"Actually, it [the ship] came out in 1972. I had just turned 20 years old that May and we spent the following month at Elektra in Los Angeles recording. As I remember, it was released the following fall. There weren't any folk clubs as such in Champaign, Illinois and the idea of Melshenker and Cowan playing dances is pretty funny. In reality, we were all playing at a coffehouse called "The Red Herring" which sponsored folk festivals. Reinwand and Hamby generally played together as a duet, Melshenker and Cowan usually performed solo and I was mostly playing twelve-string, but was the only person they knew who had previously played bass and I would borrow my roommates Hofner when somebody needed a bass player. Most of the songs at the folk festivals were original and there were some pretty good people in the core group of maybe 25-30 individuals who played in most of them and did weekend sets down in the basement the rest of the year. Notables among the regulars included songwriters Thom Bishop and Fred Koller, singer/songwriter Linn Brown and a young guy named Dan Fogelberg. For a fairly small city in the middle of the Illinois cornfields, it was some pretty high-powered talent. Melshenker and Cowan got together and wrote The Ship and then asked Reinwand, Hamby and me to help arrange and perform it - originally as a one-shot deal consisting of three or four performances at the Red Herring. It did well, so we eventually decided to oficially form a group and take it on the road to other college campuses and a few Chicago nightclubs. After the album came out, we played it another year or two and then retired the piece and switched to playing individual songs, mostly original and about 50% with acoustics and 50% electric guitars. This was a real relief as the album was very tedious to play and we were getting pretty bored playing it over and over. Looking back, it was somewhat naive, but we were pretty young back then and it was our first experience in a big-time studio. The band lasted another three or four years with a few personel changes and then broke up in the mid 1970's. Former members are spread across the country and I believe the only person from the band still playing for a living is Steve Reinwand, who later changed his name to Billy Panda. He's now a well known Nashville Studio musician with a string of album credits as long as your arm and he spends some of his time touring with Kim Carnes.
"I suspect we played The Ship live 40-50 times over about three years before finally retiring it and moving on to playing regular original songs. It was played in two continuous halves with an intermission, just as it is on the album and other than a few stray harmonies and some vocal double-tracking to thicken the blend, the album is very faithful to a live performance. We resisted mightily adding stuff to the album that we couldn't do live. This didn't thrill the folks at Elektra, as they leaned toward adding more "production", but we didn't want people walking out of a live concert and thinking that the live version didn't make the grade compared to the album. We did add Tim Scott's cello in a couple small spots. Tim played with Harry Chapin and Harry was recording during the daytime in the same studio we were using at night. Being able to borrow Tim for a couple nice fills was just too good to pass up.
"I think Elektra found us hard to deal with - partially because we were so young and clueless about big-time recording and because our resistance to over-producing (in our minds) the piece made it less sale-able on the street. Obviously, their main interest was selling records and getting the most commercially viable product out there. Our main interest leaned more toward getting a faithful recording of what we had actually created and there was considerable friction between the two viewpoints much of the time. When they sent us a copy of the final mix, we hated it and sent Steve Reinwand and Roger Francisco (our manager who owned a small recording studio) back out to L.A. to re-mix it and get rid of a lot of echo and other effects. We're pretty sure that doing so effectively slit our throats with Elektra as most of the pre-planned promotion for the finished album never happened. We had even made a music video (in 1972!). We had to join the Screen Actors Guild to do it and they had shots of us sailing around on the boat on the album cover set to music. I saw it once, but it was never used for anything that I know of and I think they then stuck us in the "tax-write-off" category. When the option for a second album came up, they weren't interested. It's hard to say which viewpoint was correct, but I don't think any of us ever really regretted sticking to our guns and trying to keep it as "real" as possible (of course, if I could now be living in a mansion with a swimming pool, I might have changed my mind...). I think The Ship was a decent first album for a young band. It's obviously by no means perfect or a landmark piece of music, but it's pleasant to listen to and offered something fairly unusual in it's time. These days, we could have cut it in a garage on a laptop and produced it ourselves, but back then, getting one of the half-dozen or so major labels to take the risk of plugging a lot of cash into a concept-album/folk-opera type of thing was a pretty decent accomplishment for a bunch of young guys from Illinois.
"As far as I know, Steve Cowan is still in California and works with computers, Steve (now Albert) Melshenker is also in California and does advertising for a living, Mark Hamby is in Seattle and has some sort of investment firm and Steve Reinwand (Billy Panda) is in Nashville, adding guitar and mandolin tracks to albums for folks like Kenny Rogers, Montgomery-Gentry, The Oak Ridge Boys and a bunch of others. I'm in Wisconsin and build fancy sails for sailing canoes (Is that obscure enough? - I was a sailor and now I are one...). I wrote a book on them a few years back called "Canoe Rig" and get most of my business from people who have my book. I still have three amps and a bunch of guitars in my office and play an hour or two nearly every day (use it or lose it) but haven't played with anybody or in front of an audience in 30 years. I did recently buy a small digital recording deck and have been playing around, recording little snippets, trying to figure out how it works. It has a "canned" drummer built in who is quite steady, though not particularly imaginative and I'm working around the fact that I've never been a particularly good vocalist or lead guitarist (it sucks when you have to play all the parts yourself, one at a time). But, it's kind of fun once you get it all together (and at least the bass lines are solid). There are a few samples here. Some are just one guitar or bass, a couple are early attempts to actually multi-track a song. There are mistakes, instrument buzz and other junk in them at times, but I'm slowly figuring out how the recorder works. I figure that if I can crank out 11-12 cuts per year I can send home-made albums out to my relatives for Christmas and save a bunch of money and hassle.....At this point, that's about all I have in mind as far as musical asparitions go.
