THE LONGEST JOHNS | INTERVIEW
You wouldn’t have believed it a few months ago, and you might not believe it in a few months either, but right now the world is mad for sea shanties. This Bristol quartet are at the crest of that wave, having crashed the Wellerman shanty into the public imagination. Carl Marsh lent an ear.
How did you all connect initially? Not from some karaoke night, I bet… or was it?
Dave Robinson: We’d all been friends for quite a while, working together around music: a little bit towards theatre, some recording studio stuff. But then one day, we were at a party for the Queen’s Jubilee, sitting in the garden, and we’d all by chance been listening to sea shanties – Fisherman’s Friends and Stan Rogers – and thought we’d give it a go. Someone started singing, the rest of us joined in and tried some harmonies. And then just carried on, really, from videos to gigs in pubs – then it all blew up from there.
How did you settle on the group name of The Longest Johns? Was it just a play on words around Long John Silver or because one of you is called Jonathan?
Jonathan ‘JD’ Darley: It was a play on words of that, and the name that we hated the least from all the suggestions we came up with. [laughter]
What were the other options? Can you remember?
JD: I think we liked The Land Lovers – that was one of them for a while. I think we had a Dropbox called that. With The Longest Johns, there is a nice bit of amusement there, to be sure. And it kind of just stuck after a little while.
Dave: Yeah, definitely not named after JD…
Andy Yates: There’s no deep, meaningful story there!
The sea shanty craze of these last few months, then. Why has it taken off now? Sea shanties themselves have been around for a few hundred years…
JD: I think it’s a pretty hefty combination of things. It feels like a perfect storm because, in our experience, it’s been growing and bubbling under the surface for a while. But there have been loads of exciting periods of growth that have spiked interest in the music and the genre. Looking back a few years, it was obviously [Cornish shanty group] Fisherman’s Friends, and then the Assassin’s Creed games, Black Flag and Rogue, had loads of sea shanties.
And then there are loads of other bands out there that have been doing this stuff for years; we’ve been a part of that, and have reached a more modern audience, I guess. We’ve seen this kind of spiralling upwards growth. With the song Wellerman, where people have taken it on board, they can make jokes and memes out of it. It’s created this social, cultural movement that’s been teetering just below mainstream interest and gaining its own momentum behind the scenes.
Combine that with all these feelings of lockdown, being stuck inside, and these tales of some of the worst and most challenging jobs you can possibly imagine – being stuck in a situation that you don’t want to be in. Having that inviting feeling that actually, you can take part in this; you can share your feelings and experience by singing these songs. It’s this beautiful web, that’s led up to this moment where, suddenly, everyone’s like, this is great. I understand this now!
It has exploded: I saw on social media your request for about 100 contributions from the public as a community project for your YouTube, Twitch and TikTok accounts, and you had about 500 sent to you.
Robbie Sattin: Yeah, it was amazing. We’ve got a good system now. And we went live with the second request of this just a few days ago – so we’re going to be doing a giant community project of the Wellerman. It’s already gone way past what we managed to do with the first one – it might be a bit of a logistics and editing nightmare. It’s great to get all these people together in a singsong. It doesn’t happen that often these days!
Between the four of you, who takes the lead in deciding who sings which parts of the song?
Dave: It’s very group-oriented: there’s no lead singer or lead arranger. We all just arrange together – we’ll often get together and just share songs and sing things until it sounds good. We’ve all got slightly different vocal ranges. So, for example, JD does the really low bass notes. So if you want a big solid bottom to the song, then you’ve got to put JD on the bass!
JD: I bring the solid bottom. [laughter]
Info: www.thelongestjohns.com
words CARL MARSH