Liam Clancy (Ireland)                    
Liam is the youngest of the Clancy Brothers. In 1955, American song-collector Diane Hamilton arrived at the Clancy home while on a song-collecting tour of Ireland. Liam joined her on the trip to Keady, Co. Armagh, where they met the singer Sarah Makem and her son, Tommy. Both Liam and Tommy emigrated to America the following year, pursuing careers in acting, both on stage and television.

Liam began singing with his brothers at fund-raising events for the Cherry Lane Theatre and the Guthrie benefits. The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, began recording on Paddy Clancy's "Tradition" label in the late 50's. A record breaking 16 minute long performance on the Ed Sullivan Show launched the group into stardom. The quartet recorded numerous albums for Columbia Records and enjoyed great success during the 60's folk revival.

In 1973, Liam left the group to pursue a solo career. He was based in Calgary, where he became an established television performer. Liam had his own series, which won a Canadian Emmy Award. A few years later, Liam teamed up again with his old pal Tommy Makem. As Makem & Clancy, the two recorded several hits including "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" and "The Dutchman". They toured and recorded together until the late 80's.

Liam joined his brothers and nephew Robbie O'Connell in 1990, though he still performed some shows with his Fairweather Band as well as with the Phil Coulter Orchestra. From 1996-1999, Liam toured with his son, Donal Clancy, and Robbie O'Connell. The group, known as Clancy, O'Connell, & Clancy, delighted audiences across North America and Europe. 

Louis Killen (England)
Louis Killen, from Gateshead-on-Tyne, England, and now living stateside, is recognized as one of the finest interpreters of British traditional folksong. An experienced sailor, Killen has worked on brigs, brigantines, schooners and sloops. He is a hard-core, unadulterated folksinger whose passionate delivery is matched by wide-ranging knowledge of these songs and the working people who made them.

JIMMY CROWLEY (Ireland)
Maritime Singer songwriter from Cork is described by Mick Moloney: "Jimmy is a living legend in Irish folk music. He comes from Cork...a city whose musical richness mirror's the city's diversity - a great trad music and song heritage as well as a legacy from music-hall vaudeville and high art. Crowley draws on all of these traditions in fashioning his own unique performance style and repertoire and has collected extensively in the south of Ireland both as a ballad singer and as part of his academic degree. "He is a consummate stage performer as well as a song writer, adding colour to his songs by weaving stories about Cork characters, maritime exploits and daily life into his act. His singing style is truly unique - nobody hearing Jimmy could possibly mistake him for anyone else. He accompanies himself on bouzouki, mandola and mouth organ."

The Press Gang/Warp4 (Ireland)
In 1991 Pat Sheridan (Garland) and Jack Harrison (Craiftine) formed a group with some other shanty singers to participate in the Tall Ships visit to Cork 1991. The first Shanty Specific Group was born and was the foundation stone for what was to become Warp Four. The recordings of sea songs and shanty's with “Clancy O'Connell and Clancy” developed so much useful material it resulted in two CD's A Hundred Years Ago with Warp 4 and The Wild and Wasteful Ocean with Clancy, O'Connell and Clancy on which Warp Four sang the choruses. 

The Press Gang/Warp 4 went into semi-retirement, but only briefly as they re-energised with a new line up which has spanned the three Groups Warp Four - The Press Gang - Garland almost completing the circle. An invite to perform at the Mystic Seaport Maritime Festival and at The New York City Folk Society in June 2002 revitalised the group and indeed has had the side effect of bringing the Press Gang back after a break of approximately 25 years.

Dan Milner and Bob Conroy (United States)
Leaders of South Street Seaport Museum’s maritime singing group in New York City, the duo has performed at festivals and museums from California to Copenhagen.  

