Hutzell: Annapolis is a music town. An expanding Kent Island club will shake it up.

The biggest thing happening in Annapolis music this summer might be across the Bay Bridge, on Kent Island.

Cult Classic Brewing is putting the finishing touches on a new stage with room for 400 in the audience. Pressing Strings, the popular Annapolis roots band, will perform its new album, “A Different Place,” in September.

“It puts us into a different class for booking different acts, because there’s a little more than double the capacity, right?” co-owner Brooks McNew said. “You get into sort of the minimum amount that interests a particular performer.”

If bringing national and regional acts to a small waterfront town sounds familiar, it should. That’s the Rams Head On Stage brand, creating a center of musical gravity in Annapolis that benefits the arts community.

“Rams Head has focused on presenting Grammy-winning artists, music legends, and emerging talent in an intimate concert setting that attracts audiences locally, regionally, and nationally, making On Stage a true destination venue,” said Royal Bundy, vice president of marketing for Rams Head Group. “That remains our focus today.”

The two clubs won’t exactly be rivals. Rams Head has 350 seats in an arts district, surrounded by bars, restaurants, galleries and historic buildings. Cult Classic shares a highway parking lot with a Hardee’s.

But the potential for artistic competition is clear, and that should be a wake-up call for the businesses that profit from music and a city that relies on tourism.

Annapolis can do better.

The state capital always has been a music town.

Soul and funk at Carr’s Beach in the 1950s and ’60s birthed two national record labels. In the 1970s, guitar great Charlie Byrd and his brother, Joe, made it a destination for club jazz.

The city has two symphony orchestras, chamber groups, an opera and a choral arts society. The Naval Academy Band provides a backbone of professionalism.

When singer-songwriter Livingston Taylor performed the first Rams Head on Stage concert in 1997, it crowned a thriving bar music scene.

It’s the cover bands and songwriters, the aging rockers and twenty-something singers who set the tempo night after night. Yet there’s no anchor for local music.

“We do not have a small-venue room that caters to local talent,” said Sarah Larsen, a bluegrass fiddler and music educator. “And we do have a lot of talent.”

So, local acts now spread out to restaurants and bars, outdoor pavilions, private clubs and even house parties, where admission pays the band.

Sunday, the Bloom Haven festival series opens on the lawn at Maryland Hall with Better off Dead, a Grateful Dead tribute band. Larsen will host the final day, The Annapolis Fiddler’s Pick-nic & Bday Bash! on Aug. 29.

The Annapolis Musicians Fund for Musicians, or AMFM, performs Starry, Starry Night Monday at Rams Head, a scholarship benefit. Musicians play songs written by other local musicians.

And there will be strivers and strummers in bars and restaurants across town, performing on a small corner stage or an intimate back room.

“Supporting local musicians has always been an important part of what we do,” Bundy said. “Our Rams Head restaurants have long served as a launching pad for local artists as they develop their careers.”

It requires navigating the common obstacles of Annapolis life.

“Downtown and that City Dock area, there’s hardly a place to park,” said PJ Thomas, president of the nonprofit AMFM. “If you do manage to get a meter-type spot, it’s only good for two hours.”

Thomas is a popular vocalist but is best known as half of PJ & Neal with her partner, Neal Bumgarner. When they played at Market House recently, management paid for parking — and the musicians still got a $60 ticket.

“You can haul your equipment to and from a garage, the equivalent of several blocks away in the heat,” Thomas said. “I think a better job could be done providing musicians with parking, and for that matter, a better job could be done for servers and bartenders.”

Kent Island music, meanwhile, revolves around waterfront bars in Grasonville and Stevensville.

When Cult Classic’s new space opens, it will make it more of a year-round destination, and that will have ripple effects. If the weight of music culture shifts, local musicians will be the first to feel it.

“We’ll be highlighting our larger regional acts through the end of the fall and into winter,” said Rohry Flood, Cult Classic’s events manager. “Then, starting in 2027, we hope to start announcing weekly shows with national touring acts.”

Rams Head Group, with locations in Maryland, Florida and New York, has expanded in Annapolis from its original tavern on West Street and the adjacent music club.

It’s about to announce the lineup for the annual Annapolis Singer-Songwriter Festival in September. That’s followed by the Annapolis Baygrass Music Festival at Sandy Point State Park.

Pressing Strings is the most successful band to emerge from that scene.

“A Different Place” drops Sept. 3, the day the trio plays at WTMD’s First Thursday series in Baltimore. The first songs are out now, and a national tour starts in July.

Jordan Sokel, Nick Welker and Justin Kruger took a back-to-basics approach on this, their eighth album. It has that feeling you get when you discover a fantastic local band.

“We took a more do-it-yourself approach,” said Sokel, lead singer and guitarist. “Everything was kind of more like just hanging out.”

The tour loops through five states, with stops in Baltimore and Columbia before landing at Cult Classic on Sept. 25.

Annapolis will wait.

Pressing Strings won’t play at Rams Head on Stage until December, just as Cult Classic really gets rolling.

“Gotta gussy up the floor and bring in the new tables and chairs,” said Flood at Cult Classic. “But we’ll be ready to rock in September.”