Sail For Hope!
Sales of this album support the BRCA Mutants Relay for Life (cancer research) fundraiser for 2025. You can order a CD copy of the album, or purchase a signed copy of the album through a member of the BRCA Mutants crew, or purchase a digital download of the album. Please see below for more details and ways to support the fight against cancer.
Thank you!
- Captain Shanghai Brown
Please note: This is sailor and pirate music. There be salty language and mature themes in these waters.
Sing along - but watch for reefs!
Sail For Hope!
with the BRCA Mutants
We BRCA Mutants HATE cancer. All Cancer. All the time.
That is enough reason to sail for hope.
Relay for Life gives us a way to raise money for the American Cancer Society which translates into RESEARCH which is especially important for pirates who are BRCA positive.
Relay is a 12 hour, fun event that allows us to dress up while singing, connecting, playing, eating, laughing, even crying with like-minded folk. We set up our PINK canopy and make lemonade! We raise money, we play the games, we have fun. We HONOR our Survivors and Caregivers. We REMEMBER those lost.
And we FIGHT BACK with educational messaging and inspirational activities.
Join the crew. Hoist the black flag and let fly a broadside at cancer!
- Captain Cassandra of the BRCA Mutants
Buy the album
With this year's Relay for Life theme being pirates, Captain Shanghai Brown of the infamous There Be Pirates! and Shanghai Brown & The Sweet Trade, piped up and said, "Avast ye farmers. I'll make you an album that'll get you in the spirit for setting sail on the Spanish Lake n' leave you feeling like an old salt who has sailed these seas since time began.
You can order the album HERE.
A limited supply of signed albums are also available from the BRCA Mutant crew.
About the album...
Sail For Hope! includes a dozen songs - a mix of traditional sea shanties and sea songs, some original songs written by Shanghai Brown & There Be Pirates!, and the most infamous pirate song ever - Derelict, which you may know by its "Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" chorus. (More about the songs below.)
The album wraps up with a Dennis Wolfe original, Blame it on Buffett, for all you Parrotheads out there. Shanghai learned this song while sitting in with Wolfe's band down on Ambergris Caye in Belize. We lost Dennis in 2021, and Jimmy in 2023 from Merkel cell carcinoma.
Digital Downloads
No CD player? No problem. Get your digital download of Sail For Hope! with an additional bonus track, at There Be Pirates! Bandcamp page:
https://therebepirates.bandcamp.com/album/sail-for-hope
On the Bandcamp page, you can purchase a digital album download, gift a digital album download to others, or download specific tracks from the album. You can pay more than the sales price if you'd like to donate more to the cause. All net proceeds (Bandcamp takes a small percentage for processing), go to the BRCA Mutants Relay for Life fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.​
The Songs
About the songs on Sail For Hope!
(All songs remastered from the albums Drink and the Devil and Pirates in the Desert)
Notes from Captain Shanghai Brown
1. Blow the Man Down
A classic sea shanty done NOLA style with additional lyrics by Shanghai Brown. Shanties were overwhelmingly from a masculine point of view, so this new interpretation includes the woman's side of the story, presented brilliantly by Bosun Ellen of There Be Pirates!
4. Sugar in the Hold
A traditional stevedoring shanty that mentions the steamboat J.M. White, the fastest steamboat on the Mississippi River. The race between the J.M. White and the famed Natchez became legendary as the J.M. White set a new speed record of 7 hours between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. She burned with a loss of 28 passengers and crew in 1888.
2. Paddy Lay Back
A traditional sea shanty from Liverpool done TBP style. We had the honor of performing it from the foredeck of the Earl of Pembroke at Albert Dock in Liverpool. The Earl, a beautiful three-masted barque that was the star of many movies, is now, sadly, history herself, scrapped in 2022. We were blessed to have spent some time with her, and with Liverpool - one of arrrrrrrrrrgh favorite ports!
5. Leaving of Liverpool
This is a traditional song from the 1800s about leaving one's loved ones, saying farewell, and setting off to sea once more. Ultimately, it's a song about saying goodbye and not knowing if, or when, we'll see each other again. They say some songs are like prayers. That fits this song. We hated to leave Liverpool, and we pray we may tie up to Albert Dock again one day. Arrrrrrrrrgh thanks to SeaFest and the Merseyside Maritime Museum for their hospitality during arrrrrrrgh tours, and for loyal TBP! fans joining us for arrrrrrrgh performances. Interestingly, this song may have ties to California, with its origins possibly dating back to a story of a sailor setting off during the Gold Rush of 1849.
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3. New York Gals
The most feared pirates of all weren't Blackbeard or anyone like that - they were the women of New York City! This song details a young sailor's traumatic experience with these pirates. Listen for Joshua Tree's own Shawn Mafia to join in the fun!
6. Pirates in the Desert
One aspect of being a pirate band from Joshua Tree was that people always asked how did pirates wind up in the desert. Shanghai Brown decided to answer that question, and with masterful musical arrangement by the awesomely talented Billy Bones Makuta and Ibn al Kerry Rose, he presented the story of the stalwart crew of There Be Pirates! in the title song of their second album (which had its CD release party at Danby Castle in England) as part of the band's second English tour. Billy's brilliant musical arrangements and his keyboards, accordion, vocals and other instruments were the backbone of There Be Pirates!
