Jerry Cronin
Tenor - Guitar, Mandolin, Penny Whistle

Jerry is a New Yorker by birth and a Virginian by choice. He started playing
guitar when he was eight years old and has added mandolin, banjo, string
bass, penny whistle and lost chord dulcimer along the way. He started
singing in church and began soloing when he was too big to be an altar boy
so they made him a reader/cantor. He honed his musical abilities at the U.S.
Coast Guard Academy, playing guitar with friends as a mechanism for
maintaining sanity. This is also where he picked up a love for shanties,
using the songs to work the sails on the tall ship EAGLE. As a member of the
men's singing group "The Idlers" he sang at New York's Carnegie Hall in the
Wagner Opera "Rienzi." Jerry is currently the "Old Man" of Dramtreeo, having
been with the group fifteen years.

Musical Influences: Paul Simon, Neil Young, Sting, Clancy Brothers and those
classical pieces they put behind silent cartoons in the old days. CD rack
contains everything under the sun and a few things from under rocks.

Greatest Musical Influence:

Instrumentally - John Fogarty "Who taught me to sight read music and about
jazz chord melodies, not that I get to use them much in folk music."

Vocally - Don Janse "Who taught me to sing into walls and listen to what I
was doing."

Favorite Musical Moments:

Opening the World Folk Music Association concert in D.C. with an acapella
sea song. It was unexpected and it worked.

Harbor furling the main on EAGLE using "Haul Away Joe" and making up verses
insulting the captain. He was below on deck with a bunch of Washington
dignitaries, and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Recording "Take Your Pay" and "No Man's Land" on our first album. The
playback made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

Songs:

Take Your Pay
Square Rigged Ship
Handspike Hash
Waterman's Song
Big Fish
The Mistress
Parts Per Million