Live Music at La Divina: LSU songwriters showcase
La Divina Italian Cafe
Baton Rouge
Sept. 26, 2025
“Oh honey, I think you’re tipsy,” sang Shelbi Frantom. “You keep telling everyone that you love me.”
The crowd, which contained mostly other songwriters, family and friends, sang along at the performance Thursday night, at LSU songwriters’ showcase at La Divina. The showcase was a standing-room-only affair in the Italian cafe/restaurant. It wasn’t like going to dinner with some background live music. People turned their chairs and rearranged tables to watch songwriters Shelbi Frantom, Evie Richard and Mason Wulff perform.
All performers were former students of Eric Schmitt’s LSU songwriting class. They’ve formed a songwriting group since completing the couse to continue critiquing and workshopping each other’s work. They each accompanied themselves on guitar from the corner of the dining room, and Schmitt sat in to the side, running the sound board.
Frantom, a confident performer, sings like she really means it. She said in an interview after the show that she has been songwriting for five years, but didn’t get the push to perform until taking Schmitt’s class. It helped her realize how much music can touch and heal other people, and her goal is to write and perform music that others can find themselves in.
“It’s not usually just you that’s going through it,” she said. “It’s all these other lives that are in the same thing the same way but a little bit differently, and I think music brings that all together.”
Her song, “Tipsy,” was inspired by an experience she had with a guy who was blowing up her phone one night. She replied simply, “Oh honey, I think you’re tipsy,” and immediately copied it into her notes app.
“I was like, ‘That is the beginning of a song,’” she said.
The lyrics came to her in about 30 minutes. It has become a favorite among her friends and family when she performs for them privately. And who among us hasn’t felt this way?
La Divina is a third space in Baton Rouge. It’s evidenced by the flyers tacked on the walls and around the counter for chess club and open mics and by the rotating local art that always adorns their walls. It’s the perfect place for a small event like this. They have food. They have wine. They serve amazing gelato. It’s an intimate setting where people can take a step out and perform.
Showcases like this give young songwriters and performers a chance to share new work and gain experience performing. It’s part of fostering talent here in Baton Rouge. Especially in college and the one or two years immediately after that, one of the highest forms of love is showing up for people and caring about their stuff, not after they’re wildly successful but when they’re first getting started. The true magic of the evening isn’t that three former students reunited to perform their work. It’s that they knew each other’s songs too.
