Interview by Mark Lacey
When Björn Malmros and Peter Mollwing attended a pirate themed party on 2008, it sparked a collaboration that would breathe life into the historical legend of some of the 18th century’s most wayward seafarers. Known henceforth as “Bellows” and “Quartermaster Blackpowder Pete”, the pair would pressgang a number of their friends and fellow renegades, and Ye Banished Privateers were ready to set sail. Their journey has seen them navigate land and sea across Europe in recent years, performing traditional ballads and raucous anthems through the stories of marauders of the past, and through their traditional folk inspired pirate melodies. With the cohort’s sixth album ‘Til the sea shall give up her dead’ released in recent weeks, MyGlobalMind.com spoke to Bellows about their story so far, and plans for UK / European shows later this year.
MGM: As a pirate band, your shows are notorious for becoming a gathering of wayward marauders, with fans dressed for the part, and plenty of skullduggery. Audiences have been known to dance around the venues carrying a dead man’s chest, drinking rum, and forcing the uninitiated to walk the plank. It’s an immersive experience for sure.
Bellows: We’re a musical collective of pirates with over 20 musicians. We perform as a group of 10 to 12 people mostly. The idea right from the start was that when you go to one of our concerts, it’s not just going to be about listening to the music; it should be a whole experience for a lot of the senses. We want to present something that’s visually interesting, both in how we’re dressed, but also what happens on stage. We do a lot of acting and improvisation on stage. And we try to play melodies that are easy to learn, so you get them the first time you hear them and you’re able to sing along. We’ve always wanted a lot of crowd participation. We think that the audience is really the 21st member in our band.
MGM: The band has been going for some time, but it was originally conceived by a group of friends going out for a pirate themed night out together. Is the band still made up from that same group of friends, or has it changed over the years?
Bellows: It’s changed a bit over the years. That very first night, it was just me and Peter … “Blackpowder Pete”. He’s the guy with the long black beard. He’s sort of our poster boy. We met at this pirate party and he looked like a pirate, even back then. It was a pirate costume party. He had an amazing costume. I had a decent costume, but I had something that he didn’t have; I had actually written a pirate song. He had an inflatable rowing boat, and he had decided that he wasn’t going to join the party like the rest of the land lovers taking the gangplank, but he was going to board the ship from the side. So, with my pirate song and my pirate costume, I got a ticket on that ride. We rode up to the boat. I taught him that song, and we entered like true pirates from the side of the boat. After a couple of beers, we decided, hey, maybe we should start a band and try doing something more out of this. It took a couple of years and another party with more beer before we actually made it happen. For the first night of the band, we were five or six people, and before the night was over, we went out to drink more beer and we met some friends and we told them about our first rehearsal as a band, and three more people joined. Within a few months, we were up to eleven.
MGM: The music has a very percussive feel, and you’re using a lot of really old traditional instruments. When you first got together, were you all established musicians, or have you had to bring in musicians along the way?
Bellows: No, we were definitely not musicians. I started the band because I’d been to Ireland and just got into the bodhrán and the wooden spoons. I really wanted to play that in a band, but I wasn’t good enough. I started a band because, at least then I get to be in it. I asked Peter if he could play something and he said, no. OK. Can you sing? No, not really. OK, can you sort of growl or bark like a pirate? Yes, that I can do! So, that’s how it started. The first guys that joined the band were like campfire musicians; really good voices and also actors, which helped a lot. But along the way, as we have grown as musicians, the bar has been raised. These days, it wouldn’t be possible for us to bring in someone who didn’t play music; every newcomer in to the band has been a really good musician.
MGM: You’ve just released a new album called ‘Til the sea shall give up her dead’. How did you come up with that title?
Bellows: We were brainstorming a lot and we found this phrase in an old prayer. Peter was the one who found it. There’s one phrase in the middle of the prayer, and we put that prayer in one of our songs called ‘Sailmaker song’. We thought that it was a fitting title for the album because we knew it was going to be an album about heartache, loss and sorrow, but also about gallows humour. Even though things can be really rough and harsh, and conditions are getting worse for these sailors in the album, you still have to laugh about it. You still have to be able to have a drink and laugh about it in order to survive.
Bellows: I think we always try to tell individual stories about people, usually historical people. Even though we don’t name them, there’s usually someone that we’ve found in sources about a life that someone has actually lived. So, that makes it interesting, because even if the theme and the stories are similar, we’re talking about different people, and different lives and we’re trying to do that justice. But of course when we write about sailors, life at sea, piracy, and we restrict ourselves to mainly writing about the 18th century, a lot of times we come up with an idea and it’ll remind us of this song or that song. Then we have to decide if we want to take it in another direction, scrap it or just go with it.
MGM: Are there historians among the crew?
Bellows: Yeah, I studied history at university for two years and I’m a history teacher now. Peter studied history as well and he’s the one who really is the expert on 18th century history, especially when it comes to pirate and maritime history.
MGM: What age range are your students? And what do they think about you being a pirate?
