Dread Pirate Robert the Barrrd

R obert Dorsey, a ’90 s rock musician turned pirate singer known as Robert the Barrrd , is now a frequent presence at Renaissance festivals across the region. He’s renowned for the unique vocal techniques he pulls from cultures around the world.

How did you start in performance and become Robert the Barrrd?

I was doing rock bands in the ’90s, and I started exploring the nuanced uses and quality of voice. That turned into doing some singer-songwriter stuff, repurposing my old rock songs, writing new arrangements, incorporating some guitar, flamenco, folk, into that. That got mashed up with my music theater background and became doing it in character. The mix of folk festivals, comic cons and adjacent kinds of conventions [were the venues] to do that type of thing. I ended up reaching out to the Ohio Renaissance Festival and said, “Let’s be the crazy guest band for pirate weekend that nobody’s ever seen.” That led to doing it at a number of regional fairs. Eventually, I thought if I’m going to be the bard of pirates, I might just be Robert the Barrrd.

What’s a typical act look like?

One of the callout lines I sometimes use is I play some of the greatest hits of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. So here’s to the 1770s, 1880s, and the 1990s. I play old traditional folk songs, cast numbers, folk music written in the 1980s but made to sound like it was Old English-y. I do have some originals—I have some traditional songs from Scotland and Ireland that I repurpose. But I also do things like cover “Shiver Me Timbers” from Muppets Treasure Island . I do a lot of Johnny Cash, covering Nine Inch Nails. My teenage son told me that sea shanties are all over TikTok, so I learned “The Wellerman.”

What might people not expect about your performances?

A lot of the other music that I do comes from traditions that are significant or sacred to the people that they come from. I wouldn’t perform those things publicly or for pay like doing the Tibetan deep voice chanting, Mongolian throat singing. I have learned those things at the knee of the people who are from those traditions. We realized very quickly there was a chance to do something really interesting and yet again, different, unique, and in every sense of the word, weird, for American audiences. Not something that most people have seen or heard before in-person.

What’s generally the reaction to these types of musical blends?

People are very drawn to it. When we start performing, we do some stuff at the beginning that is designed to slowly make people aware of the fact that we’re doing it, and to call them in if they’re interested. Sometimes people are a little startled and stunned. We’ll finish and there will be this pause, and everybody gets their breath inside of their bodies again and then goes, “Wow. That was amazing.”

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