The Escape Pods

Greetings Sailors and Podcast Fans! This episode is a special one! With no Annapolis Sailboat Show to enjoy this year, lets take some time to celebrate The Chesapeake Bay with Annapolis native Janie Meneely, who has a long history of writing songs about the Chesapeake Bay and its History. She grew up sailing home made boats in the questionably clean or not clean waters of Spa Creek, back when Baltimore dumped their trash in the Middle of the Bay, and god knows what ended up in the creeks and back bays. Along the way she picked up a guitar and started writing songs during the heyday of the late 60’s and played songs for her friends. Over the years, she taught in school, lived aboard, started a magazine, immersed herself into Bay Culture, and began looking for songs that reflected that long, storied history of the water men and maritime stories. With valiant efforts she searched for these songs, and they really didn’t exist, so she sought to start new traditions by writing some of her own.

It is a great bunch of stories she tells, about being in many bands, or groups of musicians and storytellers over the years, she even gives us a special, impromptu rendition of her song “Nasty Nell.” Incorporated into these stories, I’ve added a few snippets of the songs she is talking about, with a special one you can investigate yourself at the end.

The impetus for this whole interview, is the latest project she has undertaken since she’s been in lockdown in England, and that is a new Songbook she is compiling and releasing soon, which covers all of her Chesapeake Bay related songs. It will have the songs notated for you to play at home, or at the boat club, or on the boat, or wherever music happens, and there will be Historical notes for each song. You can pre order the Songbook by emailing Janie ASAP, at janiemeneely@gmail.com

You can find her music on YouTube Music here and you can get more information at her website, www.janiemeneely.com, you can find her most recent collaborations with Rob Van Sante at their Facebook page. They have recently been putting on House concerts every month featuring other musicians at Falcon House Concerts, you should check it out! It is also Robs home studio, so if you are looking for a great sounding studio in the UK, well there you go! They hope to tour the US again sometime soon, featuring shows in the Bay area as well as in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe we can get them to stop by Hances Point!