From left, Nyx Leibiger, Charlie Swerdlow, Fairen Stark and Zoe Pancic play sea shanties and folk music in their band the Shank Painters. Sophie Burchell / The Forecaster

Walking past Congress Square Park last Thursday evening, some Portland residents did a double take at the merry band of pirates gathered there. Not only was the crowd in the square clapping and wearing eye patches and felt pirate hats, but four performers in full pirate clothing were playing instruments and singing a series of sea shanties.

“It’s fun adding a little bit of the unexpected to people’s day,” said member of the pirate band Nyx Leibiger, who was playing the accordion.

Maine’s premiere pirate band, the Shank Painters, partnered with the nonprofit Friends of Congress Square Park to perform for the Sept. 19  Talk Like a Pirate Day. While this is the band’s third year celebrating the niche holiday in the square, it is far from the only day of the year they perform. The Portland-based Shank Painters play at pubs, Renaissance fairs, and educational events and parties across the state. During their busiest season of the fall, they perform about 10 times a month.

The group consists of Charlie Swerdlow (aka “Trouble” von Bellows), Fairen Stark (aka Faire B. Rapscallion), Zoe Pancic (aka Zetara of the Northern Isles) and Nyx Leibiger (aka Captain Nobeard). Dressed in bandanas, gold hoops and leathers, they play the guitar, banjo, fiddle and accordion and sing tunes including “Leave Her Johnny,” “Spanish Ladies” and the classic “Drunken Sailor” to enthused crowds. The band’s music repertoire includes both traditional sea shanties and original compositions.

The Shank Painters have released three studio albums, starting with their self-titled debut in 2018. Their most recent album, “She Shanties,” showcased songs about “the badass women of fact and fiction alike who defied gender norms, patriarchy and the oppressive restrictions women endured,” according to the band’s website.

The swashbuckling group started in 2016 when high school peers Swerdlow and Leibiger reconnected in Maine to play music, along with a third member who has since left the band. The pirate theme came out of the music they enjoyed playing and an excuse to have more fun, they said. A “shank-painter” is the small rope that fastens the shank of an anchor to a ships’ side, and was selected as the name of the band due to the pirate-sounding “shank” and as a nod to the bandmembers’ work outside the band as visual artists, said Swerdlow.

Stark was connected to the band through mutual friends, and Pancic joined the band after approaching them following last year’s Talk Like a Pirate Day performance. She offered herself as a fiddler, perfectly filling a vacancy in the band’s sound.

“I’ve been a violinist and a fiddler for about 15 years, and I also had just kind of started transitioning out of my full-time job as a tall ship sailor,” said Pancic. “When I moved to Portland, and I saw these guys play, it was kind of like, ‘Oh, this is my exact favorite thing that’s happening.’”

The band members said that their audiences really connect to their music, whether they are familiar with the tunes or are hearing the sea shanty genre for the first time.

“They’re real ear worms, and that’s probably why they’ve been able to be passed down,” said Pancic. “They’re very simple and repetitive, just for their function as repetitive work songs, but also it makes it really easy to learn.”

“I think it’s a communal experience,” said Swerdlow. “It’s simple, but it’s also a really interesting aesthetic world that is super fun to dive into, imagining the travel, the history, all sorts of characters from through the ages.”

Their pirates’ garb are not ready-to-go Halloween costumes but rather collected over time in true pirate fashion, said the Shank Painters. When it is time to perform, Pancic dons a knife and coat from her days being a deckhand on a tall ship. Other pirate-like clothing items were found in thrift stores, sewn by hand, or gifted to bandmembers by friends, they said.

“My boots, despite looking “pirate-y” are L.L. Bean boots, because we are pirates from Maine,” said Leibiger.

The Shank Painters have found unexpected benefits in their pirate aesthetic, said Leibiger. The uniqueness of being a pirate band has brought the band more recognition and memorability and gained them audiences in a variety of venues.

“We just thought it was fun, but it’s been just enough impetus to get us into steampunk festivals, the Renaissance fairs, some of these places that they really want you to be characters while still allowing us to just do folk music,” said Swerdlow.

The band has also worked with the Maine Historical Society, Maine Lobstermen’s Association and Walk the Working Waterfront.

“We’re getting to connect with all these organizations in our community doing things that really celebrate Maine’s maritime history, and because of kind of dressing like weirdos,” said Leibiger. “So, it all kind of worked out.”

While they do have pirate band names, the band does not think of themselves as having seafaring alter egos. Rather, they are playing as versions of themselves that occasionally just say “argh” more often, said bandmembers.

“With the amount that we play, it’s hard for it to be a separate thing that we just do sometimes. It’s pretty frequently that we are dressing up like pirates,” said Stark.

“I think most people who know anything about me, have found out eventually that I’m in a pirate band one way or another, and I think we each bring like ourselves to it,” she said.

South Portland resident Ann Helfrich went to a puppet show hosted by the Friends of Congress Square Park last Saturday and decided to check out another event there with her partner and 3-year-old daughter. The whole family donned the pirate accessories that the Shank Painters were distributing.

“It was our first time seeing them. They were really fun. Enjoyable and hilarious,” said Helfrich.

Ann Davis was visiting Portland from Moorestown, New Jersey, with her daughter. She was sitting in Congress Square Park when the band was setting up and decided to stay for the performance.

“I’ve never been to Portland before, and I think it’s a really great place to live, I really do,” said Davis. “It’s been really great trip here to Portland, this was a nice thing.”

The Shank Painters enjoy adding the element of the unexpected to Portland, they said. The band’s audience in Congress Square Park grew with each song.

“It’s nice having people just wander by and be surprised. It sometimes sort of feels like in those moments we’re part of what makes Portland a fun city. There is a crazy pirate band and that can just be something you stumble onto in your life,” said Swerdlow.