Hogeye Navvy. Click to enlarge.

Mac Bellner loves singing sea chanteys as long as her feet are planted firmly on dry land. "I am terrified of deep water. I don't even like to be on a boat on Lake Monroe," the singer said.

Bellner describes her husband, Terry, as a "river rat" who grew up hearing the traditional work music of laborers along the Maumee River near Toledo, Ohio. Both historians and musicians, the couple gathered friends made through historical re-enactments and formed Hogeye Navvy in 1987.

The band features Terry Bellner on concertina and Irish tenor banjo; Mac Bellner on guitar; Garry Farren on bodhran and percussion; Ken Langell on octave mandolin and guitar; Dmitri Alano on Highland bagpipes, pennywhistles and Irish flute octave; and, as of six years ago, Terry and Mac's son Johnandrew Bellner on Irish tenor banjo and mandolin. All band members also sing, save for Alano.

Hogeye Navvy made its name singing richly harmonized sea, lake, river and canal chanteys, but "navvy" is an antiquated term for a manual laborer, not a fleet of ships. The band plays regularly at bars and restaurants in Indianapolis and appears at up to a dozen festivals during the summer months.

Mac Bellner talked with Indy.com the Magazine about sea chanteys, how she began playing them and more.

Traditional Celtic music sounds the same to some people. Could you explain the difference between a chantey and, say, a reel?

A reel is a dance tune that is in 4/4 time but is not a marching tempo. It doesn't have words. We do lots of tunes that are in "reel" time that you can dance to. We play reels and jigs and waltzes and polkas. We also do ballads, drinking songs, and a good number of the pub sing-alongs.

How did a group of landlocked Hoosiers start a band playing sea chanteys?

Indianapolis is not landlocked. We are in the middle of a state that is bordered by the Great Lakes and has a major river on the other side, a state that is riddled with lakes, rivers and canals. And we have not one, two, but three ports of call in the state. We're not really landlocked.

A lot of this material was passed down orally. How do you find music?

A lot of our material comes from the collection of a man name Stan Hugill. His book, "Shanties of the Seven Seas" is like the Bible for sea chantey singers. The thing about chanteys is that they were work songs; sailors worked to the rhythm of the songs. Different work called for different types of chanteys. The Chantey Man sings the lead. He picked the songs and he sang the verse. The rest of the sailors picked (the song) up on the chorus.

--

See Hogeye Navvy

When: 9 p.m., Dec. 14.
Where: Fionn MacCool's Irish Pub, 8211 E. 116th St., Fishers.
Info: (317) 863-2100, www.maccoolsirishpub.com, www.hogeyenavvy.com.