On Friday, June 23rd at 8 pm, the Mainstay in Rock Hall, MD, in partnership with the Maryland State Arts Council’s Touring and Presenting program, is excited to welcome the smooth jazz sounds of guitarist Ronny Smith and his six-piece band.

Baltimore-born, Grammy-nominee Ronny Smith is one of the most exciting guitarists on the contemporary jazz scene.  Smith’s playing brings to mind that of Joe Pass, Larry Carlton, George Benson, Wes Montgomery, and even 70’s Johnny Guitar Watson. His style quickly impresses the listener with the broad range of his influences – from urban jazz/ funk, to raw, edgy blues, an infectious rhythm and blues groove, and straight-ahead jazz swing. His 2013 release Can’t Stop Now hit #1 on Billboard’s New and Active smooth jazz chart and ultimately reached #25 on the Billboard Top 30. Renowned jazz journalist Scott Yanow wrote, “Guitarist Ronny Smith’s mellow tone, subtle creativity and ability to groove over catchy rhythms have made him an increasingly popular force in contemporary “smooth” jazz.” The veteran guitarist’s artistry and spirit of eclecticism has led him to build a loyal Mid-Atlantic following on his own terms, and gained a public recognition that has resulted in consistently sold-out appearances at the top jazz clubs in Baltimore and D.C.

Tickets are $20 in advance of the show and can be purchased online at mainstayrockhall.org. Phone reservations are accepted by calling (410) 639-9133 (tickets reserved by phone are $25 when paid at the door). The Mainstay is located at 5753 N Main Street in Rock Hall.

On Friday, May 5, The Mainstay in Rock Hall features the next installment of pianist Joe Holt’s monthly First Friday program. Joe is a highly regarded jazz performer throughout the Delmarva Peninsula, as well as being a sought-after accompanist and creative collaborator. Each of his monthly shows features a unique collaboration with different regional performing artists, frequently from a variety of notably different genres.

Joe’s guests for his May show are female vocalist Randall Butler and guitarist Jeff Davis. This pair of seasoned performers were on the very short list of music pros that Joe at one time entrusted with hosting one of his regular shows at the Mainstay — a high bar to meet.

The popular area duo, with Joe’s piano accompaniment will perform a range of “soulful” classic popular songs by Etta James, Elvis, Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, Bonnie Raitt, Billy Joel, Adele, and Lady Gaga.

Showtime for the Mainstay concert event is 8 pm. Tickets are $20 in advance of the show and can be purchased online at mainstayrockhall.org. Phone reservations are accepted by calling (410) 639-9133 (tickets reserved by phone are $25 when paid at the door). The Mainstay is located at 5753 N Main Street in Rock Hall.

On Friday, April 28, The Mainstay in Rock Hall is pleased to present the return of Baltimore area headliners, The Bumper Jacksons. The concert is tentatively scheduled to take place on The Mainstay’s new backyard stage, weather permitting.

The Bumper Jacksons revel in playing the sounds of authentic American music, from the sounds of New Orleans street corners to Appalachian hollers to neighborhood jump rope songs. Unafraid to scrap together sounds from forgotten 78 records, they pay homage to the traditions of vintage American music while fashioning their own unique, playful approach to the music.  Your first impression may come from the voices of jazz clarinet and horns and swingy rhythms, as they play Billie Holliday and Duke Ellington classics. But this masterfully gives way to the voices of fiddles and guitars, bouncy banjo-ukes, weepy country pedal steel, rock-and-roll electric guitar, jug-band kazoo and assorted percussion. Although their sound is solidly centered around traditional jazz, listeners are tempted to re-categorize their genre as early Western swing, bluegrass or country blues. The truth is closer to that golden time when American music was just fun, before categories like ‘blues,’ ‘country,’ and ‘jazz’ meant much of anything. They have been honored multiple times as the Mid-Atlantic’s “Artist of the Year,” and “Best Country/Americana Band” at the Washington Area Music Awards. As one music critic commented, “Their hellacious devil music will make you get up and dance!”

This Americana program is made possible in part with support from the Hedgelawn Foundation, the Maryland State Arts Council and the Kent Cultural Alliance.

Showtime for the Mainstay concert event is 8 pm. Tickets are $20 in advance of the show and can be purchased online at mainstayrockhall.org. Phone reservations are accepted by calling (410) 639-9133 (tickets reserved by phone are $25 when paid at the door). The Mainstay is located at 5753 N Main Street in Rock Hall.

On Saturday, April 22, The Mainstay in Rock Hall is pleased to present vocalist Karen Somerville in a retrospective show she has titled “Billie Holiday, Then and Now.”