Dan Milner has been involved in the Irish song tradition all his life.  The son of a traditional singer, he was partly raised in Ireland, England, Canada and the United States, having emigrated to America twice – once each on the Cunard liners Aquitania and Queen Elizabeth.  A retired airline executive, Dan is now a National Park Ranger at the Statue of Liberty and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, and a columnist for Irish Music magazine of Dublin.  As well as being a frequent contributor to Britain’s foremost folk song publication, The Living Tradition, his articles have appeared in The Log of Mystic Seaport and South Street Seaport Museum’s Seaport magazine 

Bob Conroy is the son of famed “Fighting 69^th Regiment” veteran and American labour leader John Joseph Conroy, who founded Local 831 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters with John DelLury in 1935.  It was the first union officially recognized by the City of New York.  Bob’s roots are in Co. Roscommon.  He grew up in New York in a home filled with Irish-American and labour songs.  In the 1960s, Bob was struck by American folk music and spent most of his waking hours in Greenwich Village, studied the 5-string banjo and guitar with the legendary Erik Darling who took Pete Seeger’s place in The Weavers, and first heard The Clancy Brothers.  Bob has recorded three albums of maritime songs with the group Stout.  A retired executive of the municipal government of New York City, he now teaches American history through folk music in elementary schools and organizes concerts of maritime music at Sailors Snug Harbor, the very place where “The Leaving of Liverpool” was collected.

Banana Boat (Poland)
Banana Boat, Member of International Shanty and Seasong Association, is a Polish male vocal quintet, specializing in contemporary songs of the sea as well as in close-harmony interpretations of classical sea shanties, and recently (as of 2005) also experimenting with other genres of music (Christmas carols, popular songs, jazz compositions). 

The group was founded in 1994, and suspended activity 1996-1998, but returned to stage at the end of 1998 with a new lineup. Today, the group consists of Maciej "YenJCo." Jedrzejko, the frontman and leader of the band, Pawel "Konik" Konieczny, the group's composer and high tenor, Pawel "Synchro" Jedrzejko, author of the majority of Banana Boat's original lyrics and the group's baritone, Tomasz "Mundry" Czarny, the quintet's arranger, composer and basso, and Michal "Ociec" Maniara, the manager of the BananaArt.Pl Art Agency and a performer of high baritone parts. All members of the Banana Boat share a common interest in sailing; their professional milieus are diverse: medicine, dentistry, banking, law, trade, and higher education.

So far, they have recorderd one full-fledged album - "A Morze Tak, A Moze Nie", the title of which could be roughly translated as "We will sea..." and one mini-album "Banana Boat ... Swiatecznie," including six beautiful Christmas carols (three traditional Polish, one traditional Welsh, one traditional English and one mediaeval Latin). Two of our songs have also been recorded in an album "Szanty dla Pajacyka," the total income of which covered the costs of meals for undernourished Polish children. The album was published by MCK Tychy; the contributors included such groups as Pearls and Rascals, Roaring Twenties, Segars, Kant, Passat and such personalities of the Polish culture as Marek Szurawski and Janina Ochojska.

 Recently, Banana Boat was nominated for the 2005 Contemporary A Cappella Recording Award in two categories: Folk/World Album for the album "A Morze Tak, A Moze Nie..." and Folk/World Song for "Arktyka". The Band's songs were broadcast on BBC, Radio Trossenlos, and many other radio stations in Poland and abroad.

Jimmy Mageean (Scotland)
Jimmy began singing in folk clubs in 1963 at “The Bridge” Newcastle where he is still an occasional resident. Another of the club residents in those days was Louis Killen who sang a lot of sea songs and shanties and was a major influence on Mageean. In 1975 Mageean moved to London and was resident at several clubs in the Capital over a 10 year period including ‘Dingles’, ‘Herga’ &  ‘The Cellar’ in Cecil Sharp House. In the same year he teamed up with Johnny Collins and the duo are still going strong after more than 25 years on the road. With many American & European tours behind them, probably the highlight of our partnership was winning the prestigious International Liederfestival in Rostock, Germany in 1983 against competition from 19 countries. They also won the Stan Hugill trophy for traditional shanty singing in Krakow, Poland in 2004.

