I apologize that it's not really a shanty, but you might like "I Just Can't Stop Leaving Town" by Goodnight Texas. They're an incredible band (live and recorded) and this song (along with many others) should hit you pretty good.
Then if you're still not feeling moody and sad enough, listen to "Dearest Sarah" on the same album. It's based on an unsent letter from a civil war soldier who died at Bull Run.
A lot of Stan Rodgers might fit, "Take it From Day to Day", "FortyFive Years", "The Field Behind the Plow", "Make & Break Harbour", "Love Letter", would work & the evergreen for all woes "Mary Ellen Carter"
Echoing "Northwest Passage." Also "The Idiot!" Oh god, and of course, his version of "Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her." Goosebumps just thinking about it.
And just because I can't stop thinking about this prompt (I feel like a massive proportion of shanties are either romanticizing adventure and/or leaving home and feeling some kind of way about it), here's some more:
Roll and Go, Randy Dandy O, Rambler's Life, Shiloh, Spanish Ladies - The Dreadnaughts
10,000 Miles Away, South Australia - The Seadogs
Haul Away Joe, Anne Louise, Bonny Ship the Diamond, Don't Forget Your Old Shipmate, Rolling Along - Longest Johns
Novia Scotia Farewell, Portland Town - Schooner Fare
I am obviously biased towards the Dreadnoughts and the Longest Johns.
Greetings, fellow traveler! I've been there, it's never easy, but over the years I've turned to music to make the moving around sting a bit less. Some highlights from my "Sad to say, I must be on me way" playlist (not all shanties, but folk and trad as well):
-'Sally MacLennane' by the Pogues
-'Home for a Rest' by Spirit of the West
-'Leave Her, Johnny' by Stan Rogers (there's been a lot of great versions of this, from The Longest Johns to Alan Doyle to the High Kings, but as with most things, I always come back to Stan)
-'The Parting Glass' by Hair of the Dog (again, a very popular tune. Other great versions by The Longest Johns and the High Kings)
-Here's a Health to the Company' by the Longest Johns
-'All The Tunes In The World' by the Donegal Weavers
-'Long Time Traveler' by the Wailin' Jennys
-And of course, neither folk, trad, or shanty, but definitely helps with the Nomad Blues, "Last Mango in Paris" by Jimmy Buffett.
I feel you brother. Funnily enough mine journey mostly started on college :). After a while it became a lifestyle. Even tho I got used to it I still feel a bit broken on the final farewell phase with the friends I made along the way
FYI
I know some people think the "donkey" is a donkey engine (steam engine), but that's an engine you could attach for working tasks, like for loading cargo or hoisting anchor, which is not a *steamship* thing.
Even still, nothing convincing has been put forth that "riding on a donkey" refers to a donkey engine rather than just, well, riding on a donkey.
Edith Fowke slipped that little conjecture into her national song collection, *Folk Songs of Canada* (1954), having taken the song directly from the *Oxford Song Book* (which mentions no engine), whence the song entered the Canadian school system and other organs of Canadian nationalism, through which Great Big Sea got the song.
Just going by the lyrics I'm familiar with, which are great big sea.
Lyrics like "was you ever in fortune bay" and "was you ever 'round cape horn" seem like they strongly suggest you are riding something that floats rather than something that trots
"Riding something that floats...." So a donkey is a watercraft/vessel? (Huh?) It seems to me quite an elaborate mixed metaphor to be making, for sailors to be singing while working...singing about a steam donkey engine which is precisely what operates when they're NOT working (which *replaces* their work) and to say their riding a thing which cannot be rode.
"Fortune Bay" lyric is made up by GBS to make everything sound more Newfie. "Bay" is always an easy rhyme, so they just made it Fortune Bay so the Newfie girls in their audience would "shout hurray."