7. The Ballad of Captain Kidd
This song derives from a broadside from around 1701. Captain Kidd was a complicated character, and not really much of a pirate. He may have been more of the first notable victim of multinational corporations, but that's a long story. Did he bury some treasure somewhere? We'll never know because they executed him and stuck his body in a gibbet where it hung for all to see - for 3 years! Shanghai Brown added the last verse to keep Kidd sailing today. Billy Bones Makuta's brilliant piano arrangement and Ibn al Kerry Rose's guitar work set this version of the song apart from any other.
8. Swingin' from the Yardarm
So, There Be Pirates! loved to experiment with adapting and writing songs in different genres. One day, Ibn al Kerry Rose noted that while the band had rock, folk, a cappella, reggae, cabaret, and even country (along with some songs that defy classification), we didn't have a swing song. On a jaunt up to Idyllwild's Jazz in the Pines festival, Shanghai Brown came up with this pirate swing ditty, polished, of course, by the musical direction and arrangement of Billy Bones Makuta.
10. Fiddler's Aire
There Be Pirates! was blessed with incredibly talented crew members, including Fiddler Francis Gaskins III. Francis, a Princeton and Harvard grad, and IPO expert whose expertise was frequently found on Forbes, the Associated Press, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, Smart Money, Investor's Business Daily, USA TODAY, the LA Times, and CNBC, was also a true pirate at heart. His career as a fiddler began as first violin for the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra, and then he became Concert Master for the Palisades Symphony. Being a mischievous, brilliant, and dangerous crew member (certified as an instructor for turbo-kickboxing), brought an astounding level of talent to There Be Pirates!. His Fiddler's Aire became the ideal mood-setting piece for our most beloved song, Derelict, and it was a pleasure to yield the stage to Francis, solo, to set the stage for the mayhem to come.
11. Derelict
You may have read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island as a kid and not have made the choice to become a pirate, right then and there, and that's okay. But the song that Billy Bones sings in the tavern may have stuck with you - "15 men on the Dead Man's Chest, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum." But Stevenson only put a few lines of the song down on paper.
Well, along came writer Young Ewing Allison, who decided that Stevenson's song needed to be fully formed, and he wrote Derelict. A fragment of one of Stevenson's lines became the title of There Be Pirates! debut album, Drink and the Devil. Listen for it in this version of Derelict that borders - intentionally - on madness. We always loved performing this song, and if you've never had thousands of rather inebriated British people enthusiastically singing the chorus with you, you've missed out. Speaking of British people, listen for British folk music icon, Richard Grainger, singing on the chorus.
9. The Ballad of Kerry Rose
If you're going to write original pirate songs, why not write them about your own crew? While reading about the corsairs (pirates) of Tripoli and North Africa, and the absolutely insane US Marine expedition to deal with them, Shanghai Brown thought that we should recount the story of how the talented Ibn al Kerry Rose joined the band. Is it a true story? Well, outside of one detail that was altered for lyrical purposes, we'd like to think so. But you'll have to both find - and ask - Kerry Rose to know for certain.
12. Blame It on Buffett
Shanghai Brown's cousin Jan ran the iconic Pier Lounge down in San Pedro on Ambergris Caye in Belize. On a visit, Jan arranged not only for Shanghai to meet with the island's legendary singer/songwriter Dennis Wolfe, but to sit in with him and his band several times at palapa bars and the Roadkill Bar (where cousin Jan belted out a few numbers with the band). Being a lifelong Parrothead, Shanghai asked Dennis if There Be Pirates! could perform and record this song, and Dennis graciously said yes. This version pays homage to both Dennis, whom we lost in 2021, and Jimmy, whom we lost in 2023 to cancer, as well as to cousin Jan, the good people of Ambergris Caye and Belize, One Barrel Rum, and all you Parrotheads out there looking for your lost shakers of salt. Dennis may be gone, but his son Dennisito, carries on his musical tradition on the islands. Jerry Jeff Walker fans will recognize Dennis' anthem, Gringo in Belize, from Jerry Jeff's Cowboy Boots and Bathing Sutis album.
Bonus Track!
My 18 Pounder
Bosun Ellen kept complaining she didn't sing lead on enough songs, so Shanghai Brown decided to write her a showcase piece. She read through the lyrics and refused to sing it. But after some coaxing and trial runs, she made it her own. The song was a hit everywhere it was performed, from the Queen Mary to Liverpool! Take a listen and hear why.
Please Sail For Hope
If you can, please order a CD, grab a digital download, or make a direct donation to the BRCA Mutants for their 2025 Relay for Life fundraising campaign for cancer research.
Cancer is the scourge of all our seas. Please keep Slappin' Sam Sloneker, Fiddler Francis, Dennis Wolfe, Jimmy Buffett, as well as my mother and Aunt Vickie (both lost through pancreatic cancer) in your thoughts. And remember - fire on the uproll, and fuck cancer.
You can learn more about the BRCA Mutants and Relay for Life by using the QR code below, or going HERE.
