He'd just finished a club gig one February night and was sliding his guitar into the back of his SUV when Dana Biagini, a full-time Annapolis musician, heard the sounds of a commotion in the street.
He turned his head to look, finished closing the trunk, and suddenly felt a strange pain shooting through the index finger on his playing hand.
"It was such a freak thing. I looked down and saw it was bent, and I couldn't straighten it out," says Biagini, a veteran bass player and guitarist in the local music scene.
In less than a moment, he'd severed the extensor tendon in his most important finger — and any chance he'd be able to earn a decent living for at least the next several months.
"I depend on gigs to pay the mortgage and pay the bills," says Biagini, who plays more than 200 shows a year when healthy. "I was concerned how I'd be able to get by. I'm not the kind of person who wants to take anything from something like AMFM. But I had no choice."
He's referring to the Annapolis Musicians Fund for Musicians Inc., a nonprofit organization created six years ago to provide financial relief to professional Annapolis musicians "who can't work due to sickness, injury, or any other circumstance leaving them unable to perform," according to its charter.
It has helped more than 20 performers so far, according to co-founder and current president Matt McConville, a Riva-based singer-songwriter. The group has supplied thousands of dollars in support, some of it urgent.
"We're sort of a community workman's comp for musicians," McConville says. "[Musicians] don't always have the kind of coverage other people carry through their jobs. One health problem can really leave us hanging."
Monday and Tuesday night, McConville will take the mike at Rams Head Tavern to emcee the organization's top annual event: "An Annapolis Christmas," two concerts of holiday-theme music performed by dozens of local players in styles ranging from Irish folk to mellow jazz to foot-stomping rock 'n' roll.
All proceeds go to AMFM. As of late last week, the shows were approaching their usual sellout status.
This year's version, the 13th, will feature a stable of familiar players — soulful singer-songwriter Angie Miller, the jazzy Rob Levit Trio, indie rockers East is East — and a few newcomers performing traditional carols and originals.
It's likely to generate the intimate feel Biagini knows all too well. He has played the show several times himself, never guessing he'd be one of those to draw on the benefits. "You'd rather take part to help others, not take advantage yourself," he says. "But I'm glad [AMFM] is there."
Fish out of water
McConville, 52, grew up in western Pennsylvania, a kid with writerly leanings and a passion for 1970s singer-songwriter music.
His musical tastes haven't changed — he can strum and sing a mean Neil Young or Van Morrison cover — but back in the early 1990s, when he was immersing himself in the writings of Steinbeck and Kerouac, he decided to move to Annapolis as a kind of inside cosmic joke.
The goal: learn to sail, find work on a boat and have himself a great "fish-out-of-water" junket to write about. "Some kid from Pittsburgh, taking up yachting among the elite? That appealed to me," he says in a voice slightly hoarse from smoking.
McConville went on a six-week Caribbean trip, and on his return settled in Annapolis, where he started playing solo gigs at Middleton Tavern and meeting some of the dozens of musicians on the scene.
He was wowed by the sounds of blues rocker Dean Rosenthal, acoustic duo Van Dyke and Glaser, folk troubadour Mary Byrd Brown and others. But it struck the impresario in him that they didn't get to play their own material very often, and that some were playing so much that they didn't get to know each other very well.
He hatched a project called Homemade Wine, grouping three acts together per night so they could showcase their own stuff in the local venues.
"It started out as a word-of-mouth thing and got huge. A ton of people showed up," says Meg Murray, a local blues and jazz singer-songwriter who refers to McConville as "Papa Bear." "It gave [us musicians] a place to be together."
Local players say it strengthened an already potent community feel — a good thing, since reality can test that spirit pretty harshly.
You don't necessarily think about it until it happens, Murray says, but people who play music for a living are vulnerable. The pay (it generally tops out at $250 per gig locally) is erratic, bars can close, written contracts are unheard of and those who have insurance are usually placed in a pricey high-risk pool.
"If you get sick or something else happens, you're in a hard place," says Rosenthal, who has played on the local scene since "before I was legal," in 1975. "It's not like you can take a sick day."
In 1994, when the home of a musician friend burned down, McConville helped put together a benefit concert. Rosenthal took part, as he often does in such shows. Later, when he was disabled with an undiagnosed ailment himself, he saw how what goes around can come around.
McConville and friends came calling; it gave him an odd feeling. "I wanted no part of [a benefit]," says Rosenthal in a raspy bluesman's voice. "Nobody wants to be in a position where they need help, you know? But my mother talked to me about it. She said, 'You have friends who want to help you. Why aren't you letting them?'"
Rosenthal did, and a benefit at Coconut Joe's in Edgewater brought in nearly $10,000.
The ante seemed to rise, though, in 2002, when Brown — a beloved local singer-songwriter who had shared the stage with the likes of Tom Paxton, the 1960s folk icon — was diagnosed with advanced Lyme disease. "That rocked all of us," says McConville.
Brown could not perform — and still struggles to now.
Papa Bear, as usual, helped round up a lineup for a benefit. Afterward, he spoke with a couple of friends, including Meg Murray. "Let's set up something a little more proactive, where we can get money to people right away," she said. Along with Martha Jacobs, an accountant who also tended bar in the area, they opted to set up AMFM.
Rock and rules
Off and on for the next few years, it was a classic case of artists-meet-real-world. "I just wanted [the nonprofit] to have a casual feel, friends helping friends," McConville says.
