Every year, the Chesapeake Bay Blues Festival donates its sizable profits to charity. And every year, fans of the music return to the shores of Chesapeake Bay at Sandy Point State Park for the festival that features strong lineups and standout performers. So it comes as no surprise that the popular festival was recently awarded the Keeping the Blues Alive Award from the Blues Foundation based in Memphis, Tennessee.

     The civil rights movement raised its courage and renewed its hope on the music of faith that sustained black America through slavery, Jim Crow and oppression. The national Martin Luther King Jr. holiday makes this a weekend to hear that music loud and clear.       Two local African American choruses sing in Annapolis this weekend, both at St. John’s College.  

     Could it be 40 years ago?      Yes, it’s been four long decades since John Travolta’s sinuous moves in Saturday Night Fever made a generation believe we could dance our cares away.       You can revisit those heady nights of disco dancing this Saturday, September 9, when the tribute band the New York Bee Gees reprises the band that set the sound tone for the 1977 movie.

     Once upon a time, when the Brothers Osborne were just kids in Deale playing with their dad, you didn’t have to go farther than your local watering hole to hear them. Now they’re big time, chronicled in Rolling Stone and celebrated as Country Music Association’s Vocal Duo of the Year. Last year’s Dirt Rich tour sold out across America and Canada. 

     “I woke up and said, I can do this,” Onyx Linthicum reports of the morning he conceived the Southern Maryland Wine, Jazz, Rhythm & Blues and Funk Festival.      The D.C. native and self-help writer imagined a country event where folks could get their groove on while diverse local and national artists brought cool music to offset the August heat.

Sarah Petska says every year that it’s her last. And every year her friends remind her that she said that the year before. Yet here she is again, prepping hard for the 16th Chesapeake Bay Blues Festival.     “I literally work up until the Monday after the festival, when the stages are finally gone. I guess I must really love it because I keep coming back.”

The capital city music scene is thriving. Over the last decade, the downtown bar scene and plentiful local venues have bred musicians now flourishing on a larger scale. Reggae rockers Joey Harkum — whose band Pasa­dena honors his home town — and Brandon Hardesty — who inspired Bumpin Uglies — went from strumming on the docks and breaking into open mikes to selling out local venues and touring coast to coast. They’ve headlined festivals like Silopanna and Bay Funk and still play weeknight solo acoustic gigs at downtown Annapolis bars.

It’s the perfect summer evening: snow-white sand in your toes, waiters ready to put a drink in your hand, wind tickling the palms and a great band jamming out in front of you.

Trace your Maryland roots and you’re likely to end up in Ireland. That’s where musician Peter Brice finds both his roots and his gig. The great-something-nephew of 18th century governor James Brice — builder of the historic Brice House in Annapolis — the younger Brice wants to entertain you with true Irish music.     If you think you know Irish music, take a second listen, Brice advises.

There may be nothing quite as rousing as men in kilts wailing away on bagpipes — at least to Eddie McGowan.     A group of bagpipers walked into a bar, and he was smitten. “I knew I had to learn how to play,” says McGowan, whose appreciation of all things Celtic has grown into the Annapolis Irish Festival.     Back in 2010, McGowan talked a few bands into coming to Annapolis for a weekend of music.