Every Jam Heals the Bay: Annapolis Baygrass Levels Up

Somewhere in the middle of Little Feat's set on Saturday night at Sandy Point State Park, with the Chesapeake going pewter behind the stage and Sam Bush walking on to help close out the set, it became clear that the Annapolis Baygrass Festival had quietly changed weight classes. The festival is young enough that most of its audience can remember the first year, while the band on stage has been touring since the Nixon administration and is currently taking a lap it’s calling a farewell. That gap – a canon act on a mission festival’s main stage – is the whole story of Baygrass this year, and the festival told us all back in April, when it changed the wording on its own posters: “Every Jam Saves the Bay” became “Every Jam Heals the Bay.” While this may appear to be a tagline tweak, those close to the festival know that it’s more the refinement of a mission statement.

“Saves” implies a transaction – you buy a ticket, the festival buys an oyster, and the ledger balances – whereas “heals” runs both ways, between the Bay and the people standing at its shores. “I wanted to find a way to connect this mission with people who care about the Bay as much as I do, but maybe didn’t know how to help it,” said festival founder and CEO Ron Peremel. “I’ve always believed in the power of music to spark thought, emotion, and connection. I imagined all the people would need to do is show up, have a great time, and they would automatically be doing something to heal the Bay. And that’s exactly what happened.”

The lineup this year is the most obvious evidence of the step up, a testament to the efforts of festival co-founder John Way. Béla Fleck brought his My Bluegrass Heart sextet, co-led by Michael Cleveland, for a ninety-minute set that ran the bluegrass gamut and included an original take on “Rhapsody in Blue.” (Those not proficient in Gershwin may have thought they were teasing Phish’s “Bathtub Gin.”) Fleck also brought out old friend Sam Bush during his set.

Béla Fleck’s My Bluegrass Heart With Sam Bush

Yonder Mountain String Band was back for the first time since headlining in 2023, and Sam Bush closed Sunday with a marathon two-hour set, a day after sitting in with Little Feat in what half the field will tell you was the moment of the weekend. Feat is on what they’re calling their farewell tour, and they played like a band in their prime. Founding member Bill Payne will release his memoir, Carnival Ghosts, early next year.

Sam Bush Joins Little Feat For Four Songs

Beneath the canon, the festival kept doing the thing it has always been better at than its size suggests: putting young bands where people will see and appreciate them. Melody Trucks and the Fitzkee Brothers opened the festival, sandwiching a handful of originals between a pair of covers and presenting an on-stage case study of musical lineage. Mountain Grass Unit, the rapidly rising Alabama newgrass/jamgrass quartet, made its Baygrass debut and presented a slew of originals from their new LP, Appalachian Smoke. (They closed their set with a raucously jammed out pair of originals, featuring Cris Jacobs and Shadowgrass’ Nicolai Margulis on banjo.) Fireside Collective played their first Baygrass as well, featuring special guest Hannah Ramsey on keys, and delivering unique, bluegrass-tinged arrangements of Steely Dan’s “Peg” – specifically suggested by bassist Carson White – and Paul Simon’s “Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes.”

Jammy Buffet, who uses the Jimmy Buffett songbook as their jumping off point for improvisations, also played their first Baygrass, demonstrating that the road from Margaritaville to Haight-Ashbury runs through the heart of Kentucky. Tophouse, Scythian, and Sister Sadie also played their first Baygrass, as did Midnight North, led by Grahame Lesh and Elliott Peck. (Peck led an “and Friends” set last year after Midnight North had to cancel on account of a band member’s having a baby.) Baygrass also continued their Artists-at-Large program, featuring Allie Kral (fiddle), Alvin “Uncle Al” Lee (guitar), and Patrick Rainey (saxophone), three players turned into connective tissue, sitting in across sets all weekend rather than playing one and leaving.

The easy version of this review says a festival got bigger and lists what it booked. The more interesting question is whether a mission-first festival survives booking the canon – whether “Every Jam Heals the Bay” when the jam belongs to a band with fifty-five years of catalog and a farewell tour to sell. The answer was not on the main stage: it was in the house band.

Geraldine is the only act that has played every Annapolis Baygrass. Its frontman, John Bolten, wrote the festival’s theme song, “In the Water,” on request from Peremel. The song is on the posters; it’s at the water stations; Cris Jacobs even sang on the recording and played dobro on it. Bolten’s day job is Chief of the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory at NASA, and this is not a charming coincidence to run in a caption: it is the entire argument of the festival compressed into one person. The guy who measures water for a living wrote the song the festival plays while it raises money to clean the water; he has been on the bill since the beginning; and he is still on it now that Béla Fleck and Little Feat is too. The scale went up, and the center did not move.

He is not alone in it, either. Burle Galloway turned up this year with “The Secrets That She Keeps,” a new song that he wrote about the Bay after being inspired by his first Baygrass last year. This marks two songs written for the Bay, by two different artists, unprompted by anything except being asked, being around, and paying attention. Most festivals talk about community: this is what it looks like when the talk has been going on long enough to produce material.

Beyond the stage, Baygrass offers a variety of well-attended educational sessions. Uncle Al led a session on Sacred Steel, a gospel-rooted musical style born out of playing steel guitar in Pentecostal congregations; his band, The Lee Boys, are among the top in the genre that counts Robert Randolph as a member. Cris Jacobs partnered with Way for a session on mental health and wellness, another pillar of the festival’s mission; and Rolling Stone’s Garret Woodward and author Tim Newby led a session on the history of bluegrass, featuring Sam Bush and MGU’s Drury Anderson. The festival continues to raise funds for Bay conservation, split among the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, the Watershed Stewards Academy, and the Oyster Recovery Partnership.

Baygrass is currently in the running for the Event of the Year Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA); and they spent the year of their biggest booking sharpening what the cause actually claims, from saving something to healing it. After Sam Bush played the last note on Sunday, the field emptied toward the parking lots, past the water stations adorned with Bolten’s lyrics. Most people walking by did exactly what Peremel said they would: they showed up, they had a great time, and the rest happened while they weren’t looking.