Every venue has its own distinctive set of challenges where the sound is concerned, and the Ram's Head Tavern in Annapolis, MD is no exception. If not for the dogged persistence of our techies, our patience and the cooperation of the house, we might still be there trying to unravel sonic mysteries.

We played two shows with a decided emphasis on acoustic guitars (less loud and less prone to feed back). Our list that night included Beneath The Gate, Your Missing, Angel Mine and Floorboard Blues. Because of the room's acoustic demands, we had to take Dragging Hooks out of the mix, too loud.

The Ram's Head is a large, bright restaurant seating space, and more. A close look at the rows of autographed celeb B/Ws on the walls reveals that the cream of the folk world has played here including two shows I would like to have seen by Gillian Welch/Dave Rawlins and Arlo Guthrie. It's a great spot and they treated us well.

We took a much needed day off in Annapolis where we stayed at The Maryland Inn, an "historic" hotel. Several of the signators of the American Constitution stayed here when Annapolis served as the federal capitol for one year after the signing of the Treaty of Paris that ended the War of Independence with Great Britain. My room had an historic shower with historic water pressure and an historic television.

The old part of the city overlooks the harbor and is a mix of colonial-period buildings, and tacky tourist boutiques dominated by the tall rotunda of the state legislature on the hill. This marriage of the old and the new in this city on Chesapeake Bay represents to me a pattern of contrasts, of darkness and light in the city's history. Here was the signing of a peace accord, a formative step in the early life of a great nation. Here also was the dirty business of offloading human slaves, who survived the Atlantic crossing in the bowels of the slave ships, at the landing in the shadow of the rotunda.

Annapolis is also very proud of its Naval Academy. Our early morning arrival in Annapolis found us parked in a huge, empty parking lot beside the Navy football stadium. This stadium in all its oversized monumental glory looked like something from the mind of Ridley Scott.

Annapolis is the well-established cigar shop made of brick and wood and highly polished wood-framed glass counters. These days it still sells the finest rolled imports that money can buy, but cigar smoking has lost its social cache, so the cigar store also deals in tourist baubles. For some the aromatic quality of the air behind the old oak doors to the shop is old world charming. For others, it stinks like hell.