Last week Tom and I were treated to free tickets to see Matthew Sweet ("Girlfriend", "Evengeline") at the Ram's Head Tavern in Annapolis. My Dad's former band manager, Joe Stella, was managing Sweet's "20th Anniversary Girlfriend" tour in addition to working on the Bangles tour (remember "Manic

Monday"?). He's been traveling all over the place to keep up with the 80s all-girl band (what guy wouldn't?) and just did the sound for their gigs on Dancing With the Stars and Jimmy Kimmel Live!

I've spent a lot of time behind the scenes with musicians and their "enthusiastic" fans and perhaps that's why I was nervous about the prospect of meeting Mr. Sweet. To ease into the evening, Tom and I descended the stairs to the cozy "Pub" where we were greeted by our friendly bartender "Amy" with a cool gap between her front teeth. Seated on our left were 2 skinny academics and to our right was a bleary-eyed older fellow drinking a cup of coffee, making me feel extremely guilty about having a glass of wine. Tom nudged me to look at the beer the 2 dudes were drinking. Their bottles were as big as a bottle of wine! I noticed they were holding these fake paper passports and seeing as they were now a bit giddy I couldn't help but ask them what they were doing. Apparently known to

everyone, except for us, The Ram's Head has a "World Beer Club" which to belong to one must drink all 100 of the beers listed on the passport in order to graduate at which point you will get your own metal mug, your name on the wall and $2.50 draft beers for the rest of your life! Wow. So I asked Amy what was the fastest anyone has accomplished this. "One guy did it in 7 days" she said. One of the dudes admitted he was a runner and has a couple of buddies who drank the 100 beers and ran 100 miles all in one week - or something crazy like that. What the heck did they do, run around Annapolis, come in all sweaty in their running gear, guzzle a few and then run around again? Well, apparently yes! I don't know, sounds a bit like a tall tale to me. Having accomplished their

quota for the evening, the dudes left their seats at the bar, only to be promptly filled by another lively duo (a middle-aged man and his "date"). The moment they approached the bar, the man walked right up to Tom and said "Hey, you're a good looking guy!" Flattering, but oh so weird. He sat next to me and started quizzing us. "Why are you here? Where are you from, DC? (he was shocked we were from Baltimore) Why are you wearing that sparkly sweater?" We'd had a couple of drinks and were happy to go along with it. His "date" was his running buddy and he was her running coach AND believe it or not, he was number 43 on the World Beer Club wall! Does everyone run and drink in Annapolis? Turns out he's an attorney--which explains the cross examination--but a fun one. His parting words to us were "You're a lucky woman" to which I replied "I know". Doubly weird.....

Buzzzz, I got a text from Joe ("Where are you?"). The show had started and we'd better get in there. An older lady, who looked more like a cookie-baking grandma than an usher at a club, took us to our table. The Ram's Head On Stage is a dinner club where you can order food and drinks at your table (after you have indicated in sign language to your server what you'd like). It's my favorite place to see a performance. The space is intimate and the crowd is always so genuinely happy to be there. My Dad's band played there in September and he said it was the best gig of the tour.

I have to admit, when I accepted the invitation to see Matthew Sweet perform, I really didn't know that much about him and it took me a while to figure out what was going on....this was a tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his popular album "Girlfriend". As I discovered after the show, many of the members of the audience were big fans of that album and hearing the songs brought back all kinds of good memories. So sweet!
Matthew wasn't what I expected but I liked him. He admitted he wasn't feeling well and so perhaps a little bit of his sardonic humor was a result. He had skinny legs, a robust belly and was wearing brown 5 Toe Shoes. Tom thought his feet made him look a bit like a sasquach. Regardless, the performance was great and now I'm also an "enthusiastic" fan.

After the show we spent time with Joe and were introduced to the lead guitarist, Dennis Taylor and the bassist Paul Chastain (formerly a member of Velvet Crush). A fellow audience member sat with us, shaking his head and telling us how many memories the songs evoked for him. We didn't get to meed Matthew after all. Because he was under the weather he stayed in the dressing room, although as we left we did get a glimpse of him boarding the Mercedes tour van shrouded in a sweatshirt hood, looking a bit like a prize fighter. Ram's Head Live in Baltimore is fun, but the Ram's Head Live rocks!