Somerville is a favorite on the Eastern Shore for her stylish vocal arrangements and her ability to interpret and convincingly deliver a wide variety of musical genres. Her name has long been associated with the shows she has produced for solo and group performances, including programs of Gospel, Blues, jazz, and folk music. She is also well-known for her arrangements and appearances with the Gospel trio Sombarkin’ involving longtime friends Lester Barrett, Jr., and Jerome McKinney.

Karen has done back-up vocal work for numerous artists, including Stevie Wonder on his “Songs in the Key of Life” 2014 tour, and she has produced 3 albums: “Everyday Is Sunday, the heritage of a cappella gospel”, “Love Cures”, and “Our Stories, Our Songs”.

Karen premiered her Billie Holiday tribute in 2014 in commemoration of Billie’s 100th Birthday Bash to sold out audiences through the Mid-Atlantic region. Her revival of the program for The Mainstay stage pays tribute to some of Billie’s greatest songs, along with poetry and anecdotes about jazz’s First Lady. She will be accompanied on stage by guitarist Guthrie Matthews, Gerry Werner, on piano, Jeff Davis on bass, and Ray Anthony on drums.

The program also acknowledges other classic vocalists who have kept Holiday’s music at the forefront, including Abbie Lincoln, Nina Simone, Norah Jones and Madeleine Peyroux.

Showtime for the Mainstay concert event is 8 pm. Tickets are $20 in advance of the show and can be purchased online at mainstayrockhall.org. Phone reservations are accepted by calling (410) 639-9133 (tickets reserved by phone are $25 when paid at the door). The Mainstay is located at 5753 N Main Street in Rock Hall, Maryland. Its regular calendar of local, regional, and nationally touring artists features a live performance every week of the year (February through December) in a variety of music genres.

The programs of the Mainstay are supported with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Kent Cultural Alliance.

On Friday, April 7, The Mainstay in Rock Hall, Maryland presents another installment in its First Friday with Joe Holt concert presentations. Joe Holt, jazz pianist and accompanist, welcomes a different musical guest at each of his monthly programs. For his April show he welcomes Scott Robinson, one of the most versatile and wide-ranging instrumentalists on the jazz scene today.

Scott has been heard on tenor sax with Buck Clayton’s band, on trumpet with Lionel Hampton’s quintet, on alto clarinet with Paquito D’Rivera’s clarinet quartet, and on the formidable bass sax with the New York City Opera. On these and other instruments including theremin and ophicleide, he has performed with a cross-section of jazz’s greats. A respected performer in all areas of jazz, from traditional to avant-garde, Scott Robinson has arrived at his own unique musical voice which, as once described in a Northsea Jazz Festival program, “combines solid foundations with great daring”.

Scott has been heard numerous times on film, radio and television, and his discography now includes over 165 recordings. His four recording releases as a leader have garnered five-star reviews from Leonard Feather, Down Beat Magazine and other sources worldwide. The newest, Melody from the Sky (featuring the seldom-heard C-Melody saxophone), was recently the subject of a Wall Street Journal article by Nat Hentoff. A busy traveler, Scott has performed in some thirty nations, recently completing tours on five continents in a three-month period. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, at the Village Vanguard, at the Smithsonian Institution, and for the President of the United States. Scott’s group was selected to be the closing act at the Knitting Factory’s Sun Ra Festival in New York City. He was also an invited speaker at the Congressional Black Caucus Jazz Forum in Washington, D.C.

In 1981, he graduated from Boston’s Berklee College of Music, and a year later became, at 22, Berklee’s youngest faculty member.

Scott has been awarded four fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, and participated in a number of Grammy-nominated recordings.

Showtime for the live concert event is 8 pm. Tickets are $20 in advance of the show and can be purchased online at mainstayrockhall.org. Phone reservations are accepted by calling (410) 639-9133 (tickets reserved by phone are $25 when paid at the door). The Mainstay is located at 5753 N Main Street in Rock Hall, Maryland. Its regular calendar of local, regional, and nationally touring artists features a live performance every week of the year (February through December) in a variety of music genres.

The programs of the Mainstay are supported with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Kent Cultural Alliance.

The Mainstay, Rock Hall’s 25-year-old non-profit music venue, is delighted to offer the first show of 2023 in its ongoing monthly series “First Friday with Joe Holt”. Joe is a highly regarded pianist/ jazz performer throughout the Delmarva Peninsula. He is well known on the Eastern Shore for his imaginative, whimsical improvisations, as well as being a sensitive accompanist and creative collaborator, and for creating a space for all in the audience to join him.

