Howie Day and Matt Nathanson are a study in contrasts. They both are fantastically talented singer-songwriters. They both consider the acoustic guitar their weapon of choice. They both are natural "do-it-yourselfers". They both also come across as very accessible and unpretentious. But they also both have very different musical styles, as well as stage presences. Both men showcased their talents in Cleveland for the first time last week at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland, Ohio.

Nathanson took the stage first. He was clearly the lesser known of the two young men (the Boston-based Day has been playing locally on the college circuit for several years), but the crowd welcomed him with open arms and listened appreciatively to his acoustic pop stylings. Matt looks like an everyday guy, except for the nose ring, and you'd probably never take him for a rock star in the making that he is. He stepped on the stage with his 12-string guitar and immediately put the youthful crowd at ease with his jokes and stories that led into each song. Since most of the crowd was probably unfamiliar with his music, the stories about the songs helped make them feel more familiar. The San Francisco based Nathanson actually has four albums, all independently released. Most of the music on this night was from his two most recent albums, the more produced Still Waiting for Spring, and the acoustic guitar and cello only Ernst. Nathanson has an incredible sense of humor and likes to joke around, never taking himself too seriously. He led into the beautiful Loud by telling the crowd this was his attempt at a Ricky Martin/Christina Aguilera ballad, and that he was about to get his mojo on. He also joked about how Aguilera was at once gorgeously hot and strangely scary. Fortunately, he takes the music very seriously. Loud is actually a tender acoustic ballad which he recorded with New Jersey based singer Ellen Turner, who is currently a student at the world famous Berklee College of Music in Boston. The album version is fantastic, but Nathanson pulled the live verson off convincingly, even without the female voice. Nathanson would have sounded great with a band, but the voice and the guitar alone were enough. Ballads like Loud and the folk-tinged Then I'll be Smiling were supplemented nicely with some rockers like Answering Machine, Amazing Again and Wings. Nathanson isn't trying to change the world with his music. It's mostly personal, inspired by love and loss. There are no overt social or political messages to his music. It's lyrically pretty simplistic stuff, feel-good sing a long at times, and contemplative at others. The 45 minute set no doubt created a few new fans.

Enter Howie Day. While Nathanson engages the crowd with stories and jokes between songs, Day is quiet, rarely speaking between songs. Nathanson has four albums, Day only has one. Nathanson's are all independently released. Day has had major-labels courting him since he was 17, and recently signed with Epic Records. He's also opened for the likes of Dave Matthews and the Wallflowers, to name a few. Day's sound on stage is bigger and more complex sounding than Nathanson's, largely due to the large array of effects and loops that he employs. This is not to take anything away from Nathanson's sound, simply to point the differences out in their presentation style. While Nathanson stood on stage and strummed away on his 12 string, Day used his 6 string to create a sound so full, you'd swear he had a four or five person band on stage with him.

The crowd greeted Day with a torrential storm of applause, and Day rewarded them by playing his heart out. Most of the songs were from his current release, Australia, but he also played several covers, including songs by The Verve (Day is admittedly a huge fan of Brit-rock), as well as his version of the Beatles Help, from the I Am Sam soundtrack. Day is the ringmaster in a one-man band, often starting off songs by creating a drum-like beat by pounding on his guitar, and then capturing that beat in a digital loop. He would continue by creating "noise" with the strings of the guitar and a pick, layering those over the drum beat, and then follow this by strumming out several chords for the rhythm of the song. Then he'll finger the low G string and create a funky bass line. He continually adds layers, pulling certain loops out at different parts of the song. The crowd sat in awe as he played Ghost and several others in this fashion. If there is a criticism of Howie, it may be that he almost uses these loops too much. He is a talented enough guitarist and singer that he doesn't have to use them all the time to sound good. Some of his best performances on this night were the songs that he just kept simple, with minimal loops and layering. By the sixth or seventh song that he made into an extended version, it seemed as if some in the crowd had heard enough. But most were intrigued enough to remain on their feet drooling over the boy wonderkind. Day himself will concede that these looped, layered, extended versions of the songs sound nothing like they do on the album. Perhaps that's part of the lure of Howie Day. He doesn't stand up on the stage trying to make every song sound like carbon copy versions of what you could hear by putting his CD in your player. He wants the listener to hear another dimension to the music. And that is exactly what they get at one of his shows.

Simple versus Complex. Talkative and accessible versus quiet and intensely focused. It didn't seem to matter what the delivery was on this night. Both Day and Nathanson reeled the audience in on this night and gave them more than their monies worth.