DS Album Review: My Druthers – “Comin’ Up 3’s”

Stuart Fensom began playing under the My Druthers moniker in 2012, singing labor songs, outlaw country, and Irish rebel music to the good people of North Carolina, Connecticut, and Oregon. Though he shelved My Druthers in 2015, Fensom continued to perform sea shanties for a number of years, until he decided to dust off his old project in 2024 and make things official with an album.  As any good sailor would, he called upon his oldest and most dependable musician friends from around the New England music scene to join him in his exciting new adventure, and just like that, My Druthers was reborn.

2025 saw the group trek their infectious energy to a myriad of Celtic, sea shanty, and maritime folk festivals, as well as pub sings and punk shows. It also saw them introduce their spirited debut album Comin Up 3’s, produced with Pete Steinkopf of the legendary Bouncing Souls. On Comin’ Up 3’s, My Druthers offers up their take on a series of classic sea shanties and rebel folk songs, reviving these timeless tunes with a healthy jolt of punk sound and attitude. Feisty and fierce, Comin’ Up 3’s will have you ready to raise a pint, throw your arm around your best buddy, and holler along to the timeless, poignant, and insatiably catchy tunes of My Druthers.

On Comin’ Up 3’s, My Druthers embrace the hearty and nostalgic sound of the folk and shanty genres across a collection of expertly crafted arrangements. One can imagine the group’s powerful, rasping voices shouting off the side of a ship into the salty maritime air or over the clanging din of a rowdy pub. Warm acoustic guitar and shimmering, plucky banjo glitter throughout several tracks on the album, topped by the lilting call or staccato pluck of a fiddle. A handful of sparing a cappella and percussion numbers, simple yet arresting, keep the record firmly grounded in its folk and shanty roots. The sound of fists merrily pounding out a beat against a table can he heard across several songs, a rich textural addition that evokes the unparallelled feeling of late nights at the neighborhood bar surrounded by cherished friends and excellent music. What can be heard loudest of all, however, is the sincere passion and enthusiasm that My Druthers’ have for their craft. 

Over the record’s fifteen tracks, listeners are invited to fall headfirst into a wild and folkloric world from which emerges a vivid cast of characters, from the Cape’s mischievous, unclothed girls (no doubt sharing their fishbone combs with the women of “John Kanaka”) to the whisky-happy Johnny to the dependable mule trudging along the Erie Canal. We are transported to places drawn in colours more vivid still – the relentless pounding of a railroad spike and slow-fading repeats of “we’ll all from the railroad” on “Old Moke” invoke the endless drudgery of unforgiving railroad or shipyard labour, as does the chanting refrain on “Tilbury Town”. The record’s title track spirits the listener away to a dim, smoky tavern in which they might find themselves dancing and spinning with a mysterious stranger, hypnotized by sound of a seductive and melodic guitar riff. Up atop the tallest wave in the high seas, the eerie “Born Once, Die Twice” calls to mind a caravel of seafarers steering their ship through cold, churning waters, chanting shanties to boost morale and gird the crew against foul weather or nefarious pirates.

But folklore and fantasy are not all that Comin’ Up 3’s has to offer. True to the Irish rebel and folk tradition where music often reflected and directly engaged with the politics of its era, My Druthers meet the current politically charged moment with heart, conviction, and a dash of harmony, resulting in a collection of resistance anthems both defiant and joyful. Class struggle against the economic and political elite is evoked on rallying cry “Bring ‘Em Down” and closing track “The Soldier and the Sailor, and famed criminal and murderer Christopher Columbus is appropriately skewered on anticolonial anthem “Christopher”. “Fvck ‘em all”, the sardonic protest parody of WWI war song “Bless ‘Em All”, is a tune so perfectly infectious it’ll have you standing on a pub table hollering the lyrics at the top of your lungs, providing us all with a bit of necessary catharsis in an increasingly uncertain world.

This is a record that will make you yearn for adventure. With tunes both haunting and buoyant, this New England music collective’s dynamic debut wholly embodies the timeless rebel spirit of traditional Irish folk and sea shanties. It is a must-listen project for anyone interested in the genre, and those newer to the sound will find themselves drawn in by My Druther’s clever arrangements and honest, sincere music.

Comin’ Up 3’s is out now on all streaming platforms for your deck-swabbing, pint-clinking, first-pumping enjoyment. Make sure to keep an eye out for the group’s upcoming Bandcamp page, where the record will soon be made available on vinyl.