MOBILE, Alabama – The Listening Room of Mobile will host a night of original local talent on Sunday, Dec. 10, pairing a live performance from the acoustic trio Slide Bayou with a display of handmade art built from salvaged window frames. The combination of music and visual art has become a signature of the downtown venue’s approach, giving audiences more than a standard sit-down concert.
Slide Bayou brings together singer-songwriters Ryan Balthrop, Lee Yankie and Harrison McInnis, three musicians who have each built individual followings on the Gulf Coast music scene. All three have spent years playing venues from Fairhope to Dauphin Island and across downtown Mobile, and each brings a distinct songwriting voice to the collaboration – Balthrop’s plainspoken storytelling, Yankie’s melodic instincts and McInnis’s rooted, folksy phrasing.
Rather than performing only their own songs, the trio built its live show around reinterpreting each other’s catalogs, trading verses and reworking arrangements into extended, jam-influenced versions of songs audiences may already know. The format turns a typical songwriters-in-the-round night into something more exploratory: one singer starts a familiar tune, another slides in with a harmony, and the third redirects the arrangement entirely, often without a word spoken on stage.
Improvisation as the Main Event
The group has yet to release a studio album of original collaborative material, but its live sets have become known for spontaneity, with songs frequently stretched into longer instrumental passages that showcase the interplay between the three musicians. Fans have learned to expect the unexpected – a two-minute song can become a ten-minute journey depending on the room, the mood and how the trio is feeling that night.
For fans who have followed Balthrop, Yankie and McInnis individually, the show offers a chance to hear their material filtered through a different voice. A Balthrop song sung by Yankie, or a McInnis tune carried by all three voices at once, reveals new angles in familiar writing – and the trio has leaned into that alchemy as its calling card on the local scene.
Mobile’s music community has long supported collaborative projects like this one, drawing on a talent pool that spans the Gulf Coast. The city’s venues have historically given singer-songwriters room to experiment, and the trio’s members have credited that environment with giving them the freedom to build a project that exists only on stage.
Salvaged Windows, Gulf Coast Scenes
Alongside the music, the venue will display Balthrop’s ongoing “Southern Windows” art collection. The project began two years ago when Balthrop started collecting discarded window frames from around the region and repurposing them into framed artwork. Old houses across the Gulf Coast have surrendered a steady supply of raw material – peeling shutters, wavy glass, hand-milled frames from homes being renovated or torn down.
Each piece uses the salvaged window as a literal frame for Balthrop’s depictions of local scenery, blending found materials with painted or crafted imagery of the Gulf Coast. Marsh horizons, live oaks, working waterfronts and small-town streetscapes all appear in the collection, with the aged wood and hardware of the frames adding texture no new material could provide.
The result is a body of work that organizers describe as a fresh take on regional folk art, mixing rough, weathered materials with detailed renderings of familiar landscapes. Collectors in the area have taken notice, and pieces from the collection have circulated through local galleries and charity auctions in addition to Balthrop’s own show displays.
Pairing the exhibit with Slide Bayou’s performance gives attendees a chance to take in both the region’s visual and musical creative traditions in a single evening. The dual showcase format has grown popular at intimate venues nationwide, where audiences increasingly want an experience rather than simply a show – and where a songwriter who paints offers a natural bridge between the two worlds.
The Listening Room’s Intimate Formula
The Listening Room of Mobile, located at 78 St. Francis St. in downtown Mobile, is known for hosting intimate, seated concerts that highlight singer-songwriters and acoustic performers. The room’s listening-room etiquette – quiet during songs, attentive crowds, no televisions or bar noise competing with the stage – has made it a favorite stop for touring writers and a proving ground for local acts.
Located in the heart of downtown, the venue sits within walking distance of Bienville Square and the restaurants and bars of the Dauphin Street entertainment district, making it an easy anchor for a full evening out. Its size means there is not a bad seat in the house, and audiences are close enough to hear the details of an acoustic guitar and the stories singers tell between songs.
For a December date, the venue typically favors exactly this kind of program: local and regional artists, relaxed pacing and room for the unexpected. Sunday shows have become a way for Mobile audiences to close out the weekend with something quieter than the district’s late-night fare.
A Night for Local Music
Shows like Slide Bayou’s underscore how much original music is generated along the Gulf Coast. The region’s songwriters draw on a blend of influences – country, folk, Gulf Coast blues, beach music and Southern rock – and venues like the Listening Room give them a place to test new material in front of listeners who actually want to hear it.
Attendees on Dec. 10 can expect the art display to open as doors do, giving time to look through the “Southern Windows” pieces before the trio takes the stage. The members of Slide Bayou have hinted that the evening’s set list will lean on reworked favorites from all three catalogs, with plenty of room left for the improvisational passages that have become their trademark.
For Balthrop, Yankie and McInnis, the show is another chapter in collaborations that keep evolving with every performance. Whether the trio eventually commits its sound to a studio album remains an open question – for now, the only way to hear Slide Bayou is live, and the Listening Room may be the best seat in the region for it.
Local audiences have followed each member’s career through solo records and side projects, and the trio’s chemistry reflects years of sharing stages around the region. Balthrop’s work in particular has traveled beyond the Gulf Coast, but all three remain fixtures of the Mobile-Baldwin music circuit, playing listening rooms, festivals and waterfront venues throughout the year.
The December date also fits into a broader stretch of holiday-season programming downtown, when Mobile’s historic district fills with events, shopping nights and out-of-town visitors drawn by the city’s decorated streets and mild winter weather. A seated concert with an art exhibit offers a complement to the season’s larger spectacles – something slower and closer, built around songs and images of the place itself.
Organizers suggest arriving early for the best seats, given the room’s limited capacity and the draw of all three songwriters’ followings. As with most Listening Room bookings, the show is expected to unfold at a relaxed pace, with the artists introducing songs, swapping instruments and letting the arrangements breathe – the qualities that have made the trio’s appearances among the most talked-about nights on the local acoustic calendar.
Word of mouth has been kind to the trio, with clips of its extended live arrangements circulating among Gulf Coast music fans between bookings. The members have joked that the project may never be pinned down in a studio, since its whole appeal is what happens when three writers who know each other’s songs get loose in front of a crowd. The Listening Room’s quiet, attentive setting is considered the ideal environment for exactly that kind of interplay – no crowd chatter, no noise bleeding in from the bar, just three old friends trading songs.
Supporting the Local Scene
Nights like this one also carry weight for the region’s creative economy. Every ticket to a local show supports not just the performers but the venues, sound engineers and artists who make up the Gulf Coast’s music infrastructure. Community members who want to see the scene grow are often reminded that the simplest way to do it is to show up – buy a ticket, bring a friend and let the artists know the audience is listening.
The members of Slide Bayou have spent much of the year playing to audiences across the coast, and their return to a Mobile listening room gives local fans a home-turf chance to hear the project at full strength. For newcomers, the trio’s show doubles as a guided tour of the area’s songwriting talent, delivered in one evening with the improvisational surprises that have made Slide Bayou one of the most engaging acts working the Gulf Coast circuit today.
For residents looking to support original Gulf Coast music and regional art in one stop, the Dec. 10 show at 78 St. Francis St. offers exactly that. It is a chance to hear three of the area’s most established songwriters reimagine their own work, and to see how discarded window frames from around the South become frames for the landscapes they came from.