March 2008. A Baton Rouge coffee shop is brewing a lot of new talent.

Why does the forum in which music is played shape how we take it in? Really, it is all vibrations moving through the dust and air pockets until it rattles our eardrums, whether it is created by a lone guitarist or a full marching band. Great songs come in all forms but to me, there is just something about a singer-songwriter performing his or her material alone. When a songwriter is accompanied only by the instrument he holds in his hands, there is a synergistic reaction; the coupling becomes larger than just a singer and instrument. The song has a sharper edge without all the adornments; allowing it to wedge right into you, where a richer orchestration tends to surround you.

For as intrinsically musical a place as is Louisiana, Baton Rouge doesn’t have as strong a singer-songwriter contingent as other musical cities, but Dorothy LeBlanc is making great steps to rectify the situation. As a children’s musician and member of The Buskers, she has taken up musical residency at Brew-Ha-Ha, a locally owned coffee shop on Jefferson Highway near Government Street. A month or two ago, she added a Songwriter Spotlight to the coffee shop’s entertainment roster, and it has been a resounding hit.

Brew-Ha-ha is usually a cozy oasis from the daily grind, with its walls festooned with local art and panoply of coffee drinks on a chalkboard over the register. It’s a great place to pop in and get work done during the day, whether on the shop’s free Wi-Fi (a number of these very columns have been written there) or in the meeting room in the back. Usually, I have no trouble finding a table in there, so it was a shock to see the place filled to capacity with a rapt audience listening to Baton Rouge singer-songwriter Daniel Patterson, one of six artists on the bill that evening.

Patterson’s songs occupy the Elliot Smith end of the singer-songwriter spectrum: clever lyrics about love and life over simple cyclical guitar figures, with the occasional bout of Leonard Cohen melancholy. In other words, exactly what I look for in a singer songwriter. The artist himself says this about his work, “My songs are all over the place, but I think that casts a pretty wide net.  Lots of thoughts and questions about love, life, growing up, drinking, and love again.” Patterson has tried out his material in other venues in town, and said about this one, “Brew-Ha-Ha has just been terrific since I first checked it out, the audience is really attentive and everyone is really enjoying the music. I feel like its getting better, and I would really like to see a few more songwriter nights pop up around town on ‘slow nights’ for other venues.

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