Live music by Don and Jenna
Bin77
Baton Rouge
Nov. 14
There’s a moment while listening to live music covers when you figure out what songs they’re playing. Sometimes it takes only a few chords of the intro before you’re jamming out. Sometimes it’s well into the song when they start getting to the catchy part of the tune that somehow has wormed its way into your head subconsciously. Watching that happen in someone else is like watching the lights come on.
There were many opportunities to do that at Don Kadair and Jenna D'Shay’s live music performance at Bin77 on Friday. From dance pop songs like “Shivers” by Ed Sheeran to Americana classics like “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” the music was the soundtrack to what looked to be many date nights and girl’s nights out.
Bin77 is a bar/bistro with open patio seating and live music on many days of the week. It’s a no-reservations spot on Perkins Rowe, which means it has taken over an hour to get seated every time I’ve been there. I have never eaten dinner at a normal time at Bin77, and the wait is typically longer than they say it will be. Still, they’re busy, and people come back, so they must be doing something right.
I arrived shortly after the set started at around 7:15 and was told it would be a 45 minute wait. An hour later, I checked in to see where we were in line, and it was going to be another 25 minutes for patio seating, so I changed the waitlist request to first available and finally sat down inside at 8:45.
During the wait, I doubled back outside near the patio and listened to the music from the other side of the fence. Kadair and D’Shay are both music scene regulars in Baton Rouge, playing gigs at restaurants and other venues mostly with other collaborators: Kadair is in a band called Press 1 for English, and D’Shay plays with Brice Pastorchik in a duo they call Shaychik. Kadair and D’Shay have good onstage chemistry. It was not their first time playing together, and one wouldn’t know that they aren’t regularly a performing duo just by looking at them.
The set was solid. The music they played was generally slower – or slowed down to match the vibe of the restaurant. They played a slowed-down version of “What’s up?” by 4 Non Blondes (yes, the OG, though I wonder if they picked that song because of its recent TikTok remix popularity). D’Shay is a great belter and harmonizer. People mouthed the words to Bob Dylan and bopped to the different songs. It was a beautiful night, and the bistro lights zigzagging over the patio provided the perfect ambiance — provided you can get seated there.
There’s no music playing inside. Depending on the song, you can sometimes overhear the music from outside, but it’s difficult. Despite all this, when they started playing “Mercy” by Duffy, I recognized it almost immediately, and it sent me back to middle-school dance classes and screaming the lyrics into a hairbrush microphone. In the words of the Duffy song, I don’t know what this is, but they got me good just like they knew they would: I’d still dine again and hope for live music.