An extensive menu from Hotel Café singer

Even in a city as big and sprawling as Los Angeles, all it takes for a creative scene to take root is a little space and a sympathetic proprietor.

Around the turn of this century, Hollywood's Hotel Café provided just such an environment for a new generation of idiosyncratic singer-songwriters, many of whom have gone on to win national attention. One of the most interesting is Jim Bianco, who opens at the Triple Door on Saturday and Sunday for Over the Rhine, the Cincinnati-based band led by the husband-and-wife team of pianist/guitarist Linford Detweiler and vocalist/guitarist Karin Bergquist.

Bianco arrived in L.A. eight years ago, fresh out of Boston's Berklee College of Music, thinking he was about to launch a career as a rock 'n' roll bassist. Quickly disillusioned with the band he joined, Bianco locked himself away in a closet-sized studio and began developing his chops as a singer, while slowly writing a sheaf of songs that eventually surfaced at Hotel Café.

"Being in L.A., you come across a lot of actors who have a craft, and I felt it must be disappointing to love something and not have a platform all the time," Bianco says. "I can sing in my room or get a gig, and Hotel Café served as that outlet.

"The musicians who play there are my best friends, and that's where I went to put my band together, to do a residency, to really hone the craft of performing live. It was really organic and came out of a genuine approach by the owners and artists, a place that everyone fell into by hanging out."

He's been at the center of the scene ever since, as it's evolved from beloved local hang for artists (such as Rachel Yamagata, Cary Brothers, Gary Jules and Priscilla Ahn) to a highly successful touring showcase. And with the release of Bianco's torchy CD "Sing," Hotel Café is now a record label imprint affiliated with Ryko Distribution.

For the Triple Door gig, Bianco is performing as a duo with his longtime producer Brad Gordon, a gifted multi-instrumentalist who accompanies him on trumpet, accordion, clarinet, piano and backup vocals. He delivers his bracing lyrics in a pleasingly gruff, fine-grained voice. His laid-back phrasing tends to linger behind the beat. The expansive array of textures provided by Gordon beautifully enhances Bianco's noir-inflected style.

"That's why it's fun to tour with him — we touch on all the different timbres and colors," Bianco says. "I do all original stuff, except for the occasional Prince cover drenched in irony."

Irony is a key ingredient in Bianco's approach, but not in the postmodern sense of distancing himself from the material (besides the Prince covers). His characters often say one thing while meaning the opposite; though his lyrics can also be forthright, like on his positively menacing tune "I Got A Thing For You."

As a songwriter whose sensibility is still evolving, he'll enthusiastically discuss the brilliance of Tom Petty's "American Girl." Steeped in jazz, his sound owes far more to the pre-rock world filtered through artists like Tom Waits and Randy Newman.

"I started doing this when all I was listening to was Thelonious Monk and Billie Holiday and absorbing that old-school sense of songwriting," Bianco says. "My choices used to be, start with jazz chords and try to pull it into a pop sensibility. But I'm also folk-oriented and into John Prine. We do Dixieland all the way to rock, and everything in between."

Andrew Gilbert: jazzscribe@aol.com