For five years, the Shadow Lounge has been a staple of East Liberty night life. The plugged-in and the culturally clueless feel equally at ease sinking into the comfy embrace of the club's Goodwill sofas. It's not hard to feel like a hipster when surrendering to the club's nocturnal charms.

		Tony Norman is a Post-Gazette associate editor (tnorman@post-gazette.com)

Founder Justin Strong has made a point of taking the Shadow Lounge beyond its original mandate to become the city's most prominent forum for homegrown hip-hop, slam poetry and spin parties for ambitious out-of-town DJs.

The Shadow Lounge has also expanded its audience, becoming more nuanced and sensitive to the tastes of a broader constituency of culture vultures and hipster wannabes. Though it will always be Pittsburgh's foremost showcase of underground urban music and culture, you can occasionally hear the sound of fingers dancing across an acoustic guitar's fret board if you wander into the club on a random Monday night.

Last week, three musicians sat on stools on the club's stage playing their hearts out "in the round." They were taking turns singing solo renditions of their own songs. They had two guitars between them.

Kathryn O'Leary, a Boston native transplanted to Pittsburgh, evoked an ingratiating mix of Ani DiFranco and Nanci Griffith. She had a voice as strong and cutting as it needed to be for the audience of a dozen or so hanging on to every word. Kansas City's Barclay Martin sat on a stool in the middle of the trio making as much eye contact as possible with the audience when it was his turn to play.

According to Tim Guthrie, the club's sound man and co-owner, Martin has been hitting as many stages in as many towns as possible. "He's touring the country in its entirety," Guthrie said, fiddling with the sound level. It took a few moments for me to recognize Guthrie as a former Sunday school student when I was a member of the Community of Reconciliation in Oakland more than a decade ago. Guthrie was wearing a short mohawk, so he didn't look anything like the kid I remembered. We laughed about the trajectory of his life and that my former Sunday school pupil was now an equal partner in the hippest club in town.

When it was Ben Hardt's turn to play, Martin handed him his guitar. Hardt's own guitar was stolen after a show at Club Cafe several months ago and he has yet to replace it. Still, he isn't the type to get bitter. I once heard him pray for the welfare of the thief who stole it. He sounded like he meant it.

Sounding like a cross between Paul Westerberg and Ryan Adams, Hardt mixed clever wordplay with the most aggressive rock style strumming of the evening. At one point, O'Leary responded with her own rocker, elevating the level of everyone's play for the next round.

The Shadow Lounge's door was wide open and folks passing by would stick their heads in to see what was going on. The sun had recently set and the candles in the lounge were doing their job. Shadows danced to the rhythm of elegantly strummed music.

Guthrie turned a few knobs on the sound board. "This is the life," he said. "This is what having a club is all about."