As host Rob Chidester finishes talking to the audience at Chelsea’s Cafe on Oct. 1, he introduces Caroline Schaff.
Schaff timidly takes the stage sporting a grin. Alongside her is guitarist Chris Hochkeppel and drummer Clyde Bates.
She plugs her ukelele into the speaker and transforms into a fierce and secure performer. In the middle of her set, Schaff goes on and explains the song to her audience.
“My friend challenged me to be more of a lioness in my songwriting, and I took that literally. And I wrote a song about an actual lioness,” Schaff said. “I Googled lion facts and then just incorporated them into the lyrics.”
The audience can’t help but burst into laughter. Without losing composure, Schaff doesn’t stop smiling and giggling as she sings along.
“So cute,” yells an audience member.
The combination of mellow and modern lyrics blended with the talent surrounding Schaff makes her performance stand out from many of the other local bands.
“You think we have time for two more songs?” asks Schaff.
“Please, sing three or four or five,” yells someone in the back.
Schaff, a University creative writing senior, has no trouble balancing her coursework with her music career.
“I thought it would help with the lyrical aspect of songwriting, and I always enjoyed English in school,” Schaff said. “I couldn’t go with music because I don’t have the technical knowledge, like theory and all of that.”
For Schaff, it was not hard to learn to play music instruments because she used the Internet and started writing music during her freshman year of high school, when her brother bought her her first guitar.
“I just picked it up and started writing songs,” Schaff said.
Since then, Schaff has taken every opportunity to perform live.
“I’ve always been involved in it. When I was in middle school and high school, I was in drama club and choir so I performed through those mediums,” Schaff said. “But I didn’t really start performing my own original music until college, really.”
When she performs live, Schaff makes use of her friends.
“I met them all at LSU — most of them are music majors — and just through mutual friends,” she said.
Schaff said her band name is a work in progress, and as of now, she is performing under her own name. But when she plays, she usually collaborates on and off with Hochkeppel, who is in Tiger Band, and Scott Graves. Both Graves and Hochkepper are members of the band Burris. Her other collaborators include Palmyra band members Winston Triolo and Ian Wellman and her friend Laura Swirsky.
Having so many people come in and out is not a problem for Schaff, who has her own YouTube channel, singadingding115, where she posts all her original and covered work.
“We go to the Music and Dramatics Arts Building, and we just practice,” Schaff said. “It is really easy because I have videos that they can refer to when they are practicing,” Schaff said. “It is easy beforehand if they already have an idea of what the song sounds like. So yeah, they listen to my videos and figure out the harmonies and what not.”
Schaff performed live for the first time in a college show at Kirby Smith Hall during her freshman year.
In summer 2014, she took the stage with a band alongside Swirsky for the first time.
“We met [Schaff and I]freshman year, in fall of 2011. And I had just moved down here, and I didn’t know anyone,” Swirsky said. “When I first met Caroline, she is just so genuinely nice, and I come from a place where people are not that openly nice.”
This year, Swirsky said she and Schaff have collaborated together on most of the shows Schaff has been involved in.
“She is unbelievably creative, just the nicest person in the world and really just a heart of gold,” Swirsky said. “She just sees the best in every situation and everyone, I think that is why her songs are so good, she thinks a lot about a lot of things. She really likes to express herself and always puts a lot of thought in the words she wants to use, and I guess she is really good with her rhetoric.”
To Swirsky, Schaff’s music is “nice to listen to because she puts a lot of thought into the lyrics that she sings, and it is always a nice melody behind it.” She said all of her songs tell a nice story.
Schaff’s ultimate goal is to one day be a full-time musician.
Schaff is performing at 9 p.m. Saturday at The Spanish Moon and 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 12 at Kerry Beary’s Atomic Pop Shop.

Lioness by Caroline Schaff from FreeFall View on Vimeo.

Gallery • 8 Photos

Javier Fernández

11/14/2014 Caroline Schaff at Highland Coffee's