SPOTLIGHT: The Honey Dewdrops Welcome Us to Their Neighborhood

After living on the road for about a year in 2014, Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish, The Honey Dewdrops, were ready to get out of the van and establish a home base. Both from Virginia originally, they’d been living in Charlottesville previously, but they were ready for a change.

“We wanted to try to find a community that maybe didn’t quite have a lot of people that we already knew, maybe didn’t quite have the music scene that we were used to in Charlottesville,” Parrish says. “What happens if we move somewhere that’s pretty different from our experiences?”

They decided on Baltimore based on past visits and the fact that they knew at least a few people there. “Baltimore is a gritty, blue-collar kind of place — a lot people that I know had never even been to Baltimore,” Parrish says. “I run into a lot people still who have never been to this town. It’s easy to pass over it, from DC to New York, I feel like a lot of bands tend to tour that way. But there’s just so much great stuff going on here. I feel like we were really lucky to have a chance to slowly start meeting people and get a feel for what’s going on here. As time went on we got to know more and more folks and we found that there was a small but thriving music scene here of a little bit of everything.”

Their neighborhood, Hampden, on the north side of Baltimore was once a mill town that has now evolved into a quirky district that celebrates kitsch and community. Wortman and Parrish enjoy having several friends and most of the businesses they need within walking distance. As Parrish explains with a laugh: “Living on the road teaches you if you don’t have to be in a car, try to figure out a way that you never have to get back in it.”

As part of this month’s Spotlight feature, we asked Parrish and Wortman to show us around Hampden. Their photos show off some of their favorite spots, and you can hear more about the neighborhood in the song “Welcome to the Club” from their new album, Anyone Can See.