Bellows: 13 year olds to 16 year olds. The worst year group. They’re completely uninterested in history. When they see my naked arse online, they laugh a lot. That’s usually one of the things I open with. It’s like, OK, my name is Bjorn, I’m this many years old, I live here and in my spare time I’m also a pirate musician and almost 2 million people have seen my arse online. That’s literally my opening phrase. Then I have to show them the video, because I realise if I open with that, then I take away the ability for them to find it and go talking behind my back and start spreading rumours and stuff like that. So, yeah, it’s better to just be upfront with it. But they usually think it’s kind of cool and maybe a bit silly, and a bit cringe as well.
MGM: One of Ye Banished Privateers’ many strengths is the range of emotions that you’re able to convey. This is really evident on the new album right from the opener; ‘The Cranker’. ‘Waves Away’ feels like quite a sad song. And then, of course, you’ve got the contrast of ‘Raising your glass’, which displays the frivolity on ship. How do you go about capturing that storytelling feel and the theatrical nature of the concepts?
Bellows: Well, I think that’s one of the things we work with the most. But it also comes quite natural for us. When people think of pirate bands, they only think about the drinking songs or maybe some sea shanties from Pirates of the Caribbean or something. But it’s very important for us to write stories that can be deep and emotional and touching and tragic, because those are the most interesting stories for us to tell. But at the same time, we also want to have fun when we play music, so we mix it up with a healthy dose of stupid drinking songs with way less depth to them. When it comes to the vocals themselves, all of us have this knack for acting and storytelling. For example, Magda comes from this singer songwriter tradition with traditional Swedish songs, which is very much about character re-enactments; telling a story not just through the words, but also how you portray it with your vocals. Some of the first musicians we had were actors first and foremost, and singers second, so that came very natural for them too.
Bellows: Yeah, a lot of times. But, one of the biggest issues we have is that we don’t have enough time to do all the things that we would like to do. We always say we’re going to do this in the future, one day we will do that. But when you’re running a band, we have to tour and play shows and then we have to rehearse and then we have to write new material and then we have to record the material. And there’s this post production process. Unless you’re a professional musician where everyone does this for a living, finding time to do stuff is really, really hard.
MGM: You’ve played quite a lot of shows in the last three years, and you’ve seemingly been much busier since COVID.
Bellows: We did play a lot of shows before COVID as well, but mainly in Germany and the Netherlands; that’s still our main demographic. But after COVID we did this tour together with ‘Visions of Atlantis’, a metal pirate band from Styria in Austria, and this was all across Europe. We realised that these guys could actually do a full tour, and we were definitely pulling people to the shows, so then everything just scaled up. We’re doing a lot of shows nowadays.
MGM: There’s quite a few bands now that would see themselves as pirate bands. Some of them have a rock edge. Some are a bit more folky. Why do you think that pirate themed music is riding a bit of a wave, if you’ll excuse the pun?
Bellows: Honestly, I think it started with Alestorm. Of course, there’s been other bands before them; Running Wild being one of the most prominent. But I think they grew this immense popularity and almost cult like status; you can even see that they actually distance themselves from it now. If you look at Alestorm from the start, where they really were a pirate metal band in a sense; it’s always been about the humour, and today they dress up in gangster suits or they have these Baywatch costumes and everything and the rubber duck. I think a lot of people got inspired by them. Then of course, when it comes to folk instruments, there’s always been folk metal. Then it directed towards Viking metal or maybe to the German medieval bagpipe scene. With the pirate scene, I think that opened up another option where you could have a violin or you could have a hurdy gurdy or a flute and combine it with these Irish melodies and play this sort of pirate metal.
MGM: You’re taking this new album out all across Europe. We’ve got to wait slightly longer before you come across to the UK again. But you’re over here in the summer for a festival and then you’re back out again towards the end of the year. Where are you most excited to be visiting?
Bellows: Well, we’re super excited about the Netherlands. The Dutch audience has always been fantastic to us, but every new country we go to is very exciting. Coming back to countries where we played before and people were really excited to see us, we hope that they come back this time and bring more friends so that we keep growing in those countries. The majority of our shows are in Germany, and we love playing in Germany. We’ve been playing there for more than 10 years. But it’s always nice to broaden our horizons and travel to new places. I think our playing in the UK started with a festival that we’re playing again this summer called Fantasy Forest. They have this policy to never bring a band back two years in a row, but we’re playing there for the third year in a row now, so I think it worked out well for us.
MGM: The last time that Ye Banished Privateers were in London, the band played at the Black Heart, which is a relatively intimate venue, but when you return at the end of this year, you’re playing in the Islington Assembly Hall, which is a big step up. Manchester’s ‘Band on the Wall’ is also a fabulous venue, and much grander than your last Manchester show. How do you feel about those?
Bellows: We love playing big stages. We were scared of them at the beginning, even being in such a large band, we didn’t know how to fill up a large stage because we were so used to standing shoulder to shoulder, cramming up together in these small venues. The first time we played these large stages was a bit scary. But nowadays we love it because that just gives us more space to move around and, and of course a larger audience that we can interact with as well.
MGM: You mentioned earlier than the band has 20 members and you rotate them. How do you decide who plays which shows?