Starting in 2016, and running for the next four years Holt was the host of the “Mainstay Mondays” series. Each of these weekly programs featured a unique collaboration with a different regional performing artist, frequently from a variety of notably different genres (not only other musicians from different styles of jazz, but also soul musicians, acclaimed rock and pop artists, Gospel, classical performers, and even an interpretive dancer). At the start of the 2022 Mainstay season, Joe’s diverse programs shifted to a monthly format on the first Friday of every month, and a new “First Friday with Joe Holt” series was debuted.

Joe Holt’s first show in his 2023 “First Friday” series is scheduled for March 3^rd. It features jazz pianist Allyn Johnson in a program Joe has titled simply “Two Pianos”.

Washington D.C. area music critics hail Johnson’s performances as “setting a standard for other performers to shoot for.”

A native of D.C., Johnson began playing the piano at the age of five and honed his technical facilities as the pianist in his uncle’s church. “I believe that my improvisational intuition probably developed from playing in that church,” Johnson has stated. He credits what Church musicians call this fluency ‘flowing in the Spirit.’

While Johnson received considerable local recognition early on, he never moved away in pursuit of the world stage. Instead, Johnson now stands as one of the most influential figures in the D.C. jazz scene, where he is known as both a performer who can consistently draw capacity crowds to venues, and an educator (he is the director of Jazz Studies at the University of the District of Columbia).

Showtime for the live concert event is 8 pm. Tickets are $20 in advance of the show and can be purchased online at mainstayrockhall.org. Phone reservations are accepted by calling (410) 639-9133 (tickets reserved by phone are $25 when paid at the door). The Mainstay is located at 5753 N Main Street in Rock Hall, Maryland.

The programs of the Mainstay are supported in part with funding from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Kent Cultural Alliance.

On Saturday, February 25, The Mainstay in Rock Hall, Maryland, with support provided by the Hedgelawn Foundation, is pleased to welcome the dynamic father and son team of Ken and Brad Kolodner and their quartet for a night of bluegrass, and old-timey traditional music. Their popular performances capture a unique, personal, and captivating soundscape that reveals a passion for traditional music. Their line-up, perhaps unique in the bluegrass culture, includes Ken on hammered dulcimer, Brad on clawhammer banjo, Alex Lacquement on bass, and multi-instrumentalist Rachel Eddy on fiddle, banjo, guitar and vocals (Rachel is a former member of the old-timey supergroup Uncle Earl). The arrangements include barn-burning twin-fiddle ragers, mellow meditations on hammered dulcimer, and familiar bluegrass stylings with solos on the breaks and three-part harmony vocals.

Ken Kolodneris regarded as one of the most influential hammered dulcimer players in North America. The hypnotizing groove of his percussive hammered dulcimer, along with his son’s rhythmic clawhammer banjo are at the core of their sound. In 2019, the quartet won first place in the Neo-Traditional Band Contest at the Appalachian Stringband Festival. They released their fourth studio album “Stony Run” in March 2020.

Concert appearances for the group include The Kennedy Center, The Birchmere, The Champlain Valley Folk Festival, The Helicon’s Winter Solstice concerts, several appearances on the legendary “Bound for Glory” radio show in Ithaca, NY (the longest running live concert-radio broadcast in the United States), The Common Ground Festival in MD, The Mountain Arts Gathering in NY, as well as numerous other live radio broadcasts, concerts and festivals along the Eastern seaboard from North Carolina to Vermont..

Showtime for the live concert event is 8 pm. Tickets are $20 in advance of the show, and $25 at the door, and can be purchased online at mainstayrockhall.org. Phone reservations are accepted by calling (410) 639-0331. The Mainstay is located at 5753 N Main Street in Rock Hall, Maryland. It’s regular calendar of local, regional, and nationally touring artists features a live performance every week of the year (February through December) in a variety of music genres.

On Friday, February 10, The Mainstay in Rock Hall, Maryland welcomes jazz drummer/ vibraphonist Chuck Redd and his guests in a program titled “A Tribute to Charlie Byrd and Bossa Nova”.

World-renowned guitarist Charlie Byrd filled international concert halls and played before royalty for decades. He was persuaded to perform at The Mainstay’s modest 120 seat venue in Rock Hall during its early years. Following that first concert, he frequently returned with his famous musician friends (and his young drummer and vibes player named Chuck Redd).

In 1962 Byrd released the album “Jazz Samba” with saxophone great Stan Getz that launched bossa nova in the United States. The album reached Number One and remained on the charts for 70 weeks. The recording predated the Getz/Gilberto recording of The Girl from Ipanema by two years (one of the best-selling and most recorded songs of all time).

