It's about midnight on Saturday and an audience of loud and boisterous Penn Staters half-pay attention to an acoustic guitarist doing covers on stage.

But instead of beers and wings in hand, the audience has milk and potato chips. Welcome to one of Penn State's alternative music scenes -- Joegies.

For about a year, the eatery in the HUB-Robeson Center has doubled as a venue for local performers on Friday and Saturday nights.

HUB management invited Aaron Anthony (senior-secondary education) and his friend Ryan Macel (senior-electrical engineering) to play together since the beginning, and the two have made it a regular event, performing almost every month. The difference tonight is that Anthony is going solo.

"I kind of like to say that I play the piano, and I pretend to play the guitar," Anthony said before the show. "I like the guitar but I'm certainly not that good."

On any other night, Macel would be on the guitar with Anthony on keyboard, his normal weapon of choice.

"I first got into the keyboard because my older brother was into it, and anything my brother did when I was 7 years old was cool," Anthony said.

Anthony didn't pick up the guitar until college, after digging up his father's old instrument. He laughed at the notion of having a musical family though, saying that his father "can't really play at all."

But Saturday, with Macel out of town, Anthony has decided to give his string-strumming chops a chance. Minutes before he takes the stage, a troupe of friends and acquaintances arrive -- most from Undergraduate Student Government President Galen Foulke's bar tour -- to cheer him on.

For inspiration, Anthony often looks to piano maestro Ben Folds, although his most recent addictions have included Rusted Root and Keane. When not listening to music on the radio, Anthony said he often goes to the Phyrst, 111 1/2 E. Beaver Ave., to listen to the Phyrst Phamily. He once has a fortuitous run-in with Penn State President Graham Spanier, who sometimes plays washboard for the group.

"I was getting ready to give a speech in his honor at a function in Pittsburgh and I knew he was going to be there," Anthony said. "I asked him if we could somehow ride together and he told me he'd check his schedule and get back to me. He ended up picking me up personally and we rode in a private jet together."

Anthony said Spanier was "not much of a conversationalist" but he tried to keep the president talking most of the ride.

Back in Joegies, Anthony took the stage solo a little after midnight.

"I'm feeling kind of naked here," he said about the absence of his musical partner. But nude or not, Anthony confidently plunged into "Only Wanna Be With You," by Hootie and the Blowfish starting an hour long set of nostalgic hits from the '90s by artists such as Collective Soul, Oasis and Deep Blue Something.

The partially inebriated crowd of 30-some Penn Staters responded like any normal bar crowd -- largely ignoring the performance at first and talking among themselves, yet managing an applause between songs. As the night wore on, however, the crowd thinned and the true friends and fans of Anthony remained, enjoying the music and occasionally even taking the stage to sing along.

After the show, Anthony moved through a crowd of handshakes and hugs, congratulating him on his solo effort. It's now past 1 a.m, but the night is far from over.

For Anthony, it's off to The Darkhorse Tavern, 128 E. College Ave., where an hour of milk and potato chips will soon seem like a dream.