I sat in the hotel and smiled recalling how much fun we had recording the demo on set in my trailer. One of my fav terms is “Bully Boys”, which in sailor terms means the group of loveable rogues one might share a ship with (perhaps I’ve always likened a tour bus to a ship, and touring musicians to roving sailors, but that’s for another chat). I always loved the rhythm and call-and-answer of the song and especially the nautical terminology. I’d learned a bunch of Sea Shanties primarily from Sean, Bob, and Darrell in GBS and from masters like Fergus O’Byrne in St. I figured it should have a sea shanty vibe as the boys were on a ship. I wanted to be the one to write it, and successfully pestered the director and composer enough to give me a shot at it. The script called for the gents to be singing a song to celebrate, at long last, their leaving the wars in France and returning to their home in England. There was a scene in the film where Robin, played by Russell Crowe, was joined in the hull of a ship by his Merry Men, played by Scott Grimes, Kevin Durand, and myself. I’ll sing you the whole deal tomorrow.”īack at the hotel I sat to remind myself what I had written seven or eight years ago in my trailer on the set of Robin Hood.
“Man, I have this song I wrote for a movie awhile back, but honestly can’t remember it all,” I said and sang him the chorus which he liked quite a lot, and continued, “I’ll go back to the hotel and see if I can dig up my verses and the tune and stuff. I thought about it a minute and remembered the song Bully Boys. A big fan of Folk and Celtic music, he asked if I had anything he’d not heard that came from that world. He and I picked the ones we liked the most and considered if we had enough variety to make a well rounded album for a fella like me with influences and history from so many genres of music. Late in the Fall of last year, I met with Producer Bob Rock in Vancouver to review the stack of songs I had written for the project he’d agreed to produce for me and the band.
I thought I should tell the story of the Bully Boys tune as it is a bit of an unusual one, especially for the folk minded among us.
For those of you who have already pre-ordered, not to worry, you’ll get both songs as well. Just pre-order on iTunes and you’ll get Bully Boys along with the first single, Summer Summer Night. This morning, we released another of the tunes from the upcoming album A Week at The Warehouse.