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“In the morning gleam…”

To all appearances, we have the Rogers brothers, Stan and Garnet, and Stan’s son, Nathan Rogers, to thank for transforming the song from it’s likely fate as a period curiosity, and creating a song that remains both vital and haunting. That it is both vital and haunting rings especially true in the voice and guitar of Rogers’s son, who included the song on his 2004 debut CD, True Stories. Listen on Spotify here, or through this live recording on YouTube:

Nathan Rogers is a great talent in his own right, a singer-songwriter who has also developed skills in Tuvan and other modes of throat singing. Listeners long familiar with his father’s music will often comment that Nathan’s voice gives them the chills in its close resemblance to his father’s, but his tasteful rearrangement of his uncle’s work comes forth as well. The echoes in his finger-picking in the amplifier hearken back to Garnet’s “Jimi Hendrix” fiddle accompaniment. Nathan Rogers’ performance of the song was followed by other young Canadian artists.Although developing their own arrangement, Winnipeg-based artists The Duhks cited Nathan Rogers as influential on their approach to “Three Fishers,” which appeared on their 2006 album, Migrations. The Duhks add a layer of Celtic instrumentation of the song, evoking echoes of where the Western shores face the Atlantic, or perhaps the Irish Sea.

The bouzouki played on the arrangement included on The Once‘s 2010 recording of “Three Fishers” on their eponymous debut release also projects a Celtic flavor, with a tastefully restrained instrumental arrangement beneath lead singer Geraldine Hollet’s shining vocals. The song remains sad without devolving into sentimentality. With their home on the shores of Newfoundland, The Once’s performance again evoked for me a sense of coming from artists who, like Rogers, know this particular way life about which they sing. This was merely conjecture on my part, but it was decidedly their performance of the song that brought me back to it.

Listen on Spotify here.

“And good-by to the bar and its moaning…”

My intent in exploring this song for Labor Day was to look at a work that dramatized the hardships of one kind of working life. The “discovery” of the post for me, however, was that the song unfolded a variety of ways artists relate to the imagined working folks that they create through their art; or at least how we feel that relationship as listeners. Charles Kingsley wrote “Three Fishers” to dramatize the plight of working people, but did so only after his sermon about the issue ruffled some ecclesiastical feathers. For Rogers, the song expressed his sense of connection to the lives of fishing communities that were the home of his family and his artistic vision. Because of the chance conjunction of his recording and a tragic accident, art and life intersect yet again as Rogers’s career becomes tangled in my own imagination with the themes of the song.

Like outlaws, who often appear to be kindred spirits for the troubadours who sing about them, the fishermen of “Three Fishers” also serve as totems of resonance for singers, connecting artists and the subjects of their art. This resonance may not be about mortal peril, but it is at least the recognition that some kind of sacrifice is always made. All of this reflection on “Three Fishers” has animated my own meditations on my work (both paid and unpaid), and what it demands of me and my family. Lots of things are stirred up. Little is fully resolved. That’s probably as it should be.

This post also gives me occasion to express our thanks for those many folks whose hard and good work helps us here. This includes the folks at Sing Out! who have been carrying the banner for some truly important and vital music for decades, and do a lot to help us out every week. This also includes, of course, the many artists who take risks and make sacrifices to create works of beauty and meaning, and connect us across distance and through time.

Thanks for reading.