Chuck Redd is a well-known performer at the Mainstay. He joined the Charlie Byrd Trio at the age of 21. To his credit are 25 European tours and six tours of Japan. Redd was also the featured vibraphonist with the Mel Tormé All-Star Jazz Quintet from 1991 until 1996.

Chuck will share the stage with fingerstyle guitarist Nate Najar, another familiar name to Mainstay audiences. Nate has been cited by music critic A. D. Amorosi as “the heir apparent to Charlie Byrd.” Years later, Najar would get the stamp of approval from no less than Byrd’s widow, the Mainstay’s very own Becky Byrd, who said, “There is no doubt that there is a piece of Charlie’s soul in Nate’s mind, heart and fingers.” Stand-up bass player Herman Burney will round out the trio.

Their Mainstay program will revisit Byrd’s landmark bossa nova works, as well as songs that Charlie loved by Gershwin, Ellington and Rodgers and Hart. Chuck will also offer a few anecdotes from his 19-year stint with The Charlie Byrd Trio. As a footnote, Chuck Redd and Herman Burney are both featured on Nate Najar’s July 2022 release, “Jazz Samba Pra Sempre” that reached the Top Ten of the jazz charts.

Showtime for the live concert event is 8 pm. Tickets are $25 in advance of the show and can be purchased online at mainstayrockhall.org. Phone reservations are accepted by calling (410) 639-9133 (tickets reserved by phone are $30 when paid at the door). The Mainstay is located at 5753 N Main Street in Rock Hall, Maryland. Its regular calendar of local, regional, and nationally touring artists features a live performance every week of the year (February through December) in a variety of music genres.

The programs of the Mainstay are supported with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Kent Cultural Alliance.

The Mainstay, Rock Hall, Maryland’s 25 year old non-profit concert venue, is pleased to announce the starting lineup of its 2023 music series. The offerings include a variety of music genres as performed by local and regional favorites, as well as nationally touring acts. The calendar also includes monthly programs such as pianist Joe Holt’s First Friday series (held on the first Friday of every month), with each show featuring a different guest collaboration (again, representing a variety of styles and genres); and the increasingly popular Open Mic series held on the second Wednesday of each month. The Open Mic format welcomes performers (musicians, poets and writers, comics, magicians, etc.) to take a turn on stage before an appreciative audience.

Here is a list of upcoming shows:

February
8 (Wed) Open Mic Nite
10 (Fri) Chuck Redd and Nate Najar – A Tribute to Charlie Byrd
21 (Tues) Mardi Gras Celebration with the Classic New Orleans Band, James Day and the Fish Fry
25 (Sat) Bluegrass/ Old Timey Music with Ken and Brad Kolodner

March
3 (Fri) First Friday – Joe Holt welcomes Pianist Allyn Johnson
11 (Sat) NYC Jazz/ Songbook Singer Hilary Gardner and her Trio
18 (Sat) Americana Singer/ Songwriter John John Brown

April
2 (Sun) Deanna Bogart
7 (Fri) First Friday – Joe Holt features multi-instrumentalist Scott Robinson
15 (Sat) Guitar Phenome, John Jorgenson and his Gypsy Jazz Quintet
22 (Sat) Karen Somerville – Her Billie Holiday Tribute, “Just Call Me Billie”

Tickets are available on the Mainstay website at Mainstayrockhall.org. Reservations are also taken by phone at (410) 639-9133.

On Sunday, December 11, the Mainstay, in partnership with the Hedgelawn Foundation, presents perennial musical favorites Harp and Soul, in a program they have titled “Harp and Soul: Songs for the Season.”  The group consists of Meredith Hadaway (harp and concertina), Ben Bennington (guitar and vocals), Rebekah Hardy (oboe), Bob Ortiz (percussion and vocals), and Nevin Dawson (viola), They will be joined by special guests, singer/songwriter Pam Ortiz (who will lead the group in new original compositions, one written for the occasion) and vocalist Sue Matthews. This year’s program will include songs in Spanish, Ukrainian, and Hebrew. As usual, the British Isles will be well-represented with some lively Celtic tunes and traditional English carols. This year’s concert aims to usher in the winter solstice with songs that inspire hope and courage as well as joy.

Showtime for the live concert event is 4 pm. Tickets are $20 in advance of the show and can be purchased online at mainstayrockhall.org. Phone reservations are accepted by calling (410) 639-9133 (tickets reserved by phone are $25 when paid at the door). The Mainstay is located at 5753 N Main Street in Rock Hall, Maryland. Its regular calendar of local, regional, and nationally touring artists features a live performance every week of the year (February through December) in a variety of music genres.

The programs of the Mainstay are also supported in part with funding from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Kent Cultural Alliance.