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Put your hands on the remote! browse music »The Oystermen's Ball by Bob Michel
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fave it Country Folk | Gentle
11 tracks | 44 minutes
Released Sep 2004
on Bob Michel
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- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 02:50 Tell Us Again lyrics BUY MP3 02:50 Tell Us Again lyrics "GIFT MP3" 02:50 Tell Us Again
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:30 Bridge Is Down lyrics BUY MP3 04:30 Bridge Is Down lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:30 Bridge Is Down
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:47 The Light Of Your Eyes lyrics BUY MP3 04:47 The Light Of Your Eyes lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:47 The Light Of Your Eyes
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:07 Leave This City lyrics BUY MP3 03:07 Leave This City lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:07 Leave This City
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:16 Farewell To Ship John Shoal lyrics BUY MP3 03:16 Farewell To Ship John Shoal lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:16 Farewell To Ship John Shoal
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:25 Let's Go Back lyrics BUY MP3 03:25 Let's Go Back lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:25 Let's Go Back
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:01 Out Beyond Good-Bye lyrics BUY MP3 04:01 Out Beyond Good-Bye lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:01 Out Beyond Good-Bye
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 04:59 Relics Of The Harbor lyrics BUY MP3 04:59 Relics Of The Harbor lyrics "GIFT MP3" 04:59 Relics Of The Harbor
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:28 Your Sunday Squeeze lyrics BUY MP3 03:28 Your Sunday Squeeze lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:28 Your Sunday Squeeze
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 03:47 Let It Go lyrics BUY MP3 03:47 Let It Go lyrics "GIFT MP3" 03:47 Let It Go
- sample lyrics "DOWNLOAD" 06:03 The Oystermen's Ball lyrics BUY MP3 06:03 The Oystermen's Ball lyrics "GIFT MP3" 06:03 The Oystermen's Ball
Spare, strong melodies and beautifully wrought lyrics from a seasoned neotraditional singer, multi-instrumentalist, and bayshore poet based in rural southwestern New Jersey.
Bio / Background
I started playing music in 1965, at the tail end of the Great Folk Scare. My father had an old mandolin in the garage, and one fateful night I strung it up and began to teach myself to play. A few months later I learned how to tune it properly, and began to teach myself to play again.
It seemed innocent enough at the time, but it quickly led to the harder stuff: guitar, banjo, fiddle, tinwhistle, Irish flute, Anglo concertina and button accordion, more or less in that relentless, downward-spiraling order.
Before long I was singing in folkie duos and trios, playing in rock bands (even the drums, once!), busking as an old-timey banjo player, leading traditional Irish sessions. Show me an economically marginal instrument, style or genre and I was willing to give it a try.
↓ more ↓I listened to Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, Mississippi John Hurt and Mississippi Fred McDowell, the Skillet Lickers and Uncle Dave, Willie Clancy and Martin Carthy, the Delmore Brothers and the Stanley Brothers and the Balfa Brothers, and almost everything else that eventually became known as "roots music." I like to think that, sometimes at least, some of those many motley threads get woven together in my own music in a pattern that you wouldn't find elsewhere. But you decide.
I did a lot of writing in my teens; it was, I think, a legal requirement in those remote days. Then thirty years of stone-cold songwriter's block, which may sound dreadful but actually permitted some modest real-world productivity for a while.
All that is over, though. I spend my time now on the shore of the Delaware Bay in Cumberland County, New Jersey, a remote, marshy and magical place where--and relatively few people know this--the Muse herself resides.
Her place isn't much to look at--more of a shack, really--and you'd probably drive right by it. But as a desperate realtor once said, it's "Much Bigger Inside!"
The point of all this being: the songs that matter, to me, are the ones that, on first hearing, erase all memory of a time when they weren't in your head. Once or twice before I go I'd like to write one like that.
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