"I think this is hilarious," Hawksley Workman says as soon as he pulls up to the microphone.

We're all packed in, sitting down, covering the basement of Megatunes on Whyte yesterday like human linoleum over the carpet.

Whatever the capacity is, the room seems to be about 15 or 20 people over, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 200.

The sexy gig posters of Tara McPherson cover the brick walls, the faces are mostly young and cheerful - and excited to be in at all. Store management was turning latecomers away at the door.

From a backroom door without a handle, the five-piece band emerges - six if you count the stuffed tiger. With that, the Toronto singer begins, making jokes every time he opens his lips.

"Seriously, it's a holiday - why aren't your families here? Where's my family?"

Record store appearances, you have to understand, aren't exactly ideal - things are cramped, unpredictable. But they do the fans so much. Without them, I never would have met Alice Cooper in an extremely large mall, for example.

Workman works the room with a casual but professional ease, letting requests rule the set list. On his own, he starts the show with All the Trees Are Hers.

Like most of his music there are hints of cabaret, glam and a theatrical sort of energy that's definitely emotional enough to be respectfully dubbed feminine.

"Some of us got speeding tickets today and some of us didn't," he self-defines with ironic dopiness, coy banter that he takes a while to come up with, looking for the funniest mix of words.

Later on, after Safe and Sound, for example, he says, "We always do this song to celebrate not being dead yet. No pilot has crashed us, no ... boat sailor has run us aground."

It's hard to explain exactly why this is funny, but it is, beyond silliness.

He then claims to have written another song for Travis Tritt. And he is making fun.

As far as hits go, the Ontario singer loosens only Jealous of Your Cigarette into our heads. Striptease is yelled for, but perhaps at tonight's show at the Winspear Centre.

Failing that, I know for a fact strippers like to dance to this song almost as much as Cold November Rain by Guns N' Roses.

Unlike his last visit to Megatunes, when the singer showed up with just a guitar, his band was a delightfully, safely weird presence.

David Christiensen played various exhaler's instruments, like this cool jazz flute and a bass clarinet with a panda hanging off it.

Keyboardist Todd Lumley was right in the centre of some of the best musical whirlwinds, too, and Workman teased him with the tiger as he pounded the keys.

The famous Jesse Zubot did some most excellent fiddle playing in the back corner, too, as Ruth Cassie harmonized, breaking down Cigarette into a duet. Good stuff.

Workman also kept calling out for forgotten lyrics from this one dude in the crowd who essentially became part of the band in a Dave Letterman-Paul Schaeffer way.

But this is exactly the best thing about these kinds of semi-secret concerts.

The room had a 1960 cabaret feel, a mood that has almost entirely been wiped off the face of the Earth by professional wrestling fans with flame tattoos.

Not that there was anything "high culture" about the show yesterday. It's just that things don't tend to be that unassumingly nice much anymore.