Introduction
Most American towns of a certain size have some kind of music culture. People listen to and share music. They take or give music lessons. They perform alone or together in their homes. They purchase, sell, and trade instruments. There are venues, large or small, where performers, local and touring, can be heard. There are schools and houses of worship where music is learned, played, and sung. Traditions form and evolve. Even now, as digital connections seemingly fray the edges of localized life, these experiences become part of the fabric of the community—an element without which no full story of any place can be told.
It seems that this is exceptionally the case with Catonsville, Maryland. At first by happenstance, then by a process of accretion, the suburban town on the outskirts of Baltimore has developed a rich and varied musical culture. Certainly, music was part of life there from the earliest days, when the area was first settled, and before that when it was occupied by native Piscataways. And undoubtedly music came with the town’s first African Americans, enslaved and freed, who founded and grew a close-knit community alongside but mostly apart from the dominant white community. But the solidification of Catonsville as a place particularly devoted to and known for music occurred mostly in the latter half of the twentieth century and since.
A key, albeit inauspicious, starting point came 1960, when a young professional trumpet player, seeking to leave the late-night grind of club work and focus on his new family, established a store, Nelson Knode’s Music Center (later Appalachian Bluegrass), near the corner of Frederick Road and Bloomsbury Avenue. This was followed shortly thereafter by another music store at the other end of town, Bill’s Music House. Eventually these two businesses grew to form bookends, as it were, between which multiple other music businesses set and hoisted anchor over the years—The Piano Man, Jim’s Guitars, The Guitar Exchange, Baltimore Brass.To this day, visitors driving Frederick Road through town cannot help but notice the number of music businesses—the most visible evidence backing the “Music City Maryland” signs greeting them at the town limits.
These signs of the town’s music culture belie a great deal more going on just below the surface and around the edges, however. Music in churches, fraternal organizations, a prominent night club, and an outdoor venue had been a mainstay of life in the African American community of Winters Lane since before the turn of the twentieth century. If anything, the music culture of that community was richer, more varied, and more essential than in the white community prior to the latter half of the twentieth century. The site of another outdoor venue, the Lurman Woodland Theater, which had been acquired by Baltimore County from an early landowner, has played host to regular summertime concerts and festivals since 1965 and continuing mostly uninterrupted to this day. Several local theater groups staged Broadway productions in the area for decades, and town leaders kept a lively tradition of community-wide dance party benefits featuring such bands as The Van Dykes and The Hubcaps for many years.
At Catonsville High School, a music teacher’s chance encounter with Trinidadian steel pan music in the 1980’s led to the remarkable creation and development of one of the most successful student steel bands in the country, with direct ties to the historic forefathers of the genre and the instrument. That experience was foundational for an indie rock musician who toured internationally as part of the band Wye Oak. The lead guitarist for the prominent heavy metal band Danzig was also a product of Catonsville High School. The town has also been home to some acclaimed music teachers, such as clarinetist and conductor Les Luco, and the nationally sought-after drum instructor Grant Menefee. In 2002, the critical mass of music culture in the town led community leaders to seek and receive an official proclamation by the Maryland General Assembly naming Catonsville as “Music City Maryland.”
What follows is a more detailed account of some of these businesses, places, and people, based on archival and secondary research as well as new oral histories. It is but a start and preliminary map to the full history of music in Catonsville, Maryland.
Most American towns of a certain size have some kind of music culture. People listen to and share music. They take or give music lessons. They perform alone or together in their homes. They purchase, sell, and trade instruments. There are venues, large or small, where performers, local and touring, can be heard. There are schools and houses of worship where music is learned, played, and sung. Traditions form and evolve. Even now, as digital connections seemingly fray the edges of localized life, these experiences become part of the fabric of the community—an element without which no full story of any place can be told.
