From left: Izzo, Dailey, and Levy. Photograph: Justin Knight

Over the years and under varied names and serving various brews—Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, Peet’s—the third-floor café in McElroy Commons has led a dual life as morning way station and, nights and weekends, small performance space. Renovated over the summer and renamed the Chocolate Bar, the café now serves chocolate Belgian waffles and fondue. And on Friday and Saturday nights starting at nine, it adds a mix of student performances.

The show takes place in the back of the café’s sitting area, which is furnished with clutches of blond-wood tables, chairs, and pillow-backed loveseats separated from the serving area by partitions of wood and frosted glass. Seats are arranged in a half-circle around the “stage”—a square rug framed by track lighting and speakers. Friday, September 23, features a quadruple billing.

Some 60 students are seated for the opening act: Dave Levy ’06, thin in a white T-shirt and jeans, who launches into Sister Hazel’s 1997 vocal-driven, infectious “All for You” with his acoustic guitar. (Covers are the order of the night.) The audience seems composed largely of two groups, curious freshmen and sophomores from nearby upper campus dorms and friends of the musicians, the latter apt to yell out encouragements like, “I love you Dave Levy!” Between songs, Levy plays the hook from “Scotty Doesn’t Know” (off the 2004 soundtrack for the movie Eurotrip), an inside joke acknowledged with bellows from the audience. Later, during a break between acts, he will scoot onstage and play the off-color song all the way through.

For now, Levy sings four more songs, chatting often with the audience, and then Ali Davitt ’07, whose sleeveless black T-shirt reads “London” in gold, perches on a stool with her acoustic guitar, saying, “I’m kind of nervous, so I’m starting off easy.” She sings a gentle Jewel song in a full alto and stays focused despite the talkative crowd, which is now 100 strong, some dressed in pajamas or sweats, and some in high heels. Davitt finishes her low-key set against type (“I apologize in advance for this”) with Kelly Clarkson’s rock-pop barn burner “Since You Been Gone.” With the song’s last, cathartic yell, Davitt hops off her stool to applause, sets her guitar to the side, and joins friends in the audience.

Next is Brendan Dailey ’09. With a buzzed head and the ability to sell a crescendo on the acoustic guitar, he opens with a Goo Goo Dolls song, a throaty pop-rocker for the lovelorn, and then is joined onstage by Jeongcheol Ha ’09, a violinist “from down the hall.” Requests are taken, and one male student calls out in vain for Aladdin’s “A Whole New World,” to laughter. Half the audience gives Dailey a standing ovation after he stretches the Dave Matthews Band’s 2001 “Everyday” into Bob Dylan’s 1968 “All Along the Watchtower” and back again.

Jarret Izzo ’07 is last, the headliner. Seated behind a keyboard in whalebone blazer and jeans, he slides his left hand down the keys and blasts, “Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire!” Izzo has played the piano since he was five and performs weekly at Jake Ivory’s, a downtown piano bar. He rocks back and forth to the Jerry Lee Lewis opener and between verses sends a double finger-point to the crowd, who clap and sing along and once even boo a wayward cell phone ring. He follows up with the punk-pop gospel “Basket Case,” by Green Day, playing (because he can) with one hand over his eyes. Ray Charles is requested, and Izzo launches into “What’d I Say,” the audience echoing his call, “Baby it’s all right!” Snoop Dogg’s straight-out-of-Compton rap “Gin & Juice” follows, with Dave Levy returning to provide vocal percussion, and then a rock version of Beethoven’s “Fur Elise.” Izzo also plays several originals, including a wry, melodic “homage to my city,” Buffalo, New York (“so stand tall my fellow Great Lakers”).

The night ends at midnight with “Come On Eileen,” a karaoke staple from the 1980s. “Never open with a ballad,” explains Izzo afterward, citing Cole Porter, “and never end with one.”

Read more by Paul Voosen