Your Host, Cris Jacobs

Cris Jacobs has earned his place as one of the most compelling voices in American roots music. A masterful guitarist with a soulful, expressive voice, Jacobs brings both fire and finesse to the stage, weaving rock, soul, Americana, and funk into a sound that’s as dynamic as it is heartfelt. His live performances are renowned for their energy and spontaneity, whether stretching out with searing guitar work or locking into deep grooves with his band.

With a deep catalog of heartfelt, finely crafted songs and a career marked by collaborations with icons across genres, Jacobs continues to build on a career defined by authenticity, grit, and musicality. At once a seasoned craftsman and a restless innovator, he delivers songs that speak to perseverance, joy, and the complexities of the human experience—songs best heard live, where his artistry fully comes to life.

Class size will be 10-15 participants max. All classes will be held at Oldfields.

Letitia VanSant

…her gentle singsong may strike you as sweet, but listen a little closer, and you’ll realize she is spitting fire.”
-Paste Magazine

Why is the world the way it is? Letitia VanSant's lyrics trace this question into the human soul. 

With a distinctly intimate vocal style, VanSant's stage presence is down-to-earth and immediate, and is fortified by arrangements ranging from sparse indie folk to soaring rock anthems.

Paste Magazine named her among 10 Artists to Watch, and BBC Radio says she is “a force to be reckoned with.” Her songwriting has earned several awards, including the Kerrville New Folk Songwriting Competition, and she has been on tour across the Atlantic--but she is most proud of her role as a staple of the Baltimore Americana scene.
Letitia is one half of Golden Aster, a vocal harmony-focused duo with Laura Wortman of the Honey Dewdrops, and lead vocalist for classic country band Rusty Sal. Her most recent album is Eye of the Storm, an acoustic collaboration with Celtic/ Americana guitarist & vocalist David McKindley-Ward.

Talbot Mayo

Talbot Mayo's musical roots are in the bluegrass, gospel, and folk of her family's historic Maryland farm. Starting on washboard and jug at age 4, she was playing fiddle by 10 and had taught herself guitar by 14, when she began writing and performing her own songs. This background shaped her distinctive style, which mixes old-time bluegrass with honky-tonk twang and a gritty alt-rock edge.

Her debut solo EP, Big Shot, was produced by Grammy-winner Matt Rollings (Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson) and features a stellar lineup, including Jenee Fleenor and Buddy Miller. The EP showcases witty storytelling and heartfelt introspection on themes of resilience and small-town life, delivered with Talbot's powerful vocals. Big Shot was a remarkable independent debut on national and international radio charts, reaching #75 on the Americana Association Chart and #14 on the Roots Music Report “Top 50 Americana Country Albums” chart.

Talbot has collaborated with songwriters like Susie West (co-founding the Monkton Road Band) and Matt Rollings. She performs her original songs as a solo artist and with The Talbot Mayo Band, while also still playing with her family band. Her ability to blend tradition with innovation has established her as a rising force in the Americana scene, driven by her singular focus on the music.

Caleb Stine

Caleb Stine is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist. Though he makes his living as a folk musician, Stine wouldn’t call what he does a job; he considers it a calling. His work is part-mystic poet, part-traveling preacher. As Americana UK observed, “Stine’s upfront personality [is] seeking to make a personal connection with everyone in the venue.” Stine, who plays 100+ shows a year, has released 14 albums of original music, and shares a series of Instagram videos called “Caleb Stine Says Keep Going,” encouraging followers to dig deep into a creative practice of their own.  He's a festival favorite, has opened shows for Jason Isbell and Sierra Hull, and keeps a grass-roots presence by frequenting small venues up and down the East Coast.

