share his stories. Jim McGrath of Newport, Rhode Island and The Rum Soaked Crooks will share traditional and original maritime music, and the New Bedford Harbor Sea Chantey Chorus rounds out the weekend.
