The Band
About
We are Pressgang Mutiny, Toronto’s “delightfully unhinged and uniquely talented” shantymen. We are musicians dedicated to challenging conventional understanding of sea shanties from a place of deep immersion in their roots.
We’ve travelled to discover where this work-song tradition came from, who sang it and why, and what it still has to say. Along the way, we discovered that shanties share musical roots with hip hop, soca, dancehall and reggae. Those roots are an often-erased history that we have an opportunity to shine a light on.
We are tradition-bearers
We have worked to earn that responsibility by learning directly from those who came before us. We want our generation to contribute to the tradition and pass it on to people who will have their own ideas about what to do with it. That gives us plenty of room to experiment.
In Barrouallie, St Vincent and the Grenadines, we learned directly from George “Tall 12” Frederick and filmed a documentary about him and the young people carrying his songs forward. Having had the chance to learn from him, we take our place as the next link in that chain very seriously.
For us, that means making music of our own: four-part harmony, new lyrics and arrangements, and production that explores the connections we hear between these songs and the music around us. Our third album, Departure, brings that work into the studio with Toronto collaborators including Carl Harvey of Toots and the Maytals and veteran Toronto reggae drummer and deejay Sunray Grennan. We’re back in the studio now, recording our next album.
We are Richard Kott, Josh Ludy, James McKie and Stefan Read, and we love singing together.
Why It Matters
A Living Tradition
An encroaching monoculture threatens the local traditions we have spent years learning. We want to be a model for our generation of people carrying a living tradition: learn it properly, understand the responsibility of inheriting it, and have something to contribute.
Shanties are still widely presented as British sea songs. The contributions of Black sailors and Caribbean and African-American work-song traditions deserve far more recognition. They are central to our research, our teaching and the music we make with reggae and hip hop artists. These collaborations let us explore a shared musical heritage with people who know those genres from the inside.
On “Hill and Gully / Sally Rackett”, call and answer vocal lines with Sunray Grennan let you hear that relationship. Working together gives us new ways to arrange and sing these songs, and new audiences to share them with.
Passing the songs on is part of the same work. We teach through harmony workshops and community sings. On The Shanty Show, we talk with singers and researchers about the songs and the people who keep them going.
On Stage
Singing Together
Our live show puts that whole range onstage. Unaccompanied singing sits alongside fiddle, concertina and guitar, with beats and vocal arrangements developed together. It’s a high-energy, polished show with the singing at its heart, and we’re as comfortable in a late-night mainstage slot as we are leading workshops and pub sings.
We’ve toured across North America and Europe and performed at official showcases for Folk Alliance International and Folk Music Ontario. Our 31-show UK tour in 2026 included mainstage performances at Sidmouth and FolkEast, alongside appearances at Whitby and Shrewsbury. Further afield, we’ve played Paimpol in France, Bie Daip in the Netherlands and Port Pieśni Pracy in Poland, as well as Canadian stages including Chi Shanty, Fundy Sea Shanty Festival and Chants de Marins de Saint-Jean-Port-Joli.
Watch Us PerformThe Four of Us
Members
Richard Kott
Vocals, Guitar, Spoons
Richard is a lifelong singer, chorister and a cappella bass who also plays guitar and piano. In Pressgang, he’s often hanging around a low C having basso profundo fun, or leading a ballad about love and loss. He helps develop the band’s workshops.
Josh Ludy
Vocals, DJ
Josh sings and DJs with Pressgang Mutiny and performs as DJ Trulii. He studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
James McKie
Vocals, Fiddle, Production, Rhythm Bones
Juno Award-winning multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer James McKie produced Pressgang’s first three albums. He has recorded with Cowboy Junkies, toured across five continents and completed cultural residencies in Chile and Colombia. He holds an MA in Music and a BFA.
Stefan Read
Vocals, Concertina, Melodeon
Stefan is a second-generation folk musician and dancer. He sings and plays concertina and melodeon, performs with Sweet Felons All, and organises Another Bloody Folk Club in Toronto. He produces The Shanty Show.
Get in Touch
Booking & Inquiries
Want to book a show or a workshop? Write to us here.