Are you a lyrical wordsmith who wants to pick the brains of the best songwriters in the biz?
Or are you simply a music fan who wants to enjoy some cool concerts in Maryland’s capital?
The third annual Annapolis Songwriters Festival returns this Thursday through Sunday, modeled after the 28-year-old Key West Songwriters Festival.
“We purchased the Key West Songwriters Festival about three and a half years ago and one of the goals was to bring a sister festival here to our own town in Annapolis,” Festival owner Kyle Muehlhauser told WTOP. “There’s a lot of great synergies between Annapolis and Key West, we bump into a lot of people from Maryland when we’re in Key West. It’s just a great, historic, maritime town. It really showcases the city.”
The first year welcomed Jake Owen, the second year hosted LeAnn Rimes, Blondie and Michelle Branch, and now this year’s star-studded lineup features 140 artists across 15 different venues across the city.
“You get to just bop around town and see all of these different shows and it kind of highlights all of these different venues and parts of the town,” Muelhlauser said. “We have some emerging young artists that aren’t quite established yet and they’re getting to mix in with some of these established songwriters. We’ve got guys here that have written songs that you’ve been listening to on the radio for years and years.”
It kicks off Thursday with a full day of events leading up to a ticketed event with American folk duo Johnnyswim at Maryland Hall, followed by another full day of events on Friday, headlined by Citizen Cope at Annapolis City Dock.
Saturday at Rams Head you can see Natalie Hemby, who won a Grammy for Best Country Song for “Crowded Table” with The Highwomen and another for Lady Gaga’s “I’ll Never Love Again” in the film “A Star is Born.” She’s also been nominated for CMA Song of the Year five times: “White Liar” (Miranda Lambert), “Pontoon” (Little Big Town), “Automatic” (Lambert), “Rainbow” (Kacey Musgraves) and “Bluebird” (Lambert).
It all culminates Sunday with arguably the biggest lineup, including country music hitmaker Lee Brice (“I Don’t Dance”) at Annapolis City Dock, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Marc Cohn (“Walking in Memphis”) at Maryland Hall, and Grammy winner Kimberly Perry of The Band Perry (“If I Die Young”) at Rams Head.
“It’s a great family-friendly event,” Muelhlauser said. “Annapolis is a very walkable town, so being able to walk around and see all of this great music, it’s really a fun event. … Seeing all of the songwriters walking around town with their guitars on their back, it’s kind of like the whole town kind of transforms for the weekend.”