 Since returning to his native Tyneside in 1985 Mageean now perform  with the group ‘The Keelers’ who specialise in songs from the River Tyne and North Sea Coast.

An internationally acclaimed performer and recording artist, Johnny has organised Folk clubs and topped the bill in concerts around the world since the mid-fifties: his vigorous style and his supreme ability to persuade audiences to join in choruses is unrivalled.

Johnny is a familiar and welcome figure at many of the world's foremost maritime venues and festivals, and has guested in the U.S.A. at Maine Maritime Museum, Kendall Whaling Museum and Newport News Maritime Museum. He has also delighted audiences with several concert appearances at Mystic Seaport (U.S.A.) and was resident shantyman at Expo '88 in Brisbane, Australia.

1983 was a highpoint in his singing career when, in partnership with Jim Mageean, he was a winner of the Intervision Song Contest in Rostock, GDR, with a medley of English sea shanties. In 1987, Johnny was invited by the government of the GDR to appear at the Berlin Shanty Festival which was organised to celebrate 750 years of that city.

Regular forays into Europe continue to be part of Johnny's yearly itinerary. He has been a main guest at the annual Liereliet at the Strontrace in Workum, Netherlands for the past 21 years. He also sings regularly in Belgium, Brittany, Germany, Holland, Poland and France.

Nearer home, he has been acclaimed as a shanty supremo at many of the Cutty Sark Tall Ships Race venues, including Southampton, Liverpool and Newcastle upon Tyne, and other U.K. maritime festivals at Hull, Lancaster, Bristol, Dundee, Maldon, Portsmouth, Gosport, Greenwich and Chatham.

Baggyrinkle (Wales)

The group currently consists of nine members, (eight performing and one female to keep the boys in order!) who come from all walks of life and have been brought together by their love of folk music with the emphasis on maritime material, of course.

Most of the Baggies’ repertoire is traditional, although contemporary songs also feature – some of them penned by group members Dave Robinson & Andrew McKay – and Welsh language songs are also beginning to make an appearance.

Baggyrinkle was formed in April 1994 with the initial role of hosting the Swansea Maritime & Shanty Festival.  The group has since represented their city at its Cockles & Celts Festival.  Swansea is twinned with Mannheim and the crew was invited to the German city to provide entertainment at their prestigious International Rowing Regatta on the Rhine.

The Baggies became the resident group at the popular shanty session of the Pontardawe International Music Festival.  They have, in their time, performed at most of the major shanty festivals in the United Kingdom, Brittany and Holland and more recently America.  The repertoire naturally features shanties and songs of the sea but the lads also have a collection of drinking songs, which come in handy as they are often called upon to sing at Beer Festivals.  They also have a wealth of material relating to the mining history.  The group was invited to perform at a special event commemorating in word & song, the passing of the mining Industry, both in Wales and in the rest of the UK.

Pat Speight (Ireland)
Storyteller/Seanchai - Pat Speight is one of Ireland's best known Storytellers, carrying on the timeless art and oral tradition of storytelling for young and old. Living in Cork where he is a member of the local Yarnspinning group. Pat was appointed 1^st Storyteller in Residence to Cork County Council and has travelled far and wide as featured Storyteller at many festivals.

Pat specialises in traditional Irish Tales, Folk Tales from the fireplaces of Ireland. Pat has stories to make you laugh to make you cry and to scare and cheer, stories about Animals and Birds, Kings and Warriors, Saints and Sinners, Witches and Magicians, Pickpockets and Ghosts, Fairies and Mermaids and Mythical, Mystical characters that inspire and captivate the imagination.

Tom Munnelly (Ireland)
Collector/Archivist with Department of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin, Tom Munnelly has been collecting folksongs & folklore and lecturing on folk music extensively in Ireland for many years.  Munnelly is responsible for recording the most comprehensive collection of traditional folksongs ever compiled in Ireland and has contributed extensively to the Journal of Irish Music and other publications.