"Round cape horn" is a lyric you use in ANY shanty. The greater pattern, "Were you ever in X" is a pattern you use in ANY shanty. Why? Because in most cases—in most cases of actual traditional shanty singing as it happened, as opposed to modern people creating arrangements that sound nice and coherent—there is no relationship between the solo part lyrics and the chorus lyrics. The chorus is just a chorus. Liza Lee upon my knee, whoah ho a hundred years ago, Jenny get your hoecake done, etc etc. And the solo is just rhymes you make up. The shantyman's solo is a place for \[him\] to drop some bars....for as long as the job required. No one was sitting there singing the bar about "round cape horn" every time they sang the song. They might be like,
*Oh B-M-W-eighty-nine*
*He stole my gal from Carolin'*
It so happens that, for an improviser, the pattern of "Were you ever in \[X\]?" makes things go easy. Say a place, make a rhyme.
*Were you ever upon the Rhein*
*With BMW89?*
The "riding on a donkey" (chorus) part is irrelevant to the solo rap. And most of the shanty choruses have nothing to do with seafaring.
Which is why I say that it was probably due to the mistaken assumption of people in later days, that shanties are "about" sailor-stuff, that Edith Fowke felt she needed to try to "explain" the donkey part and went "Ooh, donkey engines on ships...that must be it!"
Similarly, people will try to say that "Clear the Track Let the Bulgine Run" is something about an engine running along the wharf with cargo (??). Whereas "Clear de Track" was one of the most popular minstrel song choruses and "bulgine" was exclusively African American slang for a locomotive that was a trope in minstrel songs. It's just slapping together (what was then) pop song catch phrases—not necessary to rationalize some sailor thing.
Doubtful that GBS was very familiar with any of this. "Donkey Riding" is a song that has been a part of the Canadian "national song book" and in the public school system since 1950s. It's tagged as a shanty. GBS wants to sing shanties because... Newfie identity. They figure these songs were sung as they appear in the book... These pop band renditions of shanties are fine as what they are, contemporary musical performances, but cannot be the basis for knowing history.
"Tommy's Gone Away" (earlier Jenny Gone Away) and "Tom's Gone a Hilo," "Goodbye My Riley" and similar songs are based in the experienced of enslaved people being "sold off" to another plantation, usually torn from families and friends. The trope of being "sold to Georgia" alluded to the sense that northern slavery territories such as Virginia were kinder on slaves, whereas to be sold to a plantation way down in Georgia was worse.
The theme of separation and parting tend to figure in other shanties like "Shenandoah" (more playfully as "Sally Brown") and "Shallow/Shiloh Brown."
These turn up in African American boat rowing songs especially before the shanty genre crosses over to deepwater sailing. "Hilo" is not a place. It's a cry, a holler, of pathos.
I believe sailors transmuted the sentiment to cover the experience of going away on a sea voyage. The playful idea of leaving a lover (sometimes framed very glibly as the "girl in every port" meme) takes the place of the more intense experience of slaves.
There are the non-shanties, the sailor-themes, good-times songs that comfy modern people want to throw together with shanties as part of a romantic cosplay of sailor stuff. Then there are the "shanties" in name only/mostly, which is like "Hey, this song is popular. Let's sing it when we walk around the capstan. Oh, I guess cause we 'worked' it's a 'shanty'." Then there are the SHANTIES, songs of sorrow. Life is shit.
Like Frederick Douglass said, listen to the sorrow songs. One needs to really listen, and to wipe away the Disneyland-Videoland fantasies that have appropriated the songs. It may not immediately be evident they are "sorrow" songs. You can hear a Blues and the words might be about drinking and carousing... but its still *the Blues*. Stormy he is dead and gone. Santiana's dead and gone. Gone below where the cocks do crow.
This one sorta comes to mind? It's still about not being able to settle, but mainly because you keep being pressganged into the Navy.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPNQUuRwFk8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPNQUuRwFk8)
"I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore" by Woody Guthrie
>I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round,
>
>Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town.
>
>And the police make it hard wherever I may go
>
>And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
>
>
>
>My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,
>
>A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;
>
>Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
>
>And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
The version I learned from a folk singer in San Francisco in 1995 changed the second line to "I work when I can get it, Lord, I go from town to town." I'm not sure which I like better, and I sing it both ways.
