“Blues is the first form of American music,” declared Daryl Davis, renowned blues pianist. “And when I say American music, I’m talking about music that was created right here in this country.”
Blues, he continued, is not European, nor African, but a combination of influences from both continents that came together in the mixing bowl of the United States. Davis, a longtime Silver Spring resident, who graduated from Wootton High School and attended Howard University, plays the blues like he’s breathing. The expressive musical form is deeply rooted in his soul, his spirit and his ancestry. He views blues as a creative endeavor that gives voice to the oft-overlooked episodes in history of our nation that inform who we are today.
Playing Piedmont Style
The mid-Atlantic region, including Montgomery County, has its own blues style, Davis noted. “Around here you have the Piedmont-style blues. It’s acoustic blues — finger picking the guitar, that kind of thing from Virginia, Southern Maryland, all the way down through the Carolinas.” Piedmont blues and other styles will be in play June 14 throughout the 16th Annual Silver Spring Blues Festival in Downtown Silver Spring.
While born down in the Mississippi Delta, the blues musical form traveled north to Memphis, where it evolved into soul music and then on to Kansas City where it became swing. It then went to St. Louis, where it became rock ’n roll, and Chicago, where it shifted to electric blues. Although the blues came to Silver Spring after its transformative journey in the South and Midwest, this region has long held deep attachment to the spiritual and elemental music.
Piedmont blues, found particularly in Southern Maryland, Virginia and down in the Carolinas, is acoustic, emphasizing finger picking rather than strumming, and is heard further south in the Mississippi Delta. Piedmont artists play the melodies with either three fingers or two fingers and bass players use their thumbs on the bass strings of the guitar, Davis explained.
Birth of Silver Spring’s Blues Fest
Back in 2009, Alan Bowser, Silver Spring attorney and past president of Silver Spring Town Center Inc., felt the burgeoning suburban district needed something to mobilize the community. “I’d been impressed with the Takoma Park Folk Festival, which drew large crowds, and lots of other festivals there,” he said about the neighboring incorporated city. A lifelong music lover, Bowser hoped to replicate that energy without competing in the same musical genres or season. The nascent blues festival found a sponsoring partner in Downtown Silver Spring’s dominant developer, the Peterson Companies, and since its early years the annual Silver Spring Blues Festival has become a fixture on the local music circuit.
Bowser also sought input and advice from two all-volunteer regional blues organizations: the D.C. Blues Society and The Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation. In 2010, the Silver Spring Blues Festival debut was modest, but grew quickly in subsequent years.
Those first years, musical events ran from 3 to 9 p.m. In recent years, programming and logistics have been directed by Lisa Martin, executive director of the nonprofit Silver Spring Town Center. Aside from the festival, she organizes and promotes hundreds of events annually, from book talks to cooking demonstrations, poetry slams and gallery shows, all aimed at activating the town center and drawing residents and visitors to community-based arts and cultural programming reflective of the region’s diversity.
Guitar Jams With a Bluesy Feel
This year the stage will fill with music for 12 hours, starting at 10 a.m. The early acts feature family-oriented groups, acoustic artists and student ensembles, providing opportunities for the next generation to play and hear the blues, while friends and family cheer them on. The afternoon program features an ensemble of burgeoning youth blues artists from School of Rock. The evening concert headliner, Grammy-nominated blues guitarist Sue Foley, has been praised for her “blazing guitar chops” in The Philadelphia Inquirer and “classic Texas blues” in Vintage Guitar magazine. “I don’t want to say, ‘She is a great female blues guitar player,’” Davis said about Foley. “Sue is a great guitar player. Period.” Everyone, he said, should hear her play.
For the anticipated finale, musicians who played during the day will be invited up for an all-artists’ jam led by Davis. Then, whoever’s still game for more music and camaraderie will adjourn for an after-party at a downtown Silver Spring pub or restaurant. Once a jam gets on a roll, it’s hard to shut it down.
