From heroic rescues to titillating tales of maritime miscreants, the music of Janie Meneely and Rob van Sante celebrates the history, characters and traditions of the Chesapeake Bay waterfront.

Singer/songwriter/sailmaker/sailor Janie Meneely grew up in Annapolis and raised a family on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Masquerading as a recreational boating writer (Chesapeake Bay Magazine) she traveled the Bay collecting stories and crafting songs to reflect the lives of people who make a living “working” the water. Sometime in the last century, she partnered with Eastern Shore songstress Chris Noyes and Annapolis poet laureate Jeff Holland to create a folk band called Crab Alley, showcasing original music about the Bay and beyond.

Life always changes things, and Crab Alley parted ways eons ago. Nowadays Janie works as a duo with her life partner Dutch-born Rob van Sante who lends his knack for melodies and flair for vocal harmony to Janie’s compositions. Their music rambles from the raucous ruminations of a ne’er-do-well charter captain in “Nasty Nell” to more thoughtful ballads like the somber “Claud W. Somers, 1977” about the tragic loss of a Chesapeake Bay skipjack. Her song about the Pride of Baltimore was written months before the ship sank and rewritten prior to the launch of Pride II.