Band Members
Steve Melshenker - 2nd Lead Guitar, Vocals
Steve Cowan - 12 String Guitar, Vocals
Steve Reinwand - Lead Guitar, Dobro, Mouth Harp, Vocals
Mark Hamby - Piano, Flute, Vocals
Todd Bradshaw - Bass Guitar
Tim Scott - Cello
Balboa
The Ship Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Balboa, with heart in his throat
Unbelieving his eyes, he started to cry
And the tears spilled down on my coat
Balboa, you traveled your journeys and won
Our country was rugged and naked and young
My adventures are mimicking centuries done
Am I crying the same tears as you?
Our country is dying in pieces and shares
We’re carving the map to the bone
The tooth of a serpent’s so dull when compared
To America’s daughters and sons
They’re stripping the veins from the breast of our land
Clear-cutting the green with hysterical hands
And left the indelible mark of a brand
When you cried, did you hurt through and through?
Can I be crying the same tears as you?
No, no, no, no!
I’ve stood on the coast of my country at last
Balboa, with heart in his throat
Unbelieving his eyes, he started to cry
And the tears spilled down on my coat
The Ship's song "Balboa" is a reflective and emotional tribute to the explorer, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who was the first European to discover the Pacific Ocean. The lyrics suggest that the singer has visited the coast where Balboa first beheld the Pacific and can empathize with the explorer's feelings of awe and wonder. The tears that spill down on the singer's coat are like a connection between the two figures, as if the singer is crying the same tears as Balboa.
The song then shifts to a critique of America's treatment of the land and the challenge of preserving the beauty of the natural world. The singer acknowledges the consequences of greed and exploitation as America has carved up the land and exploited its natural resources. The imagery of the "tooth of a serpent" and "clear-cutting the green with hysterical hands" suggest a sense of violence and recklessness. The singer feels the pain that Balboa must have also felt when he saw the land he discovered being misused and destroyed. The repeated refrain of "can I be crying the same tears as you?" underscores the shared sense of loss and heartbreak for a natural world that is being dismantled and ruined.
Overall, the lyrics of "Balboa" are a powerful tribute to the beauty of the natural world and the importance of preserving it. The song draws a connection between the awe and wonder that Balboa experienced when he discovered the Pacific and the sense of loss and pain that comes from seeing the land destroyed. The singer expresses a deep empathy for Balboa and suggests that his tears are a sign of mourning for a world that is rapidly disappearing.
Line by Line Meaning
I've stood on the coast of my country at last
I have finally reached the coastline of my own country.
Balboa, with heart in his throat
Just like Balboa, I am feeling anxious and fearful.
Unbelieving his eyes, he started to cry
Balboa was overwhelmed with emotion and shed tears in disbelief.
And the tears spilled down on my coat
Balboa's tears ended up falling onto my coat as well.
Balboa, you traveled your journeys and won
Balboa had taken many journeys and emerged victorious.
Our country was rugged and naked and young
The land we inhabit was untamed and new.
My adventures are mimicking centuries done
My own journey seems to follow a pattern set by those who came before me.
And I cry, but the salt burns a wound
I cry, but the tears sting as they fall on my injured heart.
Am I crying the same tears as you?
I wonder if Balboa and I are crying for the same reasons.
Our country is dying in pieces and shares
Our nation is disintegrating bit by bit and being divided up.
We're carving the map to the bone
We are dividing the land so deeply and thoroughly that it's like we're carving a skeleton.
The tooth of a serpent's so dull when compared
Compared to the tenacity and cunning of America's people, even a snake's sharp tooth seems weak.
To America's daughters and sons
This land belongs to all of the brave and resilient people born in America.
They're stripping the veins from the breast of our land
People are taking away critical resources from the fertile earth.
Clear-cutting the green with hysterical hands
People are destroying the natural beauty of the landscape recklessly.
And left the indelible mark of a brand
These actions have permanently marred and scarred the earth.
When you cried, did you hurt through and through?
I wonder if Balboa felt the same deep pain and anguish that I feel now.
Can I be crying the same tears as you?
I wonder if Balboa and I are feeling the same sorrow and helplessness.
No, no, no, no!
I deny the possibility that we are feeling the same emotions, because it is too hard to bear.
Contributed by Callie C. Suggest a correction in the comments below.