Ask an acoustic singer-songwriter about his influences and he might throw out names like Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Nick Drake.

Ask David Leicht of the acoustic duo Pairdown, and he mentions Fred Neil, John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, Leonard Cohen and Bill Callahan from Smog.

	David Leicht, with bandmate Raymond Morin, pared down for Pairdown. Click photo for larger image. Pairdown With: Kevin Finn, Evan Knauer and Sam Matthews. Where: Modern Formations, Garfield. When: 8 p.m. Wednesday. Admission: $5; 412-362-0274.

Leicht is clearly someone who has looked beyond the top-tier performers and is coming from an indie background. He is also relatively new to the acoustic field, having cut his teeth in an experimental Chicago band called Sailing Knife.

"We were eclectic," he says. "We certainly picked up bits of what was going on in Chicago at the time, which was a revived interest in No Wave and also some of the more experimental post-rock. One of the people in the band worked at the studio where a lot of Tortoise and The Sea and Cake records were recorded, and he was the kind of the engineer of [our] sound."

Leicht was more the engineer of the words, and when the band split, he moved to New York and started to pursue his acoustic interests while performing at the Knitting Factory and the Mercury Lounge.

"When it dissolved," he says of the band, "I wasn't interested in repeating that experience, and I certainly like to travel light to a gallery or club with a guitar case, open it up and be playing in minutes, whereas with Sailing Knife, we had a lot of equipment and samplers and organs and it was complex, so the simplicity of just picking up an acoustic guitar is a departure from that."

Plus, he says, "I always appreciated great songwriters and people who could present what they do in the simplest fashion."

Leicht, a Youngstown native, moved to Pittsburgh two years ago with his wife, and, now, with Pairdown co-guitarist Raymond Morin, he is beginning to establish himself in the Pittsburgh acoustic underground -- although there's no reason for his music to remain there.

Pairdown's debut EP on Sort Of Records, while melodic and accessible (pretty even), reveals a slight avant-garde edge and more idiosyncrasies in the phrasing than the typical acoustic singer-songwriter. You can tell Leicht is familiar with the New York anti-folk movement and lo-fi as well as indie-rockers like Smog and Neutral Milk Hotel.

While in Pittsburgh he has opened for such indie phenoms as Songs:Ohia, Wooden Wand and the Ditty Bops.

"I realize that a lot of show-goers, when they see someone climb onstage with an acoustic guitar, start looking for the door," he says. "I can sympathize with them ... singer-songwriters and fingerstyle players can be tedious. All of the cliches and other trappings of acoustic music leave little room to maneuver. Whether or not Pairdown is succeeding with it on some level is not for me to say, but the challenge is seductive and appeals to the minimalist in me."

EXPERIMENTING WITH WOODLAB

Along with his work in Pairdown, Leicht is helping to build the acoustic scene with Woodlab, a performance series at Modern Formations in Garfield the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month.

It began last week and continues Wednesday with Pairdown, Kevin Finn, and Evan Knauer and Sam Matthews (of the Crow Flies).

"One of the ideas of the Woodlab series," Leicht says, "is to try to consolidate some of the people who are doing more acoustic-oriented or more experimental, progressive acoustic guitar stuff, try to round them up and at least get them listening to one another."

Along with the shows, Woodlab is spinning off a series of monthly CDs featuring two studio songs from each of the artists who performed. The first one includes music by Wednesday's performers, along with David Bernabo, Daryl Fleming and Anita Fix. It's on Sort Of Records, which is run by Morin, who started it in Boston but is now based here.

Leicht says the ideal is for the artists to contribute exclusive tracks, which happened with the first one.

"That's what were really excited about and we're hoping that bands in the future will be willing to do the same, because you need documents rather than just compilations."