How a Love of Beer, Bluegrass, and the Bay Led to the Birth of an Ecofriendly Festival

This story starts the same way a lot of great stories start – with beer and the great outdoors. 

A beer garden to be exact. Not one that would just fill the cups of patrons, but one that would have an environmental impact on one of the most important bodies of water in the United States: the Chesapeake Bay.

While Ron Peremel, the man behind this story, later decided that a music festival was better suited to accomplish this goal, his vision remained the same – protect a natural resource that was close to his heart and have fun while doing it.

What manifested was Annapolis Baygrass Music and Arts Festival, a one-of-a-kind bluegrass festival that makes zero-to-low environmental impact an absolute necessity – something that is a rarity in the American festival market these days.

“It breaks my heart every time I go to a concert and see bins and bins of plastic water bottles – and they don’t recycle any of it.”

Taking it one step further, this festival also serves to enhance the community and environment that surrounds it at Sandy Point State Park in Annapolis, Maryland.

“We’re doing a lot of cool things that make it feel perfectly comfortable. It’s a beautiful spot, and we want to make sure we keep it beautiful.”

This summer, we got to catch up with Peremel at Sandy Point on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay – a place the Maryland native grew up going to as a kid.

“Sandy Point State Park was fundamental – it was a requirement. If we weren’t going to do it here, I don’t think we were going to do the festival. That’s how critical it was.”

It’s clear to see why this destination added so much fuel to his festival dreams – it was breathtaking. As one of the largest estuaries in the world, the Chesapeake Bay is responsible for sustaining a lot of life forms – both aquatic and terrestrial – including humans. 

But it’s in danger, with dead zones, nutrient pollution, sediment runoff, climate change, and habitat loss plaguing the estuary.

Luckily, Peremel and his team at Annapolis Baygrass Festival are doing something about it with some impressive results from their 2025 iteration.

1. Over 25 cubic yards of compost
2. Over 25 cubic yards of recycling
3. Over 369 liquor bottles (30 boxes!) to be repurposed (even better than recycled) 
4. Over 24,000 oyster shells recycled  = 240,000 oysters planted back into the Chesapeake Bay by one of Baygrass’s non-profit beneficiary partners — Oyster Recovery Partnership. 
   1. Each adult oyster is estimated to filter 50 gallons of water per day, so the oysters eaten by attendees of the festival have the potential of cleaning 12 million gallons of water per day! 
5. 8933 liters of water went through the 6 filtered water stations (converts to 18,000 plastic bottles eliminated)
6. A portion of all revenues generated by the Annapolis Baygrass Music festival is donated to three non-profit beneficiary partners to support their conservation work. These organizations are: Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, Oyster Recovery Partnership, and the Anne Arundel County Watershed Stewards Academy. This year, the festival generated donations of over $31,000. 

“Our volunteers will literally take trash out of the wrong bin and put it in the right bin with a smile on their face and a dance in their step.”

As someone who experienced the festival firsthand, it is a can’t-miss, family-friendly, incredibly well-curated event. From the lineup and the destination to the food and the mission, this is a festival establishing a new precedent in the American market and having fun while they do it.=

“You’ve got to come to the festival and experience it to understand what we’re doing here and why this is unlike any other festival in the country.”

Grab tickets to the event here, and keep up with everything the festival has going on in the links below.

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