Welcome to the Website of Tom Mason and The Blue Buccaneers!
Well, as is the case with most of you, our journeys have been put on hold until it's safe to go outside during the Coronavirus, most importantly for the well-being of our heroes in the field of health care and all the other fine folks whose work is deemed essential and are out there risking their lives. I will do my best to figure out how this internet thing works and update it for a chnage, but in the meantime we can be found at our facebook page (www.facebook.com/tommasonandthebluebuccaneers) and should you want to help us out in this time of no work, there are links to buy our CD's and a tip jar below. While you're sailing on the internet, please subscribe to our youtube channel at www.youtube.com/gasstationmason . Fair winds!
Sage and I are off to Great Britain in May and early June, playing the Filey Folk Festival, Brixham Pirate Festival, and Conwy Pirate Festival in Wales with Mikey and Steve, the Scottish Blue Buccaneers, and playing multiple duo dates from the southern coast to the Highland of Scotland.
Photo: Natalie Micola von Fürstenrecht
2019 was a great year with Tall Ships festivals on the great lakes, pirate festivals in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee, The Minnesota State Fair and the Pilgrimage Festival, and a lot of wonderful shows in between. We're beginning work on a new CD, and in October went into the studio to record a special song for Halloween, "Captain Blood the Vampirate". Here's a link to the download:
And here be a moving picture made by Sage O'Silver, complete with music!:
photo: Andrew Rogers
New CD!!
"If You Want to be a Pirate"
We have a new CD, written with young pirates in mind, entitled
"If You Want to be a Pirate".
We set out to write a kids CD that adults would appreciate, so it's full of humor, harmonies, stories, and solos, with all the mayhem and none of rum, murder, and sorrow that sometimes shows up in our songs. There are sing-alongs and dance moves, songs about a kraken, parrot, and an invisible crew (everyone needs one!), and a song or two about keeping the ocean and land clean.
It will soon be available for downloads in all the usual places, but you can order it here and now, and we'll include a sticker and tattoo when we mail it.
While we purport to be pirates, we seldom engage in actual criminal acts, and often survive be the generosity of others. With the advent of people streaming our music for next to nothing, it has become difficult to survive as artists. Here is your chance to invest in us, to be a patron of the arts, by means of a virtual tip jar. Thanks in advance!
A new year is upon us, and we're liking the looks of it!!
After some hometown shows in the Port of Nashville, we sailed to the oldest city in America for the Old City Pirate Festival in St Augustine. We had a brilliant time playing for the event this year and last, joined by fantastic pirate musicians, wonderful belly dancers, and some of the friendliest freebooters on earth.
Photo: Patience Becquet
On February 3rd we ventured north to the Kentucky Pirate Festival in Louisville. The all day event will featured plenty of pirate musicians, including our friends Drunk 'n Sailor, who've been teaching our song "In The Drink" to rum-diddy-rummies across the Bluegrass State and beyond, and we got to meet some other wonderful entertainers, including Band of Pirates and the Naughty Bits Side Show.
Photo by David Vail
Photo by David Vail
Photo by David Vail
Our calendar is filling up with shows, including Tall Ships Festivals. Pirate Festivals, Music Festivals, and a summer tour of England and Europe, so watch the shows page for updates, or like us on facebook.
Huzzah!! We had a most enjoyable 2017!
Tom Mason and the Blue Buccaneers started the year out with the Old City Pirate Festival in St Augustine, Florida, America's oldest city, and we had a grand time. They've already asked us back in 2018, so mark your calendars for the last weekend in January. The solo tour of the UK in May went wonderfully, our trips to the midwest to play Door County, Eagle River, and the Minnesota State Fair were a gas, and the Pilgrimage Festival in Franklin Tennessee was more fun than ever. We ended the year with some Christmas shows, and are finishing up work on a CD for young pirates, and starting work on our next.
A galleon of gratitude to you all!
photo Maria Shindeldecker
Photo Nate Dungan
The new CD "Pirate Party" is here! Pirate Party is the perfect soundtrack to, well, a Pirate Party, of course. It features five originals and eight old sea shanties that we've rearranged for our band and your dancing pleasure. "Blow The Man Down" gets dragged through a parade in New Orleans, a Bo Diddley-esque "Drunken Sailor" is perfect fodder for a mambo line, and "All For Me Grog" is a hard bluesy shuffle. It's the first appearance of "Talk Like a Pirate" on CD, we've re-recorded "In The Drink" and "Pirate Song (We'll All Go Down With The Ship)" and there are two new songs, "Pirate Polka" and "Pirate Party".
