Robert Palomo

Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Robert Palomo is an American-born musician who resided in the historic port city of Saint Petersburg, Russia for 26 years. Following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he and his wife, a prominent independent journalist reluctantly fled Russia with their two rescue dogs.

Although many of his original maritime songs may sound traditional at first, listening closer reveals bits and pieces that are strictly 21st century. For example, his capstan shanty Noah Could Not Navigate fires a couple of shots across the bow of creationism and climate change denial. His poignant Widows on the Shore imagines a shanty that women in seafaring towns during the age of sail might have sung. His rendering of Edward Lear’s classic children’s poem The Owl and the Pussycat as a sea shanty has proven a sing-along favorite with festival audiences.

In recent years Robert has performed his “new old sea songs” at the Harwich International Sea Shanty Festival (UK), the Baltic Shanty Festival (Åland Islands, Finland), and the Teign Shanty and Maritime Festival (UK).