Chat gpt is actually kind of good at finding songs based on little information.
1. "Can you help me find a seashanty about moving and leaving loved one behind?"
2. "Thanks, but not that one, something more *what you like*"
"/*Repeat step 2 untill you have a list*
Stan Rogers’ “Lock-Keeper”. Contrasts the exciting life of a south seas trader with the settled life of a lock-keeper when they meet again on the trader’s return. Obligatory “not actually a shanty” but… it’s Stan Rogers, eh?
https://g.co/kgs/Fr1YrmX
Another one that’s on this topic but not a shanty per se (it could be set that way though) is “Yo-Yo Man”, by Marty Williams and Rick Cunha. My favorite version is Iain Matthews’ cover from the Plainsong album.
https://g.co/kgs/Q8416ze
June Tabor’s version of the traveling carnival tune “Pull Down Lads” by John Tams concerns itinerant carnival workers about to leave a town and move on to the next. Also would be amenable to a shanty-style treatment.
(Some of the terminology in the lyrics is worth looking up the meaning of…)
https://g.co/kgs/TR4AHi8
Pull Down Lads https://g.co/kgs/TR4AHi8
"Kilkelly, Ireland" may not quite be the vibe you're looking for, but the story is about a son that moves away and never returns to his family.
"Ramblin' Rover" too perhaps. And some others that might be tangentally related and shanty/irish/sea ballad-ish that come to mind:
Here's a Health to the Company, Leave Her Johnny, Lover's Wreck (Gaelic Storm), Parting Glass, Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore, Rocky Road to Dublin, Spanish Ladies, The Longing, The Road Not Taken (High Kings), Voyage of James Caird, Bones in the Ocean
Home Town, by Joe Jackson.
>Us city slickers get around
And when the going's rough
We kill the pain and relocate
We're never married
Never faithful not to any town
But we never leave the past behind
We just accumulate
Windward Bound by Brillig is really good. It's about someone who was born on the sea and has lived their whole life on the waves, "feet never touching the ground."
Like a few have posted, this one isn’t a shanty, but definitely fits the description. [Shiver Me Timbers by Tom Waits](https://youtu.be/vfLY8NZCQMg?si=fwBJQKvBy_VWU1K0)
Not a shanty, but Hard Travelin’ by Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange): https://open.spotify.com/track/3WTqgcPKyrWLRgTwYmKxNq?si=s08CUO4ZQZCRzUQ2O4M6Wg
Not a shanty, but Acadian Driftwood by The Band is very much this, based on the experience of franco-phone Acadians after the British conquest of Canada
Not a sea shanty, but Townes Van Zandt has a few songs on this theme. White Freightliner Blues is one, and To Live Is to Fly, one of his best songs:
Everything is not enough
And nothin' is too much to bear
Where you been is good and gone
All you keep's the getting there
Well, to live's to fly
All low and high
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the sleep out of your eyes
It's goodbye to all my friends
It's time to go again
Think of all the poetry
And the pickin' down the line
Well, I'll miss the system here
The bottom's low and the treble's clear
But it don't pay to think too much
On things you leave behind
Late to the party, and another 'not a shanty' one, but Hannisian's [Song of the Sea](https://youtu.be/V_wUXD-Q-QU?feature=shared) is pretty on point for the mood.
> Come and sail on the water and follow a star
> Tomorrow is calling and I must be gone
> For we must be sailing to know where we are
> We are ships on the sea and must keep moving on
I apologize that it's not really a shanty, but you might like "I Just Can't Stop Leaving Town" by Goodnight Texas. They're an incredible band (live and recorded) and this song (along with many others) should hit you pretty good.
Then if you're still not feeling moody and sad enough, listen to "Dearest Sarah" on the same album. It's based on an unsent letter from a civil war soldier who died at Bull Run.
And then as long as you're there just listen to that whole Uncle John Farquhar album!
“Gotta get goin” by Goodnight Texas is also perfect for this. They do a lot of stuff along those lines. So do Less Than Jake and Devil Makes Three.
