For the sake of the song

Some of the South Bay’s most talented young songwriters appear Live at the Lounge

The scene is repeated at open mic nights at bars, clubs, and coffeehouses, everywhere.

An aspiring singer arrives, often alone, guitar case in hand. The guitar case holds more than an instrument. It is also a vessel of sorts containing hopes and sometimes frail dreams. Open mic nights are often the first rung of a musical journey that will either see the singer emerge as an artist, or go back homed discouraged, perhaps putting that guitar case back in the closet.

They come to put themselves and their songs to the test. They step up onto the stage, raise their voices in the air, and either fail or take flight.

Friday night, some of the most talented young songwriters emerging from the South Bay’s open mic scene will take the stage at the area’s most acoustically pristine venue, Live at the Lounge, the “listening room” attached to Hermosa Beach’s venerable Comedy and Magic Club. This will be their special night to take flight.

“Young Talent Night” will feature five acts, ranging from harmony duo Allysa and Matt, who have just begun performing, to Whitney Steele, who has released two albums and toured nationally. Also on the bill are the folk-rock harmony duo John and Jake, who moved here from rural Michigan to pursue their music and quickly established themselves as a musical force locally, appropriately enough living in the famed former Beach Boys apartment above Hermosa’s Green Store; Kapali Long, a 20-year-old sweet-voiced, multi-instrumentalist Hawaiian native who moved to Los Angeles two years ago as part of heavy metal rock band and has since unplugged, come to the beach and gone solo acoustic; and Suzy Husner, a singer-songwriter whose honey-toned voice sounds like it could have emerged from 1961 Greenwich Village or a 1691 royal court.

The path each artist has taken are unique. But one thing all have in common is that playing music has ceased to become a choice. As the late great Townes Van Zandt – the patron saint of hard-living singer-songwriters – once sang, it’s a life lived for the sake of the song.

“You just kind of have to do it, right?” Husner said. “This strange thing that just compels you and you just have no choice. It’s like, ‘Well, I’ve made all these songs, I have to sing them now. And people seem to like them so I might as well keep going.”

Sing

Singers usually start early. We all know the kind – those children who seem to always be making up songs and singing. Somewhere along the line, a moment occurs when the singing child realizes it’s the single happiest thing he or she does in life.

Husner has sung as long as she can remember. She sang in chorus and choir as a young girl. By her teenage years, she knew it was more than a hobby.

“I begged, begged, and begged my parents for a piano, I don’t know how the heck I got one of those… then begged for a guitar,” she recalled. “I got a guitar on my 16th birthday and you couldn’t have found a happier girl in all the world..”

She began writing songs during college. At one point, she attended a Take Back the Night rally in support of rape victims and found herself performing in front of a large crowd of people.

“I got this giant standing ovation,” Husner said. “I was shocked. And I remember thinking, ‘Yeah, I think this is what I should do.”

But she actually put down the guitar for a few years after college, not picking it up again until four years ago, when she moved to the South Bay. She started performing at open mics and found a community of like-minded musicians.

“They told me I needed to keep going,” Husner said. “So I figured I should.”

Whitney Steele knew by the age of five, when she sang her first solo at church, that she wanted to be a singer.

“I can remember it like yesterday, really – I remember singing, and saying to myself, ‘This is what I am going to do for the rest of my life,’” Steele said.

She had a natural gift. She took up guitar as a teenager and started writing her own songs. When she sang, people frequently told her: you are going to be famous. But even as her young career has progressed – she was named songwriter of the year in her native Arizona and upon moving to California was nominated in several categories at the Hollywood F.A.M.E Awards and the Los Angeles Music Awards.

But she’d come of age at a time when the declining record industry no longer took artists under its wing. She realized pretty quickly she was on her own.

“I thought it would just come. You don’t know all,” Steele said. “All you know is you have this desire to do what you love….Eventually you realize there is nothing anybody is going to do for me.ure, people can lend something to what your are doing, but the reality is you need to wake up in the morning wanting this, telling yourself, ‘I am going to do anything and everything to make it happen. That’s why I play farmers markets, open mics, house concerts – I am not afraid to do great things, and little things, because they are all something.”

A few years ago, she was in a nail salon waiting for her appointment when she pulled out her guitar and started singing. Everybody in the salon responded enthusiastically, and she sold several CDs. It was an illuminating moment. She soon had booked a national tour that visited 150 different salons. In every city she went to she also played an intimate concert at the bed and breakfast where she stayed in exchange for room and board.

“It was probably the best thing I’ve done in my entire life.” She said.