"We just said, 'Let's get together, make a bunch of money, and start giving it to people,'" recalls Murray, a longtime board member. "We thought it would take two months. AMFM is just now turning into what we really wanted it to be."
Accountant Jacobs and Annapolis attorney Christian Elkington, a former Rams Head employee working pro bono, helped the pair define their mission and operating procedures. AMFM would set up stringent criteria for eligibility and require formal applications for any funding.
Musicians must show they're working pros; that they live in Annapolis or one of five adjacent communities as defined by ZIP code; or that they played within that geographical area at least 12 times per year.
They must also supply verification of any missed gigs and, when appropriate, furnish medical records. Funds are available for musicians who miss performances due to illness, injury or other circumstances beyond their control — including, at times, last-minute cancellations by a venue, bar closures, even blizzards. (The board votes on unusual situations on a case-by-case basis.)
Early on, Murray says, musicians in need had problems with the rules. "People would say, 'Why do I have to fill out an application? You know me,'" she remembers with a sympathetic laugh. "Artists and forms don't always get along. We'd say, 'Well, we have to make things acceptable to the IRS.' People started to get used to it."
Funds allotted are generally modest — about $100 per gig missed — but that can be a big boost. "It can help you out with food or the mortgage, or if your credit cards are backed up," says McConville, who once missed eight gigs after emergency gall bladder surgery and had to cancel two more when his daughters, Casey and Jordan, were born.
It took creating AMFM, McConville says, for him to realize how many problems can crop up for musicians, from crippling snowstorms to sore lower backs — and, less happily, how many people materialize looking to take advantage of the system, if not commit outright fraud.
"My attitude is usually 'Give 'em the [dang] money, let's go!' But we've learned you definitely have to draw clear lines," he says. "We've spent a lot of time whittling down our criteria. You have to protect the mission."
The group also had a ready resource to draw on. An Annapolis music producer, Steve Alexander, had organized a Christmas show at Rams Head as far back as 1998, and the shows became a tradition for local players and their families over the next few years, offering a rare chance for the musicians to gather and often raising thousands for charity.
By the time AMFM came into being in 2005, most of the regular performers were interested in lending their support. Since then, all proceeds from the Christmas concerts have gone to the organization, usually to the tune of about $13,000 a year. Eastport A-Rockin', a summer music festival, donates a roughly equal amount from its proceeds each year, and other local organizations contribute as well.
As funding grew, so did AMFM's mission. The six-person board has created an education-fund component — it has furnished $7,500 for musical instruments for needy kids at a summer camp — and more recently established a catastrophic fund for the kind of "big-scale" problems that can ruin a musician financially.
"I hope no one has to use that," McConville says. "If they do, help will be there."
Time for Christmas
This year's shows will be, as usual, a showcase of eclectic talent.
For a variety of reasons — the weather, the water, a long tradition of supporting artists — Annapolis has long attracted a broad range of people who, in the words of one artist, play music for the same reason others breathe.
"We all share a need to play music, and there is a brotherhood or tribe here because of that," says Murray, who has recorded a jazz Christmas album and has been singing in alt-country, rhythm-and-blues and funk-style bands since making her debut locally in the early 1990s.
Slated for the Monday lineup, her contribution will be a version of "What Christmas Means To Me," a Stevie Wonder number. McConville will share a song that has become tradition — "Waiting On Santa Claus," a piece he wrote for his daughters — and on each night, local players from country-flavored rockers The Geckos to Irish band The Rovers will serve up everything from familiar carols to seasonal originals.
Some local music lovers say their holidays don't begin until they hear Angie Miller and upright bassist Ben Grant do their jazzy "Baby, It's Cold Outside," Van Dyke and Glaser harmonize on their own "Time For Christmas" ("Music fills the harbor nights/Sailboats decked with Christmas lights/I'm glad to be home for Christmas"), or veteran Rosenthal rock his version of "Run, Rudolph, Run."
"I'm not an especially religious guy, so I gravitate toward the novelty songs," Rosenthal says. "It's the whole community element I love to celebrate."
Biagini can relate to that. For half a year after his accident, he wore a brace that immobilized his index finger, and he missed more than 20 guitar-based performances. He improvised his way through bass gigs by using the three good fingers on his left hand, otherwise relying on the help of AMFM to stay afloat.
One of his first gigs back was last year's Christmas show. He did one number — a solo acoustic guitar version of "O Holy Night."
"A thrill of hope; the weary soul rejoices," Biagini sang to a packed house that otherwise fell silent. "For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn."
"It was nice to be back in some small way," he says. "It felt like the right place to say thanks."
If you go
What: An Annapolis Christmas — holiday music performed by local artists
When: 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 13, and Tuesday, Dec. 14
Where: The Rams Head Tavern, 33 West St., Annapolis
Tickets: $30
Monday artists: Monday: Blue Miracle, the Rob Levit Trio, Meg Murray & Bryan Ewald, Angie Miller & Ben Grant, Dean Rosenthal, The Rovers, The Remnants, The Geckos, Van Meter, Jimmie Ha Ha, Doug Segree, Jordan Page
Tuesday artists: Unified Jazz Ensemble, Dan Haas, Hypnotic Panties, Higher Hands, Swamp Candy, Tobias Russell, Pilgrim & Trout, East is East, Dirty City, Van Dyke and Glaser, Tony Denikos.
Tickets and information: 410-268-4545, vwierenga@ramsheadtavern.com or ramsheadonstage.com.
All proceeds go to Annapolis Musicians Fund For Musicians Inc.