Eclectic Company: Serendipity, Again and Again

When you visit photographer and Stellar Beans-proprietress Valerie Noland Smith’s place, you’re instantly at home. The inviting and versatile coffeehouse on Broad Street feels even more like a living room than the hangouts we know from Friends and Frasier; visiting Stellar Beans is like casually showing up at the home of a dear friend, who just happens to have invited other company. Oh sure, you get coffee — fair trade beans that taste great and are both eco-friendly and harvesting community-sustaining — and there’s breakfast, lunch, snacks and such for sale. But those things are just the catalysts for what really goes on at the popular eatery: It’s the perfect setting for personal and public communication.

Almost every morning there’s an animated and enthusiastic group — a different one each day — sitting around one or more tables or relaxing on the couches, having what appear to be important meetings, while all around them, singles, doubles and small groups sit at twelve four-tops painted and glazed with stylized interpretations of the Zodiac under art-gallery quality works all along the exposed old brick walls, a pleasant backdrop for peering at glowing laptops and reading printed paper works.

It’s both a lively and relaxing atmosphere even when the joint is filled and jumping with some kind of performance. Smith loves music and poetry and the energy of artists, so she’s programmed events that appeal to hers and her coffeehouse clientele’s interests, offering open mics and occasional concerts. A few weeks ago, I heard there’d be a bluegrass band on Monday at lunchtime, and wondered how well such lively music would go down with the wraps, soups, and salads. Turns out, the young bluegrass and old-timey sister duo, Scenic Roots, was energized but low-fi, and they went down a treat with the lunchtime crowd and the days’ specials, playing well beyond their planned gig-length.

Scenic Roots are Erin (mountain dulcimer and harmony vocals) and Amber (fiddle and clawhammer banjo and lead vocals) Rogers, and they play old-timey, bluegrass and Irish trad songs with skill and taste, stitching their sets together with easygoing banter, funny stories, and some groaning oldie-moldy down-home jokes. The sisters graduated last year from South Plains College in Levelland, Texas, with certificates in Commercial Music, Bluegrass division, but they’d already honed their chops over more than a decade of family music-making, and their experience as well as their obvious talents showed up nicely alongside their training. Erin plays the mountain dulcimer with incredible precision, and uses the often delicately played box as if it was a rhythm guitar, while Amber rang all the changes on fiddle solos and played her heart out on the mournful but melodic “Ashokan Farewell,” written by Jay Ungar for Ken Burns’ Civil War PBS series. When Amber switched to banjo for a Ralph Stanley number you must have heard Jack White (of White Stripes) play on the Cold Mountain soundtrack, I double-checked Scenic Roots online info. Amber turns 22 shortly, but sings in her high nasal voice like a veteran of double those years.

How did they come to Lake Charles? Sounds like they put their fingers down on a map, and called anyone who they thought would hire them. When they played at Stellar Beans, they were touring through Lake Charles on their way to a nighttime gig in Welsh, promoting their newest release, “The Bound For Somewhere EP,” a five-song CD with a variety of musical influences. An old-timey instrumental featuring fiddle, dulcimer and guitar, “Hop The Fence,” opens the recording, followed by the country gospel “Ain't No Grave,” the bluegrass standard picking tune “Angeline the Baker,” the humorous “Everybody Wants to Go To Heaven [But Nobody Wants to Die],” and the Irish/Scots instrumental the “Temperance Reel.”

The girls used to play with guitarist dad Doug and travel with soundboard/road manager mom Marci in a family band, and it’s clear from their blog entries and bios that they’re happily tied to Concordia, Kansas. But as the girls have gone out on the road without their parents, they’ve ably and humorously taken on all the business and rhythm roles. At Stellar Beans they were winsome and wise, and for my money, they’re poised on the brink of Alison Krauss-level popularity (I remember clearly when she was a 14-year old fiddle champ, and knew she was going places). So watch this space. Or better yet, go to www.scenicroots.com and get a jump on the scenemakers.

I always tell people that I don’t like surprises, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a sucker for serendipitous discoveries. This month’s charmers are the Underground Horns, led by German-bred Welf Dorr on alto sax. The Horns are a six-piece brass band playing afro-funk, bhangra, New Orleans-style jazz, latin grooves and filtering those genres through originals and a who’s who of jazz greats’ hits and B-sides. I was literally drawn to them from one end of Penn Station’s Long Island Railroad waiting room to the other, 500 feet or more away, on the sound of the tuba and trumpet interplay (you can picture me wafted toward them on the air, drawn by the snake charmer’s tug), and after just one chorus of Charles Mingus’s “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” I had to buy the CDs they had modestly stacked in an open instrument case. Their 2008 CD, Funk Monk, had Mingus and Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane and Dewey Redman songs alongside tasty charts by bandleader Dorr, while the second, 2010’s Big Beat, features mostly Dorr-penned tunes. Both are strong sonic works, with graceful soloing by all band members. They’ve been around for several years, but lucky me, I got to hear them for free in an incredible acoustic setting — the 40 or more-foot ceilings and hard marble and cement floors funneled the taut, exquisite sounds all around us like a tornado, and if my train hadn’t come, I could have stayed and bopped all night. Get some of that love direct from www.undergroundhorns.com.