Deanna Dove greets me at the door of her North Beach, Md., home looking ready to head to Margaritaville. She’s clad in flipflops, bikini, and a Hawaiian print sarong. Her sun-bleached hair seems made to order for this singer/songwriter, who’s been called the “female Jimmy Buffett of the Chesapeake.”

“Where’s your shorts?” she asks sweetly. “You can’t go in a boat wearing khaki pants.”

Soon, Dove is piloting my khaki pants and me on a cruise down the Patuxent River aboard her eighteenfoot Thomas cruiser, the Chesapeake Dove. She steers the boat through waters she’s known forever, pointing out coves and creeks that she discovered as a little girl growing up on Broomes Island. Her dual loves, she tells me, are music and the water, which she has combined in her first album, Chesapeake, released in 2003. This summer, she’s reprising it as part of the “Songs of the Chesapeake” tour around the region, which benefits the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, among others.

Dove’s earthy, clear voice blends rock’n’roll, country, and R&B with warmth and clarity. Musicians as diverse as Kitty Wells and Bonnie Raitt, Ray Charles, and James Brown inspire her style. She says she knew her musical calling at an early age. “I was doing the ‘singing with the hairbrush thing’ in front of the mirror as a kid. And I grew up in a musical household,” Dove says. “Mom played the piano and Dad sang, and my sisters and I sang together.”

The kids made early recordings as the Dove Sisters Trio, when Deanna was twelve, for a Sunday morning “March of Faith” segment on WMJS, Calvert County’s first radio station. The young trio sang popular gospel hymns at talent shows, telethons, and church revivals. “It was a beautiful harmonious sound that I would love to duplicate again,” she says.

After singing in other numerous bands (Snafu, Nick Danger & the Untouchables, Deanna Dove and Blues Power), she set out on a solo career in 1998, going full-time two years later. “When I was a little girl, my father told me ‘It’s a rough world out there—go out and find yourself a job.’ Music was what I was put here to do.” She took his advice to heart.

It took a couple more years, but she wrote the songs and produced “Chesapeake” herself, using about $5,000 of her own money. She founded a record label in the process, Island Girl Records, to avoid having to deal with the mainstream record business. “I do it all, my own booking, promotions, and advertising. I’ve never made enough of a connection with a manager that could represent me for who I am.”

It was love, inspiration, and a little heartbreak that led to her first album. The eponymous title song is an ode to the end of a relationship that left her wounded but also gave her a newfound outlook on life. “‘Chesapeake’ took me three days of writing sitting at my kitchen table. They always say heartbreak leads to great art, and so many people tell me they relate to ‘Chesapeake.’” It’s now the theme song of WRNR’s weekly show “Voices of the Chesapeake Bay.”

“Deanna Dove is genuinely passionate about the Chesapeake Bay, and that energy comes through loud and clear through her music,” says Michael Buckley, “Voices” producer. “Her upbringing on tiny Broomes Island is recreated with full color and dimension in songs like “Lula J” and the Springsteen-come-Buffettesque anthem ‘Chesapeake.’”

This summer she’s hoping to do a concert tour of cities along the Bay. “I want to do a tour by boat, just pull up to town and let people come on board for the concert. I want to do it to raise awareness of the Chesapeake Bay, to help sustain it and raise awareness on how to protect it.”

Although a sponsor for that venture has yet to materialize, Dove still plays more than four times a week, up and down the East Coast, from the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City to clubs in the Florida Keys. Locally, she plays at Mangos at Herrington Harbour South Marina, Red Eye’s Dock Bar on Kent Island, and Calypso Bay Restaurant and Dock Bar in Tracey’s Landing.

These days, she’s also in the studio recording a gospel album of traditional Southern gospel songs, to, as she puts it, “lay down my roots.” It’s a full schedule, but she says, “I’m trying to cut back somewhat to concentrate on my writing and fishing, although I’m really a true crabber.”

As we pull up to the dock, the island girl is clearly in her element: “I can remember going out crabbing with my family every evening and returning with bushels that we caught with dip nets. I would give anything to see that plenty again. I will go to great lengths to raise awareness for ‘my’ Chesapeake.”

Noi Mahoney with Kathy H. Ely. For performance schedule, visit http://www.deannadove.com.