Laura Wortman & Kagey ParRish of The Honey Dewdrops

Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish of The Honey Dewdrops began touring in 2009 and have highlighted the power and intimacy of two voices and two instruments in both live performances and recordings in their two-decades' long partnership. Laura and Kagey constantly push the boundaries of their experimental folk sound—blending electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin and clawhammer banjo—while weaving in tight vocal harmonies. They remain committed to deepening their understanding of the world through songwriting and music.

Laura's relationship to music has always relied on intuition. From her earliest experiences taking piano and guitar lessons, she knew the notes on the page were not for her - she wanted to listen and watch and interpret what the teacher played. Laura brings this energy to the craft of singing, playing and songwriting as well - hoping to share a feeling and interpretation of the sounds she's listened to all her life, like a patchwork quilt. She is inspired by walking in the woods, tending to plants, deep conversations and the type of music that gives her goosebumps and makes her laugh and cry. 

Jordan Sokel

Jordan Sokel is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and founding member of the band Pressing Strings. For over a decade he has been performing and releasing music under the PS moniker. A stand out vocalist and performer, his style borrows from finger style folk, rhythm and blues, rock and reggae blending influences together tastefully with heartfelt anduplifting lyricism.

Sokel is a family man and father of three. He moved around as a kid, spending his childhood in New Jersey and Arizona, eventually setting roots in Annapolis, Maryland where he began playing guitar around the age of thirteen when he was gifted a gold Squire Stratocaster for his birthday. He curiously combed the internet for the tablature of his favorite songs and artists, studying the greats. At the age of eighteen he found the voice that he is now known for and began writing his own material, dedicating his life to the craft of penning songs as a form of personal therapy and joyful relief from life’s frustrations.

Since 2008 he’s been steadily releasing music with Pressing Strings and has consistently done so putting out 8 full length albums and 2 EPs, garnering national radio airplay across the US landing them on stage with some big acts like The Beach Boys, Gov’t Mule, Toad the Wet Sprocket, JJ Grey etc.

Kagey Parrish has loved music for as long as he can remember, and his first musical memory is of being enraptured by the Beach Boys' harmonies when he was four. As a vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, he has spent the last 17 years focused on live performance and music production. He is a founding member of the internationally touring duo the Honey Dewdrops, and he regularly performs with Baltimore, Maryland-based music projects including Across The Harbor, the Bottom Rung, and City Paper. In addition, he loves to help people make their own music by teaching lessons for guitar, mandolin, and songwriting.

Representative classes

Full schedule to be finalized in the coming months. Sample classes include:

Three Chords and the Real Sh*t
Let's get beyond the surface level. You've got a half-finished draft of a song. What is it really trying to tell you? We will share some drafts and give feedback on what lines from your songs seem to have strong emotional resonance, ask some questions to help you go a little deeper, and then generate some ideas for how you could continue to build the song around the truths we uncover.

Getting Through the Jitters - a bootcamp for overcoming stage fright
Have you ever practiced a song over and over to perfection, only to have it all fly out the window the moment you stepped in front of a crowd? Managing emotions in front of an audience is a whole other skill that takes practice! We'll trade some strategies for how to face this challenge, and do some mini-performances to practice using them. No one will die, I promise!

Throwing Spaghetti - Get messy and see what sticks. We will do a series of rapid-fire prompts and exercises for getting the juices flowing both musically and lyrically. You'll come away with a lot of new ideas to dig into later on! I'm not sure exactly how long the workshops are supposed to be, but if there were a long chunk, then I would make this one into a challenge to write 6 songs in 3 hours, or 8 in 4 hours, etc.

1-4-5 Demystified
For beginners! Many, many, songs only use three chords. How does this work? Once you understand this core concept, a lot of songs will start to feel more attainable to get under your fingers, it'll help you start to figure out chords by ear, and you'll be more confident about how to achieve a familiar-sounding feel when writing a song.

Melody, Poetry & Untying Your Mind
We will discuss being free and untied from any preconceived notions of where a song may or may not be headed. I will cover the importance of melody, rhyming patterns, harmony and how a song sings