FAIRHOPE, Ala. - You might not have heard their names, but you’d probably recognize their tunes. And from Sept. 16-18 in Fairhope you’ll get a chance to hear those original songs performed by the people who wrote them.

For three nights in mid-September, American Legion Post 199 on Mobile Bay hosts the Lower Alabama Songwriters’ Festival, a unique music hall similar to the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, where songwriters play their songs to an appreciative audience in a quiet, smoke-free setting.

“Any time that you can give musicians an opportunity to tell how their songs came about and an audience that has listening as its sole purpose, you’re in for a real treat,” said Wade Wellborn of Dr. Music Records in Fairhope, who will be the event’s sound engineer again for this year’s 6th annual festival. “Ten bucks a night is a steal.”

Like the Bluebird’s unassuming 100-seat venue where the “heroes behind the hits” perform their own songs, the intimate stage of the LASF has gained a reputation as a professional showcase for serious original music, bringing several dozen songwriters each year to Fairhope from Nashville, Austin and the roads between.

“My brother, Evans Davis, and I moved back to Fairhope (in 2002) after seven years in Nashville,” said Charles Davis, a festival founder who also co-hosts the event with his brother. “As songwriters, we quickly saw the need for a venue that would allow writers in South Alabama to perform their craft.”

Starting each night at 7 p.m., a trio of songwriters will take the stage, swapping turns playing songs, often accompanied by the others on instruments and vocals. A new group takes the stage every hour, and the evening rounds out with a guitar jam at 11 p.m..

“If you have ever attended the Frank Brown International Songwriters’ Festival in and around the FloraBama Lounge, then this event will be familiar to you,” Davis said. “If you have not, then you will experience something you can’t get anywhere else.”

Among the newcomers this year, Scott Boyer has been around the Southern music scene for a long time, growing up in Muscle Shoals and founding a band in the late 1960s with Butch Trucks, who would go on to play with the Allman Brothers.

Boyer was at the center of what became known as “Southern rock,” and his band Cowboy gained international acclaim as a seminal folk-rock group of the 1970s. His songs have been recorded by Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Bonnie Bramlett and others.

Some returning favorites this year include Lisa Mills, Hank Becker, Ashe Underwood, Rick Whaley and Randy Branch.

Although the main stage is set up for serious listening, there are tents and other places outside – and in the bar up front – where smoking is permitted and drinks are available, as well as festival merchandise.

“At one point in time, each piece of music was original,” said John Henderson, adjutant at the post who founded the Friday night guitar jam at the Legion about a year before the festival started. “The LASF celebration of music gives the audience an opportunity to hear how the originator developed and produced that first measure of unique verse and tune – and to sing it with the passion of its creator. It will be quite a show.”

The LA Songwriters’ Festival takes place on the indoor Hall Stage of the American Legion at 700 S. Mobile St. from Thursday, Sept. 16, until Saturday, Sept. 18. Tickets are $10 per night and are available at Dr. Music Records and the Legion post.

For more information, visit the festival website at www.americanlegion199.com, which has detailed bios on the songwriters.