Our Story

It all started 25 years ago when Tom McHugh, our founder, retired from his position as a Professor of Education and American Culture at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. He returned to Rock Hall and Kent County, the place where he started his teaching career. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of music and his own musical performance background, he began to stage informal concerts. A local real estate mogul offered him the use of a vacant storefront on N Main Street in Rock Hall and The Mainstay was born. In little time, Tom, with the help of talented volunteers, devised a weekly calendar of music performance events featuring impressive local and regional talents as well as world-renowned artists in a variety of musical genres. He also introduced yearly festivals that brought thousands of people to Rock Hall, worked with school-aged children throughout the Eastern Shore, and offered guided foreign cultural tours of Cuba and Ireland – all in the name of excellence and good fellowship. The year-round, weekly programs of The Mainstay have continued without interruption ever since.

The name ”Mainstay” refers to that part on a sailing vessel which supports the whole superstructure and holds things together. That is the work The Mainstay has chosen to do — to support, serve, and inspire the great arts communities of Rock Hall, Maryland, the greater Kent County area, and our appreciative Mid-Atlantic neighbors.