The Squid Jiggers "33⅓" track listing 1. "Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor" is a lively traditional song from Newfoundland. It probably started life as a music hall number before passing into the public domain. The Squid Jiggers get vocal support here from a group of friends and colleagues dubbed the “Calamari Choir.” 2. This short medley is a pairing of "Mairi’s Wedding," a well-known Scots wedding song sung while walking from church to parish hall, and "I’ll Tell Me Ma," an Irish children’s playground ditty from Belfast. 3. "The Bonnie Ship the Diamond" was a real Scottish whaling ship, launched in 1812 and skippered by Captain Thompson. Despite the bravado of this song, it was lost in 1819 after taking 8 whales in the Arctic. 4. "Up Jumped the Dancers" is a new song written by Troy about a fiddler with the ability to lift spirits and set feet in motion. Though he brings joy to drinkers and dancers alike, his own happiness is harder to find. 5. Based on a true story, "The Stranger" tells the tale of a fallen Confederate soldier mistakenly shipped to a family in Gray, Maine who bury him like he was their own. It is appropriately written by Dave in Maine and Dennis Goodwin of Georgia. 6. "Paddy Lay Back" is a salty call-and-response capstan shanty made for toiling aboard ship and hauling anchor. The Calamari Choir joins in here, making this one a real shouter. 7. "The Mingulay Boat Song" concerns a tiny Island in the Outer Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. Without a harbor and with a dwindling population, it was abandoned in 1912. The song comes from the imagination of Sir Hugh S. Roberton, who wrote it in 1938. It’s about coming home. 8. Troy wrote "Come Down Ye Roses" by combining parts of a traditional shanty chorus collected by Alan Lomax in the Bahama’s in 1935 with a brand new song idea. His home port of Portland used to have weekly steamship service to Liverpool and scads of shops catering to every “need” of sailors ashore. 9. The truly romantic "Lovers Often Do" comes from an old poem Troy wrote in college about longing for adventure and love. It’s coupled with an adapted traditional tune and performed on guitar and tin whistle. 10. "The Star of Logy Bay" and "I’ze the B’y" are a couple of authentic Newfoundland dance tunes. The former is a lovely waltz rendered here on concertina and tin whistle. The latter is a mostly nonsensical jig. It’s probably the best known song from ‘Da Rock. 11. Dave’s father, Tom Rowe, wrote "Molasses" for Schooner Fare’s 1985 album “We the People.” Among other details, it chronicles Boston’s great molasses flood of 1919 where a 50-foot vat of the sticky sweetener burst, drowning more than 20 of souls. 12. Hamish Henderson was a Scottish poet, songwriter, scholar, soldier and intellectual. He served in North Africa during WWII. He oversaw the drafting of Italy’s surrender order. "The Banks of Sicily" is adapted from his Scots dialect poem about going home at the end of the war. 13. Dave wrote "The Ballad of Howard Blackburn" in tribute to the Nova Scotia born pride of Gloucester, Massachusetts. He was, without a doubt the port’s most famous fingerless transatlantic sailor, bravest back room bootlegger and unlikely Yukon prospector. 14. The album concludes with the return of the Calamari Choir, singing and swaying with The Squid Jiggers on the Chesapeake Bay fishing shanty, "Sweet Rosyanne." This traditional song sports brand new verses, written by Troy. **The Squid Jiggers release CD in tribute to records*** Maine folk duo The Squid Jiggers are celebrating the release of their second full-length CD — a tribute to vinyl records entitled “331/3." The Squid Jiggers — folk veterans Dave Rowe and Troy R. Bennett — have played nearly 250 shows and released a debut album since forming in March 2010. They play a hearty mix of traditional and tradition-inspired music from Ireland, Scotland, Atlantic Canada, and Maine, sprinkled with a dash of Downeast wit. Their latest collection of old and new songs is a CD about records. Called “331/3” in a nod to the rotational speed of long-playing discs, it seeks to capture the warmth and style of the vinyl records the Jiggers grew up on. The CD cover recalls a 1960s Columbia Records release, complete with tracks listed on sides one and two. The disc itself looks like a miniature, grooved record. The resemblance doesn’t stop there. Recorded at Squid Jigging vocalist and bass player Dave Rowe’s recording studio in Raymond, the CD even sounds like a record. “We would have loved to release this album on vinyl,” said Rowe. “But the cost was just too prohibitive.” So, they used vintage equipment, and a little studio trickery, to evoke the sounds of the familiar black spinning platters instead. The album opens with the sound of a tonearm being activated. Then the needle hits the “record” and a few stray crackles and pops are heard before the first track. The music is notably warmer, more live and without the crisp digital edge of a standard CD. “I’m not at liberty to divulge our methods,” said Bennett with a grin. “Let’s just say it involved two elderly, quarter-inch tape machines, a Dual 1229 turntable, some sophisticated software and an old Glenn Miller album.” Rowe is similarly mum. “My lips are sealed,” he said. But why go to all the trouble? Because they owe a lot to records. Bennet and Rowe (the son of a well-known folk musician Tom Rowe, of Schooner Fare) say records were their biggest connection to the wider world of folk music while growing up. Bennett recalls combing the cutout bins in Portland record stores, looking for the kind of music he wasn’t going to hear on the radio. “As soon as I got my license, I was driving to Portland every week, looking for Clancy Brothers, Dave Mallet, Christy Moore and, of course, Schooner Fare records,” said Bennett. “I spent every dime I had on records, gas, girls and guitar strings.” In the days before eBay, iTunes, Youtube and Google searches, finding non-mainstream music was a challenge. He’d stop at scores of yard sales every summer, looking for folk music he hadn’t heard before. He borrowed records by the dozen, transferring them to cassette. Rowe distinctly remembers “needle dropping” Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem records over and over again, trying to discern the lyrics. “It’s the same thing my Dad did when he was a kid,” said Rowe. “He’d listen to Kingston Trio records and learn all three harmony parts, and the guitar and banjo parts, too.” Aside from the technical details, The Squid Jiggers are proud of the music on 331/3, as well. Their first CD, Greatest Hits, was a collection of well known and traditional songs from the celtic genre. Their newest offering is roughly half original material and half traditional. The songs range from jaunty sing-alongs from Newfoundland, to Irish playground taunts, to original songs about larger-than-life seafaring heroes and sailors looking for ladies ashore. Up Jumped the Dancers, a song penned by Bennett, describes the joyous effects of a fiddler and his instrument. It’s an uptempo number, but conveys a sense of sadness mixed with revelry as the fiddler brings happiness while his own remains out of reach. “It’s a mostly true story,” said Bennett. “I wish it wasn’t.” Just in time for the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, Rowe and Georgia songwriter Dennis Goodwin tell a true tale of kindness in a new song called The Stranger. In 1862, a family in Gray, Maine waited for the body of their son, who died of wounds suffered in the battle of Cedar Mountain, to be shipped home to them. When the coffin arrives, they find the body of a young Confederate soldier in his place. Instead of sending him back, they bury him as their own. “I got the idea for the song from my late friend Harvey Weinstein,” said Rowe, “and writing it with Dennis, who is down in Georgia, seemed like a natural idea. We’ve got the North and South thing going on.” The album is rounded out with songs from Scotland, a couple more Newfoundland tunes and an irresistible sing along shanty from the Chesapeake Bay decked out with new verses by Bennett and a chorus of friends and colleagues.