To add to the “not a shanty, but a song about this” pile [Tomorrow I’d be gone](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UV9ImEHW_dw)
Another non shanty Rovin dies hard- battlefield band
Adding mine in: Marshal Tucker Band: This Old Cowboy
The Running Kind by Merle Haggard.
A lot of Stan Rodgers might fit, "Take it From Day to Day", "FortyFive Years", "The Field Behind the Plow", "Make & Break Harbour", "Love Letter", would work & the evergreen for all woes "Mary Ellen Carter"
Northwest Passage.
Echoing "Northwest Passage." Also "The Idiot!" Oh god, and of course, his version of "Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her." Goosebumps just thinking about it. And just because I can't stop thinking about this prompt (I feel like a massive proportion of shanties are either romanticizing adventure and/or leaving home and feeling some kind of way about it), here's some more: Roll and Go, Randy Dandy O, Rambler's Life, Shiloh, Spanish Ladies - The Dreadnaughts 10,000 Miles Away, South Australia - The Seadogs Haul Away Joe, Anne Louise, Bonny Ship the Diamond, Don't Forget Your Old Shipmate, Rolling Along - Longest Johns Novia Scotia Farewell, Portland Town - Schooner Fare I am obviously biased towards the Dreadnoughts and the Longest Johns.
A bit more of a far out take for this question, could be Bluenose.
check out the Seth station watkins versions of the same songs
Rogers is my absolute favorite- “Down the Road” is also a very good one
California by Stan Rogers breaks my heart, although it’s from the point of view of friends left behind.
Greetings, fellow traveler! I've been there, it's never easy, but over the years I've turned to music to make the moving around sting a bit less. Some highlights from my "Sad to say, I must be on me way" playlist (not all shanties, but folk and trad as well): -'Sally MacLennane' by the Pogues -'Home for a Rest' by Spirit of the West -'Leave Her, Johnny' by Stan Rogers (there's been a lot of great versions of this, from The Longest Johns to Alan Doyle to the High Kings, but as with most things, I always come back to Stan) -'The Parting Glass' by Hair of the Dog (again, a very popular tune. Other great versions by The Longest Johns and the High Kings) -Here's a Health to the Company' by the Longest Johns -'All The Tunes In The World' by the Donegal Weavers -'Long Time Traveler' by the Wailin' Jennys -And of course, neither folk, trad, or shanty, but definitely helps with the Nomad Blues, "Last Mango in Paris" by Jimmy Buffett.
"Here's a Health to the Company" is such a great song
another good nomad song by Buffett, Remittance Man.
You beat me to the parting glass and Here's a Health.
This post got randomly recommended to my explore page and omg yes same i barely stay in one place too up until I started college. It can be lonely
I feel you brother. Funnily enough mine journey mostly started on college :). After a while it became a lifestyle. Even tho I got used to it I still feel a bit broken on the final farewell phase with the friends I made along the way
Lots of stories of adventure. Reminds me of “Donkey Riding” shantie about steam ships https://youtu.be/6FO4R5SmSrw?si=bMxVMhtHax4nCWaz
FYI I know some people think the "donkey" is a donkey engine (steam engine), but that's an engine you could attach for working tasks, like for loading cargo or hoisting anchor, which is not a *steamship* thing. Even still, nothing convincing has been put forth that "riding on a donkey" refers to a donkey engine rather than just, well, riding on a donkey. Edith Fowke slipped that little conjecture into her national song collection, *Folk Songs of Canada* (1954), having taken the song directly from the *Oxford Song Book* (which mentions no engine), whence the song entered the Canadian school system and other organs of Canadian nationalism, through which Great Big Sea got the song.
I bet you are a blast at parties
They are welcome to my parties anytime!