(Alex McCollough mastering our CD.)
Purchase Pirate Party here:
A Pirate's Christmas in a Cave!!
We had a fantastic time playing our Pirate's Christmas show at Bluegrass Underground at the Cumberland Caverns in December. We're planning on touring the show in December of 2017, so keep watch me hearties!
Summer 2016
2016 has been so much fun!, and included stops at the Eclectic Music Festival in South Pasadena CA, Billy Bowlegs and Carrabelle Riverfront Fest in Florida, Tall Ships Festivals in Bay City, Michigan, Door County Wisconsin, and Erie, Pennsylvania, and six shows the weekend of Talk Like a Pirate Day, plus house concert tours and band shows on Lake Superior. 
Photo: Larry Beat
Holiday shows
(Blue Buccaneers, Michael Webb, and Tuba Christmas at 3rd & Lindsley, photo: Greg Ketteman)
The holiday season was wonderful, and The Blue Buccaneers had a great time performing with Supe and the Sandwiches and (unmasked) with the Ornaments. We're thrilled to announce that next December we'll be back at the cave for Bluegrass Underground, and we're starting to work on a national tour of "A Pirate's Christmas".
| Christmas CD's Special |
photo: Deone Jahnke
Halloween was a blast! Thanks for all who came out to the Family Wash!
photo: Deone Jahnke
photo: Annie McCue
We had a great Talk Like a Pirate Day (5 shows!!), followed by a fun performance at the brand new Pilgrimage Music Festival, and a fantastic fourth trip to the Pirates of the High Seas Festival in Panama City Beach Florida! Here be a few shots from PCB by Dara Adams:
Here be the song we made sure to sing at every raid on September 19th:
Here's the link to share: https://youtu.be/U8_NlNSINbA
In other news:
Ahoy me hearties!! We’re back in America after taking “The World is Ablaze” to Australia, the Caribbean, and Great Britain, and here in the states. Thanks for your support, and we look forward to seeing you all soon!
The Blue Buccaneers at the Port Fairy Folk Festival
Sarah Busuttil, Tom Mason, Pete Pulkrabek, Silas Palmer, Billy Morrell Photo: Tad Auty
Photo: Tad Auty
The Blue Buccaneers grew as we added crew and welcomed back old friends in our travels, and along the way we performed for wonderfully enthusiastic crowds from the outback to the highlands and from Yorkshire to the tropics.
Photo: Tad Auty
The Blue Buccaneers on the Golden Hind, Brixham UK Steve Ryan Liddle, Mikey Maclennan, and Tom Mason with Captain Blackheart of Brixham
The Blue Buccaneers at Sugar Bay, St Thomas, Virgin Islands Leandria Lott, Tom Mason Pete Pulkrabek, Jeff Thorneycroft
The Blue Buccaneers at The Filey Folk Festival, Yorkshire, England Sam Kitchen, Tom Mason Mikey Maclennan, Steve Liddle
We were joined onstage at the Filey Folk Festival by the Ramshackle Shantymen and Monkey's Fist.
A Flock of Sparrows at the Brixham Pirate Festival!
We're so grateful to all those who pledged during our PledgeMusic campaign to help get us here. We love what we do (we'll spare you the woeful tales of failed transmissions, crowded hotel rooms of four pirates snoring, broken down rental cars, and scurvy), but in order to introduce our music to new audiences, we always need a little help. We don't have a record label giving us tour support (those days are long gone) but we do have an amazing community of fans and friends around the world, so we're hoisting our Jolly Roger to set sail!
The shows in Australia were so much fun, and we recruited a few Australians and ex-pats to be Blue Buccaneers for some of the shows.
Here are Blue Buccaneers Sarah Busuttil, Rick Plant, Tom, and Pete Pulkrabek on the Williamstown, Victoria docks.
Here are a few shots from a school show we did in Kyabram with Aussie Blue Buccaneer Sarah Busuttil:
We're very excited about "The World is Ablaze". The new songs were written and arranged knowing that pirates sailed around the world and their crews were international, and the music would reflect that. There are songs suitable for twirling fire, belly dancing, and of course, hoisting the glass and singing along. We've added African drums, Indian tablas, and Scottish bagpipes to our music. The cover was done by our mighty bass player and artist extraordinaire Jeff Thorneycroft. You can listen to samples on our music page.
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Sage and I are off to Great Britain in May and early June, playing the Filey Folk Festival, Brixham Pirate Festival, and Conwy Pirate Festival in Wales with Mikey and Steve, the Scottish Blue Buccaneers, and playing multiple duo dates from the southern coast to the Highlands of Scotland.