Robert Palomo –
Sea Shanties Old & New

Once again I take to the troubadour tradition wherein satire and criticism are leveled at Authority and Power through music.

You know things are pretty bad when world events enable you to create a parody of one of your own…

It has long been the role of the troubadour to challenge and lampoon Authority through music. This is one such piece. It was inspired by the offensive nonsense spouted by one Dr. Ben Carson, who shortly after assuming the office…

It's that time of year again - a holiday that's like no other. The only one where the whole world can be Irish for a day. I don't know why it is that there's no day when we're all Chinese…

If you stop and think about it, all the old sea shanties that have come down to us today were, as far as we know, composed by men, for men, and often about men. The ones about women were mostly…

In December of 2013, I met British composer Peter Dyson at the annual Christmas party at the British Consulate in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. We discovered we were both musically inclined expat residents for almost 20 years, but we had somehow never…

Social media. You never know who it's going to reach where, or what might come of it. Back in December, of 2016, Cruising World Magazine's Editor at Large, Gary "Cap'n Fatty" Goodlander, was posting on Facebook lamenting (OK, cursing actually)…

It's always a treat to be able to play in your home town. And that's just what I did this week together with the Men Overboard maritime folk music trio. A huge "thank you!" goes out to Igor Gurbatov…

Davy Jones - the story behind the sea shanty

The original name of the song was "The Rouble Song". I never meant it for the final title, and so it isn't. I can't recall without research the date when the…

I have read English literature, or had it read to me, since before I could talk. I've always been somehow fascinated and charmed with English place names mentioned in books. They always made me feel that I'd like to visit…

A newly released single "Davy Jones" has propelled its creator, Robert Palomo, from completely total obscurity to mostly total obscurity in a matter of days.

"It's not supposed to work like that!" moaned Tatako Yamamoto, head of Sony Music's Quash…

Word from the Harwich International Sea Shanty Festival organizers has come in giving the times and locations of my shows with the Men Overboard trio. If you're anywhere within reach, I hope you'll come and catch one of these events!

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Houston is flooded. So are my social media feeds - with my fellow Americans (you gotta love 'em or just go nuts) sending "thoughts and prayers" for the hurricane victims. That doesn't seem to be helping folks there much, so…