Chesapeake Scenes With Andy McCown

For nearly three decades, the music-and-poetry project Chesapeake Scenes: Words and Music has carried the rhythms and reflections of the Chesapeake Bay into community halls, schools, and concert venues across the region. Now, with a remastered archive and a new generation of artists on board, local educator and storyteller Andy McCown is ensuring that this living tradition endures.

A recent open-air concert, presented by Echo Hill Outdoor School and hosted by Washington College’s Center for the Environment and Society, showcased songs and poetry from the group’s repertoire.

The origins of Chesapeake Scenes trace back to a serendipitous conversation  between McCown and the late Tom McHugh, an English professor and musician. McCown, who has spent much of his life on the Chester River with Echo Hill Outdoor School, shared stories of reading Gilbert Byron’s The Lord’s Oysters aloud to students aboard skipjacks and that conversation sparked a creative partnership: McHugh on bay-inspired music, McCown on poetry and prose.

Over the years, their performances—joined by regional talents like Sue Matthews, Karen Somerville, and Tom Anthony—ranged from humble bar gigs to a black-tie show at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Regardless of the venue, the mission remained the same: to bring the voices of the Chesapeake to life through storytelling and song.

The legacy continues today. After McHugh’s passing, McCown assembled a new group of Kent County artists to carry the torch. With support from the Hedgelawn Foundation, matching funds from community members, and production work by Benji Price, a two-volume digital recording of Chesapeake Scenes was created. The remastered archive is now accessible on most streaming platforms, allowing teachers, students, and the public to explore the heart of the region through poems by Gilbert Byron, Meredith Hadaway, Joel Barber, and music by James Stankewicz, Zack Kelleher,  Warren “Pres” Harding, Sue Mathews and others.

More than nostalgia, McCown sees the project as a form of preservation—capturing not just the physical beauty of the bay but the social fabric of the watermen, their families, and the evolving culture of the region. “It’s an archive of emotion,” McCown said. “It tells a lot about the inner feelings of the watermen, the landscape, and the life along the bay.”

This fall, McCown and his collaborators will bring Chesapeake Scenes across the bay with a performance at the Annapolis Maritime Museum on October 9. The event will feature a rotating cast of Eastern Shore artists including Sue Matthews, Bob and Pam Ortiz, Meredith Hadaway, and Rebeka Hock.

Listeners can find both volumes (35 tracks) of Chesapeake Scenes by searching the title on their preferred digital music platform (Spotify, etc). All are free.

This video is approximately five minutes in length.