Oh so shifty

Published 8:00 pm Wednesday, January 18, 2006

They’re some sea-loving fellas who took four months off to settle their sea legs, but now they’re back on shore performing in their home port once more.

The Shifty Sailors, Whidbey’s own group of salty singers, will perform the concert “Sights and Sounds” Friday night at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts. Friday’s show, and the encore performance Jan. 27 in Coupeville, will include plenty of songs, loads of pictures, a gallon of salty tall tales and other shifty “tall ship” secrets.

What sort of sea stories, you wonder? Well, it’s been a busy year for the Shifties and they have plenty to share.

Last spring saw the sailors performing their salty tunes at numerous appearances around Whidbey Island and the mainland.

Then they ran off and became celebrities, spending 16 days touring the British Isles in July, following the tall ship festival to France, and being the toast of the town wherever they went.

The sailors had a total entourage of 48, which included the singers themselves, spouses and friends who came along for the journey.

More than 100 ships participated in the tall ships race, some of which were more than 500 feet in length.

The Shifties’ whirlwind journey included a night of singing shanties with a group called the Hooks and Crooks, named after the famed forks of the Waterford River.

They visited with Irish lifeboat crews (their visit made the fleet’s yearly magazine).

And they’re bringing back fun stories of meeting people on the streets of the ports they visited. Such as one young man who approached them in Dublin, shouting the question, “You know the song ‘Billy O’Shea’?”

“We didn’t know it, so he just started singing,” said Shifty Sailor Vern Olsen.

“A couple of verses in I began to accompany him on the accordion and pretty soon we were joining him harmonizing on the choruses.”

In Wales the sailors visited a folk club where they performed a tune they thought was fit for the occasion. But it drew no applause, and the place was as quiet as the bridge during the skipper’s nap.

“Apparently it was a Welsh folk tune from the north,” Olsen said. “We were in the south and they didn’t like it much.”

The Shifties toured the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s Baroque Eagle, a 295-foot tall ship on which Coast Guard cadets train. The sailors met the cadets and even ran into one with family on Whidbey.

“It showed us how many connections this island has,” Olsen said.

And it was the newly sworn in Lord Mayor of Dublin Catherine Byrne’s first official duty to welcome the Shifty Sailors to her city.

“We’re just 20 guys from all over the island, with friends all over the island, and we’ve created this fan base that’s really incredible,” Olsen said. “I didn’t expect any of this.”

But with notoriety has also come a lot of fun trips. This summer it was the British Isles. Two summers ago they sailed the Baltic with the tall ships for three weeks and two summers before that they toured Scandinavia.

Olsen founded the group inadvertently in 1993.

“The Island County Historical Museum simply asked me if I could get some guys together to sing some songs of the sea to help launch the book ‘Sails, Steamships and Sea Captains,’” Olsen said. “We sang the simplest songs, including a round of row, row, row your boat, but we were a big hit.”

Of the nine original sailors, seven remain with the group that has only continued to grow.

Their repertoire is anything to do with the sea: sailing, the ocean, visiting ports (and yes, that includes those famed drinking songs), fishing, the Merchant Marines, the Navy and everything in between. The full-blown Shifty show includes dozens of guys, Olsen on accordion, three sailors with guitars and possibly someone on banjo.

What’s next on the Shifty schedule?

“We’re working on an album collection of children’s songs of the sea,” Olsen said. “We’ve had a number of teachers request our music, but ‘no drinking songs please’,” Olsen said.

The children’s project will include songs sung by island children, as well as the sailors, with all proceeds from the kids’ albums going to elementary school music programs all over Whidbey.

“Oak Harbor, Coupeville and South Whidbey schools, we want to get everyone involved,” Olsen said.

As far as the album’s title? You can bet it have something to do with hailing from the sea, harsh sailing weather, happenstance and hanging onto the deck for dear life, as all of the Shifty Sailors’ harmonious disc titles all happen to start with an “H.” There’s been “Heave Ho, My Lads,” “Haul On …” and “Ho For the Life.”

“To me that’s what this is all about, singing songs and watching all the smiles on people’s faces — that’s our success,” Olsen said.