Thank you to Matteo Putignano, Joachim Langeneck and Adriana Giangrande as well as The Journal of Natural Medicine for informing us that a recently described species of Sabellids (a group of marine worms) was named after Gordon Bok: Myxicola boki.

Read the entire paper here:

The forgotten diversity of the genus Myxicola (Polychaeta: Sabellidae) in North America: redescription of historical taxa and description of two new species: Journal of Natural History: Vol 58 , No 37-40 – Get Access

Thank you Klemen Breznikar and It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine for this interview.

“I’ve spent much time among maritime people, absorbing stories and experiences”

Read the whole article here: https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2024/10/gordon-bok-interview.html

Thank you to the good people over at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings for all their hard work preserving and sharing the work of so many musicians.

From Smithsonian Folkways Recordings :

Smithsonian Folkways has acquired Timberhead Music, the label of prolific folk singer, songwriter, and seafarer Gordon Bok.

Bok grew up around the shipyards of Camden, Maine, and spent his early years working on various vessels. There, he learned tunes, sea songs, ballads, and myths from watermen and the people he worked with. He began composing his own songs and stories, becoming a leading purveyor of music in the maritime tradition. “I was brought up to pay attention to what’s around me,” Bok shared with Folkways in a recent interview. “Rote on the shore, sound of gulls, wind, and manmade sounds, of course, show up in the music compositions.”

In 1986, Bok established Timberhead Music, an outlet for his musical and literary works, including albums with Ann Mayo Muir, Ed Trickett, Carol Rohl, Bob Zentz, and others. The fifteen albums in the collection join Bok’s earlier recordings on Folk-Legacy. They are once again available on major streaming platforms and can be purchased on CD and digital formats via the Folkways website, remaining in print in perpetuity for everyone to enjoy.

Learn more and explore the Timberhead collection: folkways.si.edu/timberhead

Sign up for their newsletter: folkways.si.edu/join-our-mailing-list

Photo by Monika Magee

Gordon was interviewed by Dakota Brown of The Self Portrait Gospel.

Of all the albums I’ve made, the ones that gave me the most pleasure are those that involved other musicians. Learning songs, practicing, composing songs, or larger works are all solitary endeavors and I have spent enough of my years doing that. I find it a deeper pleasure now to do them in the company of other musicians. I don’t care how accomplished they are, or whether they’re amateurs, or professionals: it only matters that they love what they’re doing.

You can read the whole interview here:

https://www.theselfportraitgospel.com/interviews/the-gordon-bok-interview 

The Part-Time Explorer has published a documentary about the famous Wiscasset Schooners featuring Gordon Bok’s recording of Lois Lyman’s song of the same name at the 14 minute mark. Watch it below or on YouTube.

Thanks to Thomas Lynskey of HFX Studios for including this song in the piece.

The first transatlantic “Tall Ships Race” (which the US neglected to notice)

~ for Nick A, and Ulla S.

    We came on the Spanish coast at Cabo Villano after a week of thrashing back and forth in the Bay of Biscay without sight of land.

    First, only the dropping breeze and our gear beginning to slat in the beam swell, and then from the murk ahead, a wild-sheered, yellow Spanish trawler swung fragrantly across our bows with happy shouts and, rolling hugely, made her way to the southard, leaving us staring at the calmly blinking eye of a lighthouse, dead ahead: Cabo Villano, off Ria de Camariñas.

    And then the long wallow for Finisterre, heavy sea and light wind, rolling like a tinker’s whore (mythical beast, that) under the grim hills of Facho, Pedro Martir, Ortigal.  Off Isla Onza we picked up the Group Flashing 2 of Isla Cies, off Vigo, and Cabo Sillero kept us guessing all the way down the black shore under the squall clouds to La Guardia.  

    There’s a certain quiet to this season that feels calming, to me.  People are driving less, for one thing, so there are times on the weekend when you can stand in the orchard and hear the hills behind the crow.  That feels like it did when I was young.  

 The witch hazel has been glowing dull gold since the beginning of March, and that can keep me entertained while doing nothing but looking – perhaps I’ve found the contemplative life after all…

    Over the year I’ve had time to design and build a little furniture, some things for Carol’s house, and to further other projects like editing and transcribing.  Walks, and a little careful music with friends, but Carol and I do the only singing together since the weather drove us all indoors.

  I’ve had a small flurry of requests for videos (music, stories) and Zoom-participation in musical events.  Carol and I have been making music together far more regularly, too.

    We’re also feeling even more connected to and grateful for all the friendships, earned or bestowed that the world has given us.

    Curiously, the carvings keep trickling out the door at a leisurely pace, even without any gallery showings.  I’ve been finishing up a few long-stalled pieces, rescued a couple from “death row” and made some new ones.

    A year into sketches, research, drawings and studies (carvings in scrap wood) on a commission from a West coast family, I’m ready to put tool to a lovely piece of mahogany – (with all usual trepidation, prayers, and incantations, of course.)

    I feel hope, this season, too, that these lost years and months have shown us what we are and can do, both good and bad.  

    I hope we can raise the energy to make the changes we need to, that we might live to deserve this lovely world.