Before Wine & Slow Jams was a thing, David Abraham was just a guy trying to find a decent night out.
The Maryland native studied mass communication at Towson University, and after graduation, did what most young professionals in their early twenties do while balancing their first “grown up” job: partied. And during his time on the nightlife scene, he kept running into the same problem (one we all probably can relate to). No matter where he went in Baltimore, the night always felt like it ended just as it was getting good because the DJ would play just a few R&B songs right before close, and then the lights came on.
“I would always have to wait till the end of parties. They played maybe three or four,” he says. “I wanted something, especially for our demographic.”
He started throwing his own parties in Baltimore in 2017 and built a following steadily enough that by 2022 it made sense to try something bigger. The first Wine & Slow Jams festival had about 1,500 people, and Abraham had never thrown anything at that scale before. Needless to say, it wasn’t a perfect first run, but having all those people singing along to every word of Alicia Keys and Boyz II Men told him everything he needed to know about its potential for the future. “It showed me what it could be if we actually put some more effort and work into it,” he says.
The second festival doubled in attendance. The third and fourth pulled between five and seven thousand people to the outdoor R&B and wine experience in the DMV. This August Wine & Slow Jams turns five as a festival, returning to Rosecroft Raceway in Oxon Hill, Maryland with Case and Pretty Ricky headlining, DJ Quick Silva on the ones and twos, and Abraham himself behind the tables. He’s projecting at least 7,000 people this time around.
He’s also the co-founder of High Status Entertainment, one of the more active event groups in the area, and has been DJing professionally for about seven years. But the two operations draw different crowds. High Status skews 25 to 35 mostly. Wine & Slow Jams runs anywhere from ages 21 to 67, and he knows this because he checked the numbers before sitting down to talk. “The oldest person we had in there was 67 last year,” he says.
Abraham talks about watching a 45-year-old mother and her 23-year-old daughter singing the same song together in the crowd, about couples and groups of women and singles all finding something in the same eight hours outside on the grass. R&B is one of the few genres that does that. “I think R&B and love doesn’t have a specific target,” he says. “It hits everybody.”
He’s thought about it a lot and still can’t fully explain it. “Knowing a specific song and singing it in unison with so many people around you that can relate to a struggle or a specific feeling that you felt is something euphoric about that,” he says. “You add a little wine to it. It ties the emotions all together.”
The festival has grown but hasn’t drifted far from where it started. Last year’s headliner Mario is from the Baltimore area. Alex Vaughn, who has toured extensively, is from here as well. Go-go bands have been part of the bill. The DJs, hosts, and food vendors all come from the DMV, and last year even some of the wine did too. “We really try to pour back into the community the bigger we get,” he says.
Abraham has worked with the B Org, which supports Baltimore City Schools, and this year is partnering with a food bank that operates out of the Rosecroft grounds every Saturday. Because the festival takes over that space, he’s working to expand the food bank’s reach on the Friday and Sunday surrounding the event. “I feel like a lot of times the nonprofits and the people that are doing the behind the scenes work don’t get as much love,” he says.
He keeps a running list of what people said didn’t work, and every year the festival looks a little different because of it. When people said there weren’t enough bars, he doubled them. When the sound drew complaints, he brought in a bigger rig. When people wanted more food vendors, he nearly doubled those too. This year the request was more wine options, so he has spent months bringing in additional vineyards and sponsors to fill that gap. It’s still a very hands-on operation, even at this size.
The goal, he says, is to be the kind of festival people put on their calendars a year in advance. He points to Roots Picnic as the standard he’s chasing, which is the kind of event that becomes a permanent fixture in people’s summers. In ten years he wants 15,000 people and a two-day format.
“If it can be that, then I’ll be a happy man.” For now, the focus is getting through year five.
The post How One Founder Turned R&B, Wine, And Community Into a Growing Summer Tradition In The DMV appeared first on Essence.