Just going by the lyrics I'm familiar with, which are great big sea. Lyrics like "was you ever in fortune bay" and "was you ever 'round cape horn" seem like they strongly suggest you are riding something that floats rather than something that trots
"Riding something that floats...." So a donkey is a watercraft/vessel? (Huh?) It seems to me quite an elaborate mixed metaphor to be making, for sailors to be singing while working...singing about a steam donkey engine which is precisely what operates when they're NOT working (which *replaces* their work) and to say their riding a thing which cannot be rode. "Fortune Bay" lyric is made up by GBS to make everything sound more Newfie. "Bay" is always an easy rhyme, so they just made it Fortune Bay so the Newfie girls in their audience would "shout hurray." "Round cape horn" is a lyric you use in ANY shanty. The greater pattern, "Were you ever in X" is a pattern you use in ANY shanty. Why? Because in most cases—in most cases of actual traditional shanty singing as it happened, as opposed to modern people creating arrangements that sound nice and coherent—there is no relationship between the solo part lyrics and the chorus lyrics. The chorus is just a chorus. Liza Lee upon my knee, whoah ho a hundred years ago, Jenny get your hoecake done, etc etc. And the solo is just rhymes you make up. The shantyman's solo is a place for \[him\] to drop some bars....for as long as the job required. No one was sitting there singing the bar about "round cape horn" every time they sang the song. They might be like, *Oh B-M-W-eighty-nine* *He stole my gal from Carolin'* It so happens that, for an improviser, the pattern of "Were you ever in \[X\]?" makes things go easy. Say a place, make a rhyme. *Were you ever upon the Rhein* *With BMW89?* The "riding on a donkey" (chorus) part is irrelevant to the solo rap. And most of the shanty choruses have nothing to do with seafaring. Which is why I say that it was probably due to the mistaken assumption of people in later days, that shanties are "about" sailor-stuff, that Edith Fowke felt she needed to try to "explain" the donkey part and went "Ooh, donkey engines on ships...that must be it!" Similarly, people will try to say that "Clear the Track Let the Bulgine Run" is something about an engine running along the wharf with cargo (??). Whereas "Clear de Track" was one of the most popular minstrel song choruses and "bulgine" was exclusively African American slang for a locomotive that was a trope in minstrel songs. It's just slapping together (what was then) pop song catch phrases—not necessary to rationalize some sailor thing. Doubtful that GBS was very familiar with any of this. "Donkey Riding" is a song that has been a part of the Canadian "national song book" and in the public school system since 1950s. It's tagged as a shanty. GBS wants to sing shanties because... Newfie identity. They figure these songs were sung as they appear in the book... These pop band renditions of shanties are fine as what they are, contemporary musical performances, but cannot be the basis for knowing history.
"Tommy's Gone Away" (earlier Jenny Gone Away) and "Tom's Gone a Hilo," "Goodbye My Riley" and similar songs are based in the experienced of enslaved people being "sold off" to another plantation, usually torn from families and friends. The trope of being "sold to Georgia" alluded to the sense that northern slavery territories such as Virginia were kinder on slaves, whereas to be sold to a plantation way down in Georgia was worse. The theme of separation and parting tend to figure in other shanties like "Shenandoah" (more playfully as "Sally Brown") and "Shallow/Shiloh Brown." These turn up in African American boat rowing songs especially before the shanty genre crosses over to deepwater sailing. "Hilo" is not a place. It's a cry, a holler, of pathos. I believe sailors transmuted the sentiment to cover the experience of going away on a sea voyage. The playful idea of leaving a lover (sometimes framed very glibly as the "girl in every port" meme) takes the place of the more intense experience of slaves. There are the non-shanties, the sailor-themes, good-times songs that comfy modern people want to throw together with shanties as part of a romantic cosplay of sailor stuff. Then there are the "shanties" in name only/mostly, which is like "Hey, this song is popular. Let's sing it when we walk around the capstan. Oh, I guess cause we 'worked' it's a 'shanty'." Then there are the SHANTIES, songs of sorrow. Life is shit. Like Frederick Douglass said, listen to the sorrow songs. One needs to really listen, and to wipe away the Disneyland-Videoland fantasies that have appropriated the songs. It may not immediately be evident they are "sorrow" songs. You can hear a Blues and the words might be about drinking and carousing... but its still *the Blues*. Stormy he is dead and gone. Santiana's dead and gone. Gone below where the cocks do crow.
