THE GETAWAY

Register

DONATE

CONTACT

ABOUT THE GETAWAY

The Getaway is an amazing weekend-long party of folks who love to sing, play and listen to folk music. We come together in a lovely riverside retreat to join together in making music, sharing what we bring and learning from friends old and new. There will be workshops, sing-arounds, sign-up concerts, music and conversations at all hours. Participation is encouraged at any level comfortable to you in a supportive and welcoming environment. Old and new songs and tunes, recitations and stories, along with information on historical contexts and insights, have filled the Getaway, along with conversation and laughter, for more than half a century. Come be a part of the fun!

Please help us out by spreading the word! We are a community with a shared belief in the power and importance of preserving the living traditions of music and we know that each generation must rely on the next to continue and enhance this heritage. We hope that we can — with your help — reach out to a broader crowd of multi-generational peers in the folk tradition who may not know of the Getaway. Folks of all ages and orientations are most welcome to join us!

So far, our guests this year are Janie Meneely and Rob Van Sante, Bill Destler, Lyn Noel, George and Kathy Stephens, and Derek Piotr. We are working on a few more. 

Our covid protocols last year were very successful. There were no cases reported during or immediately following the weekend. For now, we intend to follow the same protocol: test some time during the week before the Getaway, test upon arrival at the camp, and test Saturday afternoon before dinner. We will be assessing the situation and finalizing details closer to the event.

See the 2025 Getaway Schedule 

Questions about the Getaway contact Getawaychair@fsgw.org

REGISTER

Our 2026 Guests

Janie Meneely and Rob van Sante

Janie Meneely was born in Annapolis and grew up around the Chesapeake, absorbing the geography, culture, and lore of the area, and has written many songs incorporating all of that. Rob van Sante was born in the Netherlands and grew up in Scotland. He is an amazingly talented guitarist who has performed around the world, and adds his voice and instrument - and sometimes his point of view - to Janie's songs. Together, they combine excellent musicianship and fascinating subject matter to produce a wonderful duo.

Lynn Noel has been a working folk and heritage artist since 1986. She tours nationally and regionally as Crosscurrents Music, co-founded the Boston Area Chantey and Maritime Sing and several local Boston sings, runs the Mermaid’s Tavern online folk club, and serves as Board member and Program Chair of the New England Folk Festival (NEFFA). Her recent Joanna Carver Colcord Centennial tour — eleven venues, one program, the woman who collected the chanteys — came directly out of the research practice she now teaches through Digital Heritage Consulting. She has been mentoring rising folk artists for twenty years, first informally and now through DHC, because she keeps meeting talented musicians who have everything they need except a clear sense of what comes next and the practice to pursue it with authority.

Derek Piotr is a folklorist, researcher and performer whose work focuses primarily on the human voice. His work covers practices including fieldwork, vocal performance, preservation and autoethnography; and is primarily concerned with tenderness, fragility, beauty and brutality. He is lead archivist and creative director of the Fieldwork Archive which contains over 1,500 audio recordings collected from March 2020 onward. It preserves diverse representations of folklife; ballads, hymns, tales, poems, children’s songs, and interviews among them. The focus of this collection is on the "non-singer" in other words, someone with no background in musical performance who can nevertheless relate a song or folkloric memory. However, the Archive features a wide variety of informants, including professional singers, descendants of musicians, laypeople, and ballad scholars. Besides Derek’s performing and talking about his collecting at the Getaway, you can expect him to ask you to contribute the stuff you know to the archive.

Bill Destler is a many-faceted folk musician and supporter of the art. He accompanies songs with guitar and has also delved deep into the lore, history, technology and development of the banjo while amassing a world-class collection of ~160. His music ranges from singer/songwriter to Bruce Philips to protest songs, hymns, chorus and funny songs, traditional folk, and of course, banjo songs and tunes. Old timers will also recognize him from his days as a FSGW president and founding member of the Baltimore Folk Music Society.

George Stephens and Kathy Westra Stephens perform a large repertoire of songs from traditional sources, as well as from contemporary songwriters whose music reflects the folksong traditions of North America, Australia, and Great Britain. Now living in Owls Head, Maine, after many years in the D.C. area, Kathy’s career as an environmental and conservation writer, and George’s long career as a scientist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have also inspired the duo to sing songs that express an appreciation for the wild places that provide refuge from our busy lives, and the urgent need to conserve our lands, waters and natural resources for future generations.

EVENT DETAILS