Stephen Kalmakis, KML intern, is part of a pirate-song a cappella group at his college. That's right--pirate songs and sea shanties sung a cappella! They also just love pirates a whole bunch. Recently, Stephen sat down with kml.com over some traditional pirate delicacies and chatted it out...  

Stephen, can you give us a little background about arrr.net?

ARRR!!! was founded in the spring of 1999 by Captain Redbeard (Jarrett Byrnes) and his first mate, First Mate Roberts (Sam Kusnetz) as a response to Brown University's ubiquitous, pop-song singing, a cappella groups. 

Better than heckling or just ignoring, the pirates Redbeard and Roberts decided the best way to deal with these groups was to catch them in nets, tie them up, and/or poke them with plastic swords in the middle of a performance, effectively clearing the stage for the more noble sea shanties - in other words, a pirate raid. When the pirates of ARRR!!! became an official group the next fall, it was only a matter of time before www.arrr.net became a reality.

Arrr! Next question: So have you kept the doings to strictly song-related pursuits? Is there any actual raping and pillaging going on? How's the scurvy count?

The crew is primarily a singing ensemble. Though, we drink a lot, too. Yeah, we mainly sing and drink. Often simultaneously. Coincidentally, I believe it is the drinking that keeps the scurvy count low (orange juice is a great mixer). That being said, several of the pirates – including myself - don garb taken from the set of that great Geena Davis film, Cutthroat Island ... and I'm not at liberty to say exactly how. We have also been known to break into dorms in the middle of the night and accost sleeping adversaries.

The raping is kept to a minimum.

Cool. That's good to know. It's clear that humor is a big part of what you all do--and that's fantastic. How important is historical accuracy to what you do—in terms of how you perform, dress, set the mood, etc. Do you have someone in the group in charge of such period detail?

We make no effort whatsoever to be historically accurate. The closest we come is probably with the songs, but then we'll throw in a verse from something like Guns N' Roses' Paradise City and historical accuracy goes to hell.

Great. Stephen, do people ever confuse your website--a source of online piracy--for a place for illegal downloading of music or movies? i mean... arr.net is online piracy, right?

Arrr.net is indeed internet piracy at its best and least illegal, but, as far as we can tell, no one has ever attempted to use it for illegal downloading... However, someone did use it to request that we sing at their wedding - and I find that a lot more entertaining.

So Stephen, obviously you will be graduating soon--as will most of the braintrust behind arr.net... what's in the future of this site and this group?

[Sipping from a stein of mead] Actually, this past year, the last of the original members finally graduated. It will be interesting to see what happens with the group, but I've got a good feeling the lust will live on. Every year we have a few dozen hopeful landlubbers audition, there is a pretty devote following (I want to call them ARRRgonauts. Parrotheads would be good, too, but that's taken), and several paid gigs ... so I think they'll do okay.

As for the website? As long as we can keep our server from crashing again (no small task), I'm sure it'll stick around at least as long as the group does. Maybe they'll be additions and amendments, it just depends on the ambition of our webmaster; though, being a pirate, don't count on it being too high.

You got it, Stephen... one last question--do you want to leave us with a favorite pirate quote or stanza?

I would be remissed if I didn't end by saying, simply, ARRR!!! "ARRR!!!