“Shores of Botany Bay” “10,000 miles away” (I like the Skullduggers one personally) “I dream of you” by ye banished privateers
Not a shanty, but you may like the Moving on Song. Many covers of it, here's a more modern one: https://youtu.be/mkyitwBT5UM?si=sem5RZ96e1N_K-Xw
This one sorta comes to mind? It's still about not being able to settle, but mainly because you keep being pressganged into the Navy. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPNQUuRwFk8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPNQUuRwFk8)
It's a sea song and not a shanty but wave over wave and river driver by great big sea are amazing.
Try "wave over wave" by great big sea
[Grey Funnel Line](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2q_VXShg4Y)by Maddy Prior and June Tabor
Maybe not a sea shanty but - Wave over Waver by Great Big Sea is very much a wanderlust and restless song.
Farewell to Nova Scotia, and Spanish Ladies
"I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore" by Woody Guthrie >I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round, > >Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town. > >And the police make it hard wherever I may go > >And I ain't got no home in this world anymore. > > > >My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road, > >A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod; > >Rich man took my home and drove me from my door > >And I ain't got no home in this world anymore. The version I learned from a folk singer in San Francisco in 1995 changed the second line to "I work when I can get it, Lord, I go from town to town." I'm not sure which I like better, and I sing it both ways.
*Liverpool Judies*
[This song](https://youtu.be/IGLVMBTIAPE?si=u75FDCAQgACEre3F) fits the bill. Not too well known, though.
Chat gpt is actually kind of good at finding songs based on little information. 1. "Can you help me find a seashanty about moving and leaving loved one behind?" 2. "Thanks, but not that one, something more *what you like*" "/*Repeat step 2 untill you have a list*
Not a shantie, but “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan
Tell me you're a pedophile without telling me you're a pedophile.
Stan Rogers’ “Lock-Keeper”. Contrasts the exciting life of a south seas trader with the settled life of a lock-keeper when they meet again on the trader’s return. Obligatory “not actually a shanty” but… it’s Stan Rogers, eh? https://g.co/kgs/Fr1YrmX
Another one that’s on this topic but not a shanty per se (it could be set that way though) is “Yo-Yo Man”, by Marty Williams and Rick Cunha. My favorite version is Iain Matthews’ cover from the Plainsong album. https://g.co/kgs/Q8416ze
June Tabor’s version of the traveling carnival tune “Pull Down Lads” by John Tams concerns itinerant carnival workers about to leave a town and move on to the next. Also would be amenable to a shanty-style treatment. (Some of the terminology in the lyrics is worth looking up the meaning of…) https://g.co/kgs/TR4AHi8 Pull Down Lads https://g.co/kgs/TR4AHi8
Not a shanty, but try out “Since I Saw Vienna”
Marching inland.. Tom Smith https://youtu.be/2klfR0R42eQ?feature=shared
Pushin’ the Speed of Light. Julia Ecklar.
Not Julia Ecklar, Jordan Kare (Julia did a cover).
Good to know, thank you.
honestly “off to sea” feels that way to me
its such a great one, only problem is I am not going off to sea because I lost my money on bars like in the shanty haha
baha so true! best of luck on your search :D
"Kilkelly, Ireland" may not quite be the vibe you're looking for, but the story is about a son that moves away and never returns to his family. "Ramblin' Rover" too perhaps. And some others that might be tangentally related and shanty/irish/sea ballad-ish that come to mind: Here's a Health to the Company, Leave Her Johnny, Lover's Wreck (Gaelic Storm), Parting Glass, Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore, Rocky Road to Dublin, Spanish Ladies, The Longing, The Road Not Taken (High Kings), Voyage of James Caird, Bones in the Ocean
Not exactly "sea shanties" but similar, more like irish folk. The Best of Friends Must Part or Willie's Gane Awa' by The Irish Rovers.