What Steele has done is essentially create her own music industry. Despite the fact that she has a resume that includes playing on big stages alongside such stars as Kenny Loggins and the Gin Blossoms, she’s still a regular at farmers markets, and still pops into nail salons from time to time.

She does it both because she because she finds fans in this alternative venues, and she simply loves to sing.

“I am so thankful, first of all for the gift of music,” she said. “It comforts me and it comforts other people.. The support I’ve had along the way from family, it’s ridiculously over-the-top…I am doing what I love to do and it leaves me speechless. I am grateful – that is the word.”

“Music has taken me personally, so many times in my life, through whatever emotion you are feeling – you turn it into something and you get through it. I just feel it so deeply.”

Keepin’ On

Kapali Long grew up surrounded by music. His grandfather, Oliver Crowell, was a well-known musician within Hawaiian musical circles. (He met his grandmother, a hula dancer, at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York while he was touring). His grandmother’s brother, Buddy Fo, was an internationally known Hawaiian musician, and his mother played bass.

“I was born into Hawaiian music,” he said.

Long rebelled against it early on. At the age of 4, his grandpa showed him the word “ukulele” and demanded he read it immediately, and thumped him over the head for emphasis. For a couple years after, Long refused to have anything to do with music. Finally, he learned the ukulele, then piano, then drums, and finally, just to mess with his brother, an aspiring guitarist, he picked up the guitar.. He threw himself fully into music, and eventually learned banjo, harmonica, mandolin, and singing.

But his rebellion continued, in one sense. He played heavy metal music. The day after his 18th birthday, in September, 2009, he left Hawaii and came to Hollywood. He lived on his bass player’s floor and for a few years, lived the rock musician’s life.

But two things began happening that surprised him. He tired of the Hollywood scene, and he missed both Hawaii and its music. Kapali moved to the Beach Cities, partly because it felt closer to Hawaii.

“It’s closer than Hollywood,” he said. “I am so over Hollywood. I just love being near the beach. It’s near home. I like the vibe more.”

His music took a turn for the mellower. He started playing open mics with an acoustic guitar, and writing poppy soul songs, ranging from ruminations on love gone right and wrong, to a hook-heavy and oddly poetic tune called “Double Tall Non-Fat Latte,” inspired by his day job as a barista at the Hermosa Beach Starbucks by the windmill on Pacific Coast Highway. In March, he released his first album, a sweetly tuneful affair titled Mountains That Beckon. The album, and its title, represents a benchmark for the young songwriter — his name, in Hawaii, means “mountains that beckon,” and with the release this music, he has certainly began an ascent.

Kapali said he finds himself more and more gravitating to the music he grew up around.

“I strayed away from straight Hawaiian,” he said. “I still have these tattoos left over from being in metal bands, and people look at me and go, ‘Dang – you play folk music?”

Jake Burman and John Ackerman likewise grew up surrounded by the music their families played in Michigan. John was from a little town called Ida, and Jake was from up the road in Monroe. They both arrived at a party in eighth grade with guitars in their hands, raised their voices together in song and were startled by how good it sounded. They’ve been singing together ever since, and moved to Hermosa Beach nearly three years ago to devote themselves to music.

The duo was a staple in the open mic scene. The South Bay has several open mics, but perhaps the two most vibrant are Tuesday nights at Suzy’s and Wednesday nights at Fat Face Fenners Fishshack. Jake and John were particularly social, and often invited musicians back to their home above the Green Store for late night jams, fortifying the burgeoning local singer-songwriter scene.

They are now preparing to record an album. A few videos, including an homage to Hermosa Beach, titled “Maybe I’m Crazy,” – are slated for release, soon.

“The last two years we really were just taking a step back from anything other than getting better as musicians,” Ackerman said. “I guess if we were a business, that would be our R & D phase. Now we are moving into production.”

The Live at the Lounge show, for all involved, represents a benchmark. It’s a room where each artist’s music can be showcased more purely than ever before, a room where even the silences have resonance, a stage from which their songs can take full flight.

“We are getting pretty excited,” Ackerman said. “We’ve never had, a set-up like this, to be able to survive and play music the rest of the time. The last few years, we sort of built it; now we’ve got to jump on it, and this show will be a step in that direction.”

Every singer fundamentally wants one thing: to be able to live inside the music. The dream is to make the stage your job, and this show allows that dream to also take flight a little bit more in the direction of reality.

“That would be the ultimate dream,” Husner said. “I don’t even need much. I just want to pay my rent. It would be awesome to be able to write songs, play with other folks, record a couple of albums…keep it simple and just be able to do this. That would be just a dream.”

Young Talent Night is Friday, May 11. Doors open at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m. See liveatthelounge.com or call 310-372-1193 for tickets. $12. ER