Arrr you experienced?

Mike Barnhill

It's apparently not difficult to create a holiday, and if we're going to designate entire days to celebrating things such as paper clips and corn dogs, why not Talk Like a Pirate Day? As the story goes, friends Mark Summers and John Baur, a.k.a. Cap'n Slappy and Ol Chumbucket, were playing racquetball and for reasons even they don't understand, began talking like pirates. They think it started when one of them reached for a fastball and said, "Arrr," which prompted an hour of pirate lingo and the realization that it enhanced the game. So the pair immediately proclaimed Sept. 19 to be Talk Like a Pirate Day but kept it low-key until 2002, when they contacted syndicated columnist Dave Barry to spread the word, because as they note on their Web site, "Dave is like a whole parade with brass bands and elephants." From there, the holiday caught on. To celebrate it, we've scoped out five songs that South Florida musicians wrote about the sea and/or pirates.

It would be negligent to discuss pirate songs and not mention Jimmy Buffett, whose tunes, concentrating as they do on women, booze, and boats, have a distinct piratical bent. Buffett, who spent years in the Keys and now lives in Palm Beach, is all about the seafaring life and all that accompanies it. "A Pirate Looks at Forty," a song released on his 1974 "A1A" album and more recently covered by Jack Johnson, concerns a modern-day pirate considering his past and contemplating his future. It was reportedly written about a bartender at the first place Buffett performed after moving to Key West. To hear "A Pirate Looks at 40," visit Myspace.com/jimmybuffett, click on "Albums" at the bottom of the pop-up player and select "Songs You Know by Heart." While there, check out "Son of a Son of a Sailor," the story of a guy who went to the sea looking for adventure, "expanding the view of the captain and crew, like a man just released from indenture."

It was Buffett who inspired Lake Worth singer-songwriter Keith Michaud to write a pirate song about ships and deckhands consumed with thoughts of women and beer. Michaud says it was the constant pressure to play Buffett songs, and his aversion to doing so, that drove him to write "A Pirate's Life." "I'm sure Mr. Buffett is an awesome guy," Michaud says, "but I guess the punk rocker in me would rather play Johnny Cash songs. After politely declining half a million times and disappointing people over the years, I decided to write a song about pirates that I could play in lieu of JB's songs. I figured his catalog was big enough that no one would notice, right?" To hear "A Pirate's Life," from Michaud's album "The Sun, Clouded Over," visit Myspace.com/keithmichaud.

Pirates are known for toughing out storms, and "Oceans," a song from Mike Barnhill's upcoming debut album, "The Secret Police," provides a good soundtrack for riding out a big one. The singer-guitarist, who moved from Portland, Ore., to Miami seven years ago, penned this introspective tune while awaiting a hurricane. "It's so easy to self-destruct in the face of a storm," he says. "This song was an attempt to not run away when everything was going wrong. Even in the midst of fires and wars and destruction and loss, we can be OK. Sometimes, our past is all that we have to save us and give us grace. My favorite line in the song is, 'Sea legs make islands of these hollow mountains.' Nostradamus called skyscrapers 'hollow mountains,' and I dig the idea that our experience can be used to survive even the most disastrous circumstances." To hear "Oceans," visit Myspace.com/mikebarnhill

B-Liminal, a Jupiter Beach-based surf, reggae and roots music band, celebrates the ocean's calming effects in "The Sea." "I lose myself/The sand's between my toes/The horizon, it reminds me of the truth," vocalist Bryce Rutkowski sings. "It's deeper than you/So deep into blue/All these things that may come to be/They're like the tide/They roll in and then wash away." Rutkowski says he wrote the lyrics on the beach during an overwhelmingly beautiful sunrise. "We interact with the ocean in so many ways, losing and finding ourselves again," he says. To hear "The Sea," recorded on B-Liminal's self-titled 2007 EP, visit Myspace.com/bliminal74.

To talk to Captain Spike of the Bone Island Buccaneers is to know that every day is Talk Like a Pirate Day for his crew. A recent phone message from him ended in total pirate talk and a wish for "fair winds and full holds to ye." In 2004, the Buccaneers released "Ole Zachs' Tavern, Historic Sea Shanties and Pirate Songs," a CD funded through grants from the NEA and the Florida Keys Council of the Arts. The band's songs include traditional sea shanties such as "All for Me Grog," which concerns getting drunk and spending all one's money on beer, smokes and women, and "Stowin' Booty in the Hold," a variation of the traditional "Stowin' Sugar in the Hold." The Bone Island Buccaneers, who perform at pirate re-enactments and pirate weddings, recently returned from the Treasure Coast Pirate Fest in Stuart and will celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day by giving elocution lessons Sept. 18 and 19 at Pigeon Key, near the seven-mile bridge in Marathon.

Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.