Off the radar but still flying

Nights like this make Ruth Price, the proprietor of the Culver City venue, more than a touch nervous. At the moment, eyes heavenward, she's scanning the seating plan -- a clear plexiglass sheet situated above the ticket booth that patrons scan to handpick their seats. As each ticket is purchased, Price, or one of her staffers, X's out a spot, allowing a visitor a preview of how full (or not) the evening might be.

More than a decade into this, the tension of worrying over the house still puts Price on edge.

The first set is supposed to start at 8 p.m., but there aren't many grease-penciled Xs. Price waits as long as she can, given there's the second set to think about. At 8:15-ish, the lobby lights start flashing, indicating that the doors to the performance space will be opening shortly. Businessmen with loosened ties catch the last bit of light outdoors and stub out their cigarettes. A group of women in broomstick skirts and long exotic earrings, clustered in the high-ceilinged cafe, toss out their pie plates and then take their seats inside. The green plastic patio chairs are set up in straight rows like pews. In this simple, bare-bones arrangement, the room looks even emptier than the seating grid.

By the time the lights have dimmed and Price has given her trademark peppy intro, singer Andy Bey squints out into the crowd. He makes a visor of his left hand, cupping it above his brow and peers out into the shadows: "So nice having a packed house," he laughs into his microphone. "Oh, but they're on their way." Bey smiles a knowing smile and then, seating himself at the piano, everything falls away. He promptly saunters into "Paper Moon"; next, an otherworldly version of "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"

Bey continues to toss out an unusual set of tunes -- like laying out a surprising playing-hand. Then he starts in on some not so unusual ones: Kurt Weill's "Speak Low" and an achingly out-of-time version of "Midnight Sun." He pulls something out of the center of his being, in a voice that is all ache in the middle but only slightly frayed at the edges -- he sings these with conviction and controlled force -- as if it were an SRO crowd, as if he were alone.