.png)
NEW ALBUM
Moonlight Rainy Evening
(in Old Georgetown)
Setting the Scene (1963–1971)
The airwaves were full of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Folk music was everywhere, sharing space on the charts with artists like Ben E. King and the Bee Gees. We listened to local radio stations and bought vinyl LPs in small neighborhood record stores. Music felt close, personal, and immediate.
Just two blocks from Georgetown University, a new club called The Cellar Door became our second home. During the week, established artists like John Denver and Peter, Paul and Mary performed for intimate audiences. On Sunday nights, it was “open mic” night, and the stage belonged to us. Students, songwriters, and hopeful performers stepped into the light, guitar in hand, and shared their songs. I was one of them; sometimes alone, sometimes with friends.
Beyond the music, history was unfolding around us. Washington saw Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963. The Vietnam War escalated, and the city filled with protest and possibility. We were young, still discovering who we were, and the world seemed both fragile and wide open.
There were no cell phones, no internet, no digital distractions. We lived face to face. We sang together, argued together, fell in love, and sometimes fell apart. Georgetown — its spires, bricks, and quiet streets — was our playground.
The songs on this album were born in those years, shaped by the friendships, the awakenings, and the indelible moments that stay with us long after time has passed.
On the song "Georgetown Alleluia": Sunday mornings in Georgetown arrived gently. The noise and urgency of the week receded, and the streets filled instead with quiet footsteps and unspoken expectations. At Holy Trinity Church, whose roots reached back to the earliest days of the nation, students gathered beneath its vaulted ceiling. When the choir began to sing, their voices seemed to suspend time itself, filling the air with something both sacred and deeply human.
It was in those moments — walking side by side through lamplit streets and listening to those distant Alleluias — that young love took hold. And sometimes, just as quietly, slipped away.
Georgetown Alleluia returns to those Sunday mornings, when music, memory, and the promise of love were woven together, and everything still felt possible.
On the song "Ballad to Maeve": In every school there is one person who seems to carry her own light. At Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1963, that was Maeve. She was poised, articulate, multilingual, and quietly captivating. She moved through the university with easy confidence, her British-tinged voice and natural grace drawing everyone in. For a brief moment, against all expectation, our paths came together, and I found myself at her side in a year when the world still felt wide open. This ballad returns to that moment — to youth, to wonder, and to the way music can hold someone in memory long after time has moved on.
Hear what industry leaders say
Praise for "MOONLIGHT RAINY EVENING (in Old Georgetown)"
"You sound great and your songs brim with wonderful nostalgia. What a beautiful love letter to Georgetown!” - Robert Dale Klein, performing songwriter at Big Cyrus Music.
"Robbin’s songs put honesty and great emotional sensibility at their heart. The reflective, sweet sentiment of Vienna Sunshine’s unfolding story pulls you right in. The chorus adds charm to the story and the sing-a-long melody stays with you." - Charlie Feldman, whose career spans senior music publishing executive in Nashville and Creative Vice President at BMI.
"What a delight the new album Moonlight Rainy Evening in Old Georgetown is! From the swingy “Just Let It Go” to the bossa groove of “Joy,” Robbin Ahrold’s original songs and smooth baritone will take you on a sweet journey of finely crafted lyrics and melodies." – Lydia Hutchinson, founder Performing Songwriter Workshops.
“Georgetown Alleluia is a graceful, tender song that works as both a romantic memory and a hymn — to Georgetown and to a lost love. The town emerges not as a mere setting but as an enchanted memory-space, and the refrain gives the whole thing an almost devotional feeling: a lovely, lingering sense of place and longing.” - John Hasse – Curator of Music Emeritus, Smithsonian Museum of American History
“Close your eyes and perform a Blind Listening Test…these songs will bring you back to the Classic Age of Folk Music in the 60’s and 70’s. Some classic lyrics and a voice that fit the model that record labels would’ve gladly signed and released.” – Jim Fishel, served as editor at Billboard Magazine, record producer, and Executive Director of the RIAA - the Music Industry's Trade Association. Worked with legends including Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, Laura Nyro, Larry Gatlin, and Jimmy Buffett.
"Robbin Ahrold's songs and voice bespeak the quiet authority of truth-telling about the American experience, plain-spoken but professionally polished. He also effuses warmth that invites the listener in on the music, encouraging the impulse to sing along." - Howard Mandel, Jazz Journalists Association President Emeritus
On Moonlight Rainy Evening (in Old Georgetown) – “Great images and pictures that put us in the
movie of your song! Love all of it and the timeless quality of your song.” – Nashville Songwriter
On Just Let It Go – “I dig the feel! Great paint playing too! I like how you've got it laid out; a good handle on how to craft a song.” – Nashville Songwriter
"In songs that drift between cabaret and country, Robbin wraps his deep voice around lyrics that touch on place and memories. Loves are lost, walks are taken, and what happened, like in his song ‘Joy,’ enriches the present." - Bob George , Founder and Director, the Archive of Contemporary Music (ARC)
“My favorite song, for both the music and lyrics, is the romantic “Sunsets Memories” sung by his daughter, Jill Ahrold Bailey. In this day and age, it’s refreshing to hear an authentic, heartfelt work of art from a man who values his family above everything else.” -Paige Powell, NSAI Singer/Songwriter