Over the past 15 years, even with a slim budget of about $20,000 according to Martin, the festival has expanded well beyond local favorites. Among them, of course, Davis and his band, and MoCo’s beloved rock and blues crew, The Nighthawks. “I’ve done a lot of playing with them,” Davis said. “They’re very good friends of mine. They celebrated their 50th anniversary a couple years back, and I was invited to play piano on some of those shows.”
Centering Women’s Voices
For Martin, who plans the festival with input and artistic advice from Davis, a day devoted to the blues in Downtown Silver Spring is a day for everyone. “It’s one of those traditional art forms that’s accessible to a wide variety of people. You don’t have to have a perfect voice. The blues includes everyone and we have so many blues artists in the area and patrons who love the blues,” she said.
This year Martin is excited to showcase a number of women blues artists beyond headliner Foley. “We have strong women during our electric stage hours, which are 3 to 10 p.m.,” she noted. Among them: the infectious blues fusion of local group Mama Moon & The Rump Shakers and roots, rock and blues singer/songwriter Shari Puorto, whose vocals have been compared to those of Janis Joplin.
And beyond festival day, Martin organizes supplemental events during the week. Blues Week, a series of educational programs — on Zoom and live — brings further visibility to blues artists and engages audience members curious about the form through conversations, panels, workshops and art talks.
Why Silver Spring’s Got the Blues
Just as the blues tell a uniquely American story through distinctive blue notes and chords, Davis, the county’s homegrown star bluesman, sees Silver Spring as the perfect spot to celebrate the art form. And he should know: in his younger years he played with the likes of legends from Jerry Lee Lewis to Little Richard to Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley’s Jordanaires. “Silver Spring is probably one of the most diverse cities on the East Coast,” the blues pianist said, “other than New York City. It’s a melting pot here. … Silver Spring has just about every food option, every ethnicity, every style of music.”
In the county, where people of color comprise about 60 percent of the total population, Silver Spring’s rich cultural milieu provides a backdrop to better understand the deep American roots of blues. Davis elaborated: “It evolved on plantations where slaves would have their homemade instruments. Ofttimes on Sundays — though some would be brought to church, not to give them religion but to keep an eye on them — those who stayed back on the plantation or, in New Orleans, went into town, would get together to play their conga drums. Those were the first jam sessions.”
Davis continued, “Understand that the slaves were playing songs from their homelands in Africa, plus what they would hear at their masters’ churches, you know, religious-type songs. The combinations of these chords and melodies and improvisations are what comprised the blues.” From these beginnings, the music became a way to celebrate, mourn, preserve tribal and communal memories from Africa, and share information. For example, he said, “Maybe someone saw their kids being sold on the courthouse steps that week. When they go to play a song that they played the previous week, it might be a little slower, a little more melancholy. It might have more blue notes in it.”
When he leads off the end of the festival all-star jam session, Davis draws on his decades of experience and deep understanding of the origins and propagation of the blues. “All the players are professionals. They have good ears,” he said. “My job is to keep it moving … bring an entertainer up, feature them for a couple songs, and if they want, move to be a side man for the next person…. Because improvisation not only comes with the notes that you choose, but also the feelings that you express.”
If You Go for the Blues
Lisa Martin, executive director of Silver Spring Town Center and a veteran festival attendee around the region, offers a few tips. “We encourage people to bring small festival chairs or a blanket and find a good spot.” Typically, about 5,000 people attend throughout the day, though not all at the same time. It wouldn’t hurt to bring an umbrella for rain or sun. And, of course, sunscreen and a hat. Finally, don’t worry about food and drink. “The great thing,” Martin noted, “is Downtown Silver Spring has so many choices of places to pop in and get food and drink,” ranging from sushi, Korean, Thai, Peruvian chicken and classic American to sandwich and ice cream shops and favorites like McGinty’s Public House, Copper Canyon Grill and Nando’s Peri-Peri.
Silver Spring Blues Festival, June 14, 2025, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Downtown Silver Spring at Ellsworth Avenue. For more information on the Silver Spring Blues Festival and a schedule, visit silverspringbluesfest.yolasite.com.
Lisa Traiger is an award-winning arts journalist who writes on theater, dance, music, film and visual arts from her home in Montgomery County.