Bellows: Most of the times that sorts itself out. It’s like, OK, we have these dates; which ones can you play? And we set up the event from there. Maybe we’re missing an element here or there, and we try to convince someone who turned it down to say yes, if it’s possible. Other times, we might only have three people that said that they can go do a show, and we need to shake some people around and stir things up to make sure that people prioritise differently. And sometimes when we maybe haven’t played a show in a long time, or maybe it’s a date that suits everyone or maybe it’s a really high profile show where everyone really wants to go.
MGM: Like when you played the Wacken festival?
Bellows: Everybody wants to play Wacken. The festival will say, OK, this is the crew size we can allow you to have. Then we have to turn people down. We look at the setting of instruments, so that the balance is good. And from there we look at the amount of shows that people have done because we do think you should be rewarded for playing a lot of shows, saying yes to a lot of shows, and keeping the band growing. So, if someone hasn’t played a show for six months, it’s like, I get that you want to play Wacken, but maybe you’ve got to do a few of the low profile shows first. It’s a tough decision. We want to be able to put everyone on stage that wants to be on stage, but sometimes we have to make those decisions.
MGM: With so many members, how do you manage to retain that sense of consensus around the band’s direction? Do you and Pete, as the founder members, have to make the decisions?
Bellows: Not me. That used to be the way maybe 10 years ago, definitely. But since then, we really strived towards having a more democratic approach in the band and more people weighing in, so that everyone contributes. Now we have a board that makes most of the decisions or at least recommends, and then usually we have a vote as well where everyone is allowed to have their say.
MGM: When audiences hear your new music for the first time, you’ve obviously got a range of different sounds and themes across this album. But which songs would you say best represent who you are and what you do?
Bellows: If you ask me, I would have to go with three. I would say ‘Raise a glass’ because that’s like the up-tempo party song that is featured on almost every album that we have. And we also have a lot of ballads. I would say ‘Waves Away’. I really like this. And then finally one of my favourites, which has a standard Ye Banished Privateers’ sound to it would be ‘Here’s to the Royal Navy’. That song is like, OK, times are rough; my life sucks because I’m in the Royal Navy and I get treated badly every day. But it doesn’t really matter because every time when I get back into port, I’m king for a day. I will spend all my coin at the tavern. I will forget all my worries and just drink and have a good time.
MGM: There’s a bit of a reoccurring theme here with drink. I thought the drink is very expensive in Sweden.
Bellows: That’s why we enjoy it so much. For the first couple of years as a band, that was one of the things that blew us away. It was like, OK, people pay us to go abroad and then they give us free booze as long as we keep playing. So, we were playing for hours and hours. We could do three hour sets, like acoustic sets in bars, and the bartender just kept the beer coming because, of course, they made money out of us. As long as we kept playing, people kept buying beers. It’s like, wow, we get to do this, and we get free beers.
Our review of the album is here:
Ye Banished Privateers will be performing across The UK and Europe throughout 2025:
29 May – 1 June: Mittelalterlich Phantasie Spectaculum 2025, Rastede, Germany
13 June: Kollektivet Livet Bar & Scen, Stockholm, Sweden
14 June: Skeppet, Gothenburg, Sweden
18 – 20 July: Fantasy Forest 2025, Sudeley Castle & Gardens, Winchombe, UK
26 – 27 July: Mittelalterlich Phantasie Spectaculum 2025, Bückeberg, Germany
29 July: DVG Club, Kortrijk, Belgium
31 July – 3 August: CastleFest 2025, Keukenhof Kasteel Cultureel, Lisse, Netherlands
5 September: 30 Jahre In Extremo Jubiläumsfestival 2025
5-7 September: MPS Luhmühlen, Luhmühlen, Germany
19 September: Theater am Aegi, Hannover, Germany
20 September: TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, Netherlands
21 September: Le Trianon, Paris, France
23 September: Islington Town Hall, London, UK
24 September: Band on the Wall, Manchester, UK
26 September: Forum Am Schloßpark-theatersaal, Ludwigsburg, Germany
27 September: Meet Factory, Prague, Czech Republic
28 September: Klub Studio, Krakow, Poland
29 September: Klub Progresja, Warsaw, Poland
1 October: De Casino, Sint-Niklaas, Belgium
3 October: La Rayonne, Villeurbanne, France
4 October: Neue Gebläsehalle. Neunkirchen, Germany
5 October: CC Weimarhalle. Weimar, Germany
7 October: Gewandhaus Zu Leipzig, Großer Saal, Leipzig, Germany
8 October: Arena Wien, Vienna, Austria
10 October: Live Club, Trezzo sull’Adda, Italy
11 October: X-TRA, Zürich, Switzerland
12 October: Meistersingerhalle, Nuremberg, Germany
23 October: Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
24 October: Admiralspalast – Theater, Berlin, Germany
25 October: Circus – Krone – Bau, Munich, Germany
26 October: Capitol Offenbach, Offenbach, Germany
28 Ooctober: Laeiszhalle (Großer Saal), Hamburg, Germany
For more information:
www.facebook.com/YeBanishedPrivateers
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