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This is just a sampling of what Calico Jenny has to offer. Expect a full-fledged CD sometime later this summer (maybe in time for the Blackbeard Festival). Meanwhile, here are four new originals, plus Captain Brimstone (already recorded by the Pyrates Royale).

The players:
Edie Mackay: guitar, vocals, bodhran
Ellie Cattle: fiddle, harmony vocals
Janie Meneely: guitar, vocals, concertina
Paul DiBlasi: guitar, vocals

Ellie & the Swan

This song fell out on top a piece of yellow legal pad during a long car trip from Maryland to Stowe, Vermont. Really, somewhere north of New York it started spinning out of my head as fast as my pencil could write. It took a bit of tweaking to arrive at the version here: we added a chorus and tightened up the verses, which effectively changed it from Ellie & the Swan, the epic to Ellie & the Swan, the still-a-bit-long ballad. Edie Mackay sings it, I’m adding harmony.

While the pattern of the song sounds traditional, the theme is quite contemporary. The black-billed tundra swan has always been a winter visitor on the Chesapeake Bay. They would arrive and feed on the underwater grasses of the Bay bottom, effectively thinning the grass beds and allowing the already ripened grass seeds to propagate come spring. Now the tundra swan—as well as the seaweed beds—are threatened by the proliferation of the yellow-billed mute swans. The mute swans (native to Europe, they “escaped” from a Bayfront estate) remain on the Bay all year round, and while they are lovely to look at, they are enormously destructive. These “biker” swans are not only aggressive (don’t think about approaching a nest), they eat underwater grasses, pulling them out by the roots before they have a chance to seed. As a result, our already ravaged SAV (submerged aquatic vegetation) finds itself under even more pressure, and the tundra swans arrive finding little left to eat.

I’m hoping this magical song can generate interest in the tundra swan, and help build support for controlling the mute swan population, so pass it on.

The Fiddler Queen

Chelle Fulke, fiddlist extraordinaire, was looking for a song that she could sing with the Pyrates Royale, and this little ditty turned up inside my brain one day (Chelle has to look in the strangest places sometimes; good thing it wasn’t in my liver). The lovely Edie Mackay gives it voice for Calico Jenny, Ellie Cattle adds the fiddle and I chime in on harmony. Someone plays the guitar. Not sure who. And that is Edie, most assuredly, on bodhran.

Mad Jenny

So many songs tell of women left lonely, waiting for their sailor man to return. In fact, quite a few ladies I know have been downright jilted by their sailor men. I suspect this song will strike a chord with anyone who has been roughly used by someone she trusted. More power to her, I say, and that’s me, saying it, loud and clear, with Edie chiming in on the chorus.

The Wayward Wife

This song was written on the occasion of Laurie Savely’s 50th birthday, which was not so very long ago. We sometimes introduce it as the story of how our grandmother arrived on these shores. Edie and I change off on this; she does the “A” part, and I do the “B” part.

Captain Brimstone

The first time I heard Paul DiBlasi singing with the Pyrates Royale, I decided he needed his own song to sing, so I wrote this, just for him. That was before I knew just how true-to-character it was. Amazing! He sings and plays guitar; I’m in the background with the concertina.