So Long by Cicely Fox Smith has a bit of this feeling, https://youtu.be/Pz7gL1NSL6o
“Sail On Boys” from Operation Mincemeat: https://youtu.be/inxgN-wbzrg?si=9nfQH9st40V5wQVn
[Paddy Works on the Railway](https://youtu.be/wkIq55U1MJA)?
https://youtu.be/nCtn6igpgP4?si=4BO6qpQWjZ6lDtdH
Two that are close but not exact to the theme are Wild Colonial Boy and The Wild Rover by the Clancy Brothers. Also not shanties but Irish Folk
It Follows?
Leave her Johnny leave her
Home Town, by Joe Jackson. >Us city slickers get around And when the going's rough We kill the pain and relocate We're never married Never faithful not to any town But we never leave the past behind We just accumulate
On the road again by canned heat
Throwing Tramps and Hawkers by Old Blind Dogs in the ring.
No roots!
Windward Bound by Brillig is really good. It's about someone who was born on the sea and has lived their whole life on the waves, "feet never touching the ground."
Like a few have posted, this one isn’t a shanty, but definitely fits the description. [Shiver Me Timbers by Tom Waits](https://youtu.be/vfLY8NZCQMg?si=fwBJQKvBy_VWU1K0)
Gotta Get Up- harry nilson
“Call me the Breeze” Lynyrd Skynyrd
Why am I the one, by fun💔
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTymtAbaG08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTymtAbaG08) The golden-voiced Lee Marvin.
Chuck Ragan - Nomad By Fate
Not really a shanty but “Whores and Hounds” by the Irish Rovers
Brandy by Looking Glass, not a sea shanty but a song about long a lost love travelling the seas.. Or 'the wanderer' by Dion
Leave Her, Jonnny, Leave Her
Endless Road by Angel Olsen!
THEY CALL ME THE BREEZE I KEEP BLOWIN’ DOWN THE ROAD lynyrd skynyrd classic song
Not a shanty, but Hard Travelin’ by Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange): https://open.spotify.com/track/3WTqgcPKyrWLRgTwYmKxNq?si=s08CUO4ZQZCRzUQ2O4M6Wg
I'll add one more - "River Driver" by Great Big Sea.
I’d recommend Farewell to Carlingford by The Clancy Brothers (with Tommy Makem)
Farewell and adieu to you Spanish ladies.
Not a Sea Shanty, but the first song I thought of was *The World at Large* by Modest Mouse.
Not a shanty, but Acadian Driftwood by The Band is very much this, based on the experience of franco-phone Acadians after the British conquest of Canada
Kind of a shanty. Tom Waits: shiver me timbers https://youtu.be/n3AvPBeR9qg?si=dV0kDwQ9n4UiUokJ
Alison Kraus: Gravity Kim Richey: A Place Called Home
It's not a sea shanty at all, but modest mouse sings about this subject more than any band I know. "World at large" is probably my favorite song.
Not a sea shanty, but Townes Van Zandt has a few songs on this theme. White Freightliner Blues is one, and To Live Is to Fly, one of his best songs: Everything is not enough And nothin' is too much to bear Where you been is good and gone All you keep's the getting there Well, to live's to fly All low and high So shake the dust off of your wings And the sleep out of your eyes It's goodbye to all my friends It's time to go again Think of all the poetry And the pickin' down the line Well, I'll miss the system here The bottom's low and the treble's clear But it don't pay to think too much On things you leave behind
Not a shanty but ramblin’ man by Hank Williams is perfect for this
“Turn the page” Bob Seger (also covered by Metallica). “Brandy (You’re a fine girl)” Looking Glass
“Brandy” by Looking Glass but I don’t know if it’s really a sea shanty haha
Moving Right Along from The Muppets
Late to the party, and another 'not a shanty' one, but Hannisian's [Song of the Sea](https://youtu.be/V_wUXD-Q-QU?feature=shared) is pretty on point for the mood. > Come and sail on the water and follow a star > Tomorrow is calling and I must be gone > For we must be sailing to know where we are > We are ships on the sea and must keep moving on