Brothers Make St. Mary's Memories Sing

"We used to wake up in the mornings and sing our dreams to each other," said David Norris. Today, he often wakes from a dream and scribbles it into song.

In their 20s, the two would play popular folk songs in pizza parlors for pocket change, which at the time seemed like a fortune. But they haven't played together in years because of a "matter of style," David Norris said.

"I drive my brother crazy," Joseph Norris said, chuckling. "He's real structured in music . . . and I'm more of a free-flow guy."

David Norris has always been the stronger musician, his brother acknowledged. Joseph Norris, who writes for the Calvert Independent newspaper, concentrates more on the lyrics and history than on the actual music.

"Since I am a writer, I've always written songs," said Joseph Norris, who went to college in the late 1980s to study history. "So many people are moving into this area, it is a good way to introduce them to the history."

David Norris's passion dwells in the music -- he often ventures into the woods of Southern Maryland to sing in the peace and silence of nature. As a child, he said, he would linger in graveyards to read the headstones for song ideas.

"Every tombstone is a story," he said.

In 1996, David Norris won Nashville's Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at MerleFest, in Wilkesboro, N.C., and well-known bluegrass musicians have recorded his music.

But he didn't talk about honors or awards at the Folklife Festival -- he sang of growing up near the streams and bays of Southern Maryland.

"Live a sweet life," he sang, "down on the southern waters."