When Danielle Anderson’s guitar’s batteries died onstage, she went back to playing her ukulele and set the guitar aside. Some time later, an audience member gave her batteries he had bought for her. So, Anderson proceeded to improvise a song called “Fresh Batteries.”
Anderson, who goes by the stage name Danielle Ate the Sandwich, spent the rest of her time at the Pourhouse Cafe on Friday tossing in references to the audience member in the rest of her songs.
Originally from Nebraska, Anderson has spent the last seven years as a touring solo folk artist.
“This is a ukulele, this is a woman,” Anderson said at her Friday show. “And together, we make a living.”
Anderson has opened for groups like Grace Potter and the Nocturnals and Mumford and Sons, but she said her biggest source of publicity has been social media, starting with her YouTube videos.
“Slowly but surely, they started getting views and attention from people across the world,” Anderson said. “It became the best way to get my name and my music out there because people could watch it for free and get into me and my style. It’s really been a beautiful thing.”
When she tells people she has a YouTube channel, people assume she will have polished, professional videos, but that is not the case, she said.
There are a few professionally made videos, but the majority of them were filmed by her in her house and start with a skit or joke of some kind, she said.
“The ones that I have the most of and that got the most attention are the simple videos that I recorded myself in my house of me just sitting on the ground and playing a song and doing something kind of silly,” Anderson said.
This mixture of her songs and humor are repeated in her shows. She said between her songs, which tell personal and heartfelt stories, she will get the audience to laugh.
Her music brings back memories to people, she said. It reminds them of breakups, of losing a loved one, of specific times in their lives, and it reminds them of the importance of those moments.
“I think life is this complicated mixture of really hard stuff, and the only way to get through it is to have a good sense of humor and try to laugh when you can,” Anderson said. “I want to pay respect and tribute to each half of life, the funny stuff and the sad things.”
