We recently connected with Gaylen Smith and Allison Bankston and have shared our conversation below.

Gaylen and Allison, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

We’ve been playing together for more than 25 years. We met playing in a band, and we’ve been a couple for 23 years. Over time, we’ve done a lot of musical projects including an original funk band, jazz combos, 6-piece 80s hair bands, and many theater runs as pit members and actors. Music has always been a driving force in both of our lives, but for the last 6 years, we’ve concentrated on our duo act–the Sail Bums.

Once we realized we wanted to live aboard our sailboat, travel, and do music as our primary work, we knew we needed to develop an act that would be well received in the coastal communities. We also wanted the music that we shared to draw people into our lives and let them share in our experiences. Songwriting has been prominent throughout our lives, and we’ve always been interested in collecting others’ stories and sharing our own through songs. As we began traveling by sailboat, we’ve realized there were a lot of unheard stories that should be shared, as well as our own new adventures, which people really seem to enjoy.

This is also the first project we’ve done in which we have, together, complete creative control. We choose the songs we perform, the elements of our original music, the choice of instrumentation on recordings, the tone we set in live shows, and the feeling behind the Sail Bums brand. It’s been exciting and incredibly rewarding to watch it grow and to see people’s positive reactions to the authentic approach we’ve taken.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We were coming home from a gig one night, tired, and ready to be home. Home for us is our 37′ Endeavour sailboat which was anchored, at the time, about half a mile away from the yacht club in Wrightsville Beach, NC. A member of the local yacht club had graciously allowed us to bring our dinghy to his slip, so we could get to our show at a nearby pub. All of our equipment for every show has to fit on our 10′ inflatable dinghy, which serves kind of like our car between our sailboat and land. On this particular night, we were walking through the yacht club parking lot with our gear when we heard the struggling sounds of a drunk man saying, “I’m okay,” repeatedly. He was face down on the pavement, and another man stood above him smoking a cigar and silently staring down at him. The intoxicated man suddenly stopped shouting, “I’m okay,” and began trying to get up. The man with the cigar continued watching, not offering any assistance, as the man on the ground got one knee underneath him and stopped, unable to do any more. Cigar man took a big drag off his stogie, blew it out, looked down and finally showed his only sign of encouragement saying, “There you go, buddy,” in a cheerful tone. Within moments of passing the scene and trying not to laugh loudly, we knew the man’s unfortunate evening was our next song. Now it’s one of our most requested original songs at our gigs, with audience yelling, “I”m okay,” at strategic points.

We write songs about the things we see, the people we meet, and the experiences we have. As sailors and traveling musicians, we come into a new area, set up gigs at local venues, meet lots of fascinating new people, get to know them, and then write music about those those people and places. Then we go to another area for a bit and do the same thing again. Every person has a story. Every area has a unique personality. All sailors have adventurous tales, and we love sharing those stories through music.

Authenticity is extremely important to us. We are minimalists, and we’ve worked hard to pull ourselves out of the mainstream societal expectations to live a life that is uniquely right for us. That’s also put us in a position to immerse ourselves in this lifestyle and our music. We know how lucky we are to have that, and we’re grateful.

One of the things that sets us apart as musicians is the difficulty in transporting all our gear. Most musicians pull up to a venue in a car and just carry the gear into a building. We have to unload our gear from our 37’ sailboat into a 10’ long inflatable dinghy, bring that dinghy across a bay and into shore, unload the gear on land, and then, most of the time, walk to our gigs. We tend to book largely venues within 2 miles, so we can transport the gear on foot without relying on Uber or other transportation. We’re a bit of a spectacle in the anchorage and at marinas when we bring all our instruments and our sound system to shore on that tiny boat.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We’ve been sailing about 18 years. Most of that was in Maine until 2020 when we left on our cruising journey, living and traveling full time on our sailboat, Mollynogger. We travel up and down the East Coast doing gigs all along the way. We live mostly at anchor, meaning we rarely stay on a dock at night. We mostly anchor and stay on the move, coming into areas for short periods of time.

About a year into our journey as full-time cruisers, we hit a major roadblock and safety scare. We were on our way south from New England, and we arrived in Cape May, NJ in mid-December, expecting to stay anchored for a couple of days, waiting for some bad weather to pass. Our diesel engine started malfunctioning as we were preparing to leave the bay. After three weeks of replacing parts, diagnostics, and endless calls with experts, we came to the conclusion we needed a new engine. By this point it was after Christmas, and it was getting much colder. And then our heater died.

The temperatures were well below freezing at night–in the teens at times. Ice and snow covered the decks, and being out at anchor, the winds were quite strong. For weeks, even with a small propane heater, the cabin didn’t get above 48 degrees. We weathered blizzard after ice storm for nearly 2 months before finding a used engine, renting a truck, picking it up ourselves, and installing the engine on a closed marina dock in February. Normally, there would be a team of marina workers, cranes, and more involved in that process.

During the freezing and sometimes frightening ordeal, we had the option to leave Mollynogger, our sailboat, and head back to stay with relatives in Maine until the spring, but we refused to abandon her. She’s our home, and we worked for years to prepare her for this journey. We had to protect her, and we refused to quit. Looking back at that time still brings shudders to us both, but we learned so many lessons as well as realizing how resilient and strong we can be when needed.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Both of us have been part of the corporate hamster wheel, working full-time jobs that were overly demanding to the point of making us ill or unhealthy. While Gaylen was more easily able to let go of those conditioned constraints, Allison really struggled to remove herself from that perceived requirement. Shortly after setting off on their journey she took on a part-time remote job that quickly turned into nearly full time. She got pulled back into that soul-sucking atmosphere in which she was putting in extra hours, stressing over deadlines, going out of her way to please a boss, and pushing Sail Bums creative endeavors to the back burner.

From Alli:

“Our Sail Bums work was really taking off. We were hired as the resident band at a resort in Florida for the summer, and things were really happening for us. I realized if we could achieve this with me only working part-time on the Sail Bums work, imagine what we could do if I was fully committed. After nearly 2 years at that remote job, I gave my notice, and now concentrate entirely on the Sail Bums. It’s hard for me. I still struggle with it. I always feel like I need to be doing more conventional work for money or I’m slacking, and I’m constantly working to remind myself that when I spend more time on our art, the money is there. I just need to keep believing in what we’re doing and stay dedicated to it. Nothing brings me more joy, so you’d think it would be easy. But like so many, I’ve had decades of conditioning that you have to have a full-time job and you have to be getting a regular paycheck and benefits from someone. That pattern of false responsibility is hard to break. It takes bravery to break away from what society tells you constitutes your worth.”

Contact Info:

• Website: http://sailbumsmusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sailbums/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sailbums
• Other: https://thesailbums.wordpress.com/ https://www.patreon.com/sailbums