At Philly Pub Sing, everyone’s a singer and no one stays strangers

At the Philly Pub Sing, instruments are welcomed, but not needed. One needs only to bring a song. To sing. To teach by ear. Or at least to sing along.

Because at the Philly Pub Sing, there are no printed lyrics, no microphones, no conductors. But most any type of song will do. Sea shanties. Drinking songs. Labor songs. Camp songs. Folk. Blues. Celtic. Old-time gospel. Civil War tunes. Brokenhearted ballads. Pop. Country. Call-and-response songs. Verse-and-chorus songs. Even the occasional round.

Most everyone at Philly Pub Sings starts out as rank strangers, as the old Stanley Brothers standard goes. But everyone — and every song —is welcome. You definitely don’t have to be a good singer. Because, as the pub singers believe, the Philly Pub Sing fulfills a basic human need: It’s what the world needs now.

“For most of human history, people have sung together with strangers,” said Ben Fink, irrepressible organizer of Philly Pub Sing, which is held upstairs at Fergie’s Pub on the first Monday of every month, from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. ”It offers people an outlet for some basic parts of our humanity that often these days we don’t have the opportunity to express.”

Like the part that yearns to stand up, sober-or-less-so and unaccompanied, and belt out the medieval English folk song, “Hal-An-Tow,” or Dolly Parton’s 1980 smash hit about gender inequality, “9 to 5.”

“The practice of making music is an ancient practice — as old as fire,” said Bill Hangley, 56, a reporter and freelance journalist, musician, and regular Philly Pub Sing contributor from West Philly. “To get a room full of people whose only interest is singing for its own sake is a really special place to be. It’s not performing. It’s not an open mic. It’s participatory. It’s community. It’s collective. It’s a really hard space to find.”

It was a space that Fink, 40, a classically-trained baritone and community organizer, who grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, and has lived around the South and Midwest, found was missing when he moved to Philly in 2021. He had encountered pub sings in Minnesota and New York City, and loved them.

“I asked around, and thought, ‘Surely, this is the sixth biggest city in the country, there’s got to be a pub sing somewhere,’ ” he said.

Not finding one, he kicked off the Philly Pub Sing at Doobies Bar in 2023, before outgrowing several spaces and finding its home at Fergie’s Pub in 2024.

“Singing will save us!” bellowed Fergus Carey, Philly’s most famous Irish barman, as his eponymous bar filled for the most recent Philly Pub Sing.

A devoted following has formed around the monthly sing-alongs. Everyone from seasoned crooners to aspiring musicians to first-timers. MaryElizabeth Greeley, 24, a market analyst from Center City, led her first song a year ago (the rousing English folk number, “Let Union Be.”)

“My voice cracked, I was so nervous,” she said with a smile. But the community she found helped her through a rough year, she said. Over Christmas, Greeley and Charles Stockdale, 34, a friend she met at the Pub Sing, performed holiday hymns for Greeley’s mother while she was in the hospital. That night, songs like “Go Tell It on the Mountain” helped distract her mother from the pain.

“We just sang songs,” Greeley said.

There is no politics test at Pub Sing, though songs about workers tend to do better than ones about bosses.

“The Pub Sing the night before the election was electric,” Fink said.

At a recent Philly Pub Sing, Greeley sang a rousing rendition of the folk number, “I Can Hew.”

To get people going, Torie Berke, a 28-year-old Bryn Mawr grad, had started the evening off with the catchy camp song, “Get Loose! Get Funky.”

For his part, Hangley performed a soulful version of that sorrowful waltz, “Rank Strangers.”

“If you ever made a baby laugh, then you know what it’s like to be on the stage and lead people in a sing-along,” he said afterward. “That’s how pure it is.”

There were work songs, sea shanties, I-hate-my-jobs songs, 18th-century songs about keeping good company, a silly song about radioactive frogs, and even a song by Chumbawamba.

The Mohrs — Rick, 67, Chloe, 44, and Evan, 13 — father, mother, and son — come regularly from Mt. Airy. They sang a sea shanty, May Day song, and round, respectively.

Beaming the entire time, Fink sang the labor anthem, “Rolling Home,” whose chorus broke into a spontaneous, four-part harmony.

“Singing with a group of people from every walk of life, at the top of their lungs, that’s my vision of heaven,” he said.

Learn more about Philly Pub Sing at https://www.facebook.com/phillypubsing.