In a venue where the ceiling drips water into several scattered buckets, painted skulls serve as decorative centerpieces and moth eaten cushions are the furniture, Cameron Dailey starts his set with a song completely contradictive to his surroundings;”Our Song” by Taylor Swift.

My friend next to me turns around and asks “Is this guy serious?” I hesitantly shake my head yes, hoping for the best. However, 19-year-old Cameron Dailey, while smiling and laughing at his troupe of friends in the front row, is as real as his lyrics suggest. “I can see who’s real to me, and who’s trying to deceive. I know that you’re real and true, oh yeah, there’s just something about you,” Dailey sings.

Apart from the skulls and cushions, the atmosphere at the Juggling Gypsy Hookah Bar suggests an energy from an alternate era. Red sequenced door hangings serve as the backdrop, and tapestries of multi-colored taffeta and silk divide the hookah bar where Dailey lays his set list on the ground in front of him. As he begins his set with a blend of originals about first love and covers ranging from The Jackson Five to Third Eye Blind, Dailey’s quiet timidity makes his honesty as an artist shine through.

“The main thing that sets me apart is that I don’t ever take myself too seriously. I realize that it takes determination to succeed, but I also keep in mind that music is all about having fun and, as an artist, being personable,” said Dailey. “I’m nothing special by any means. I just enjoy playing music.”

It is that humble nature that has brought Dailey to fill a cramped hookah bar in downtown Wilmington as an opening act. It brings his dad and sister to come all the way from Raleigh to watch him perform and his fraternity brothers from Delta Tau Delta to form a line in front of the stage and sing along, or perhaps proclaim their love, to Dailey’s original, “Oh, Jeannine.”

A current sophomore, Dailey started playing music when he was 11 years old. He started on the drums and moved onto singing as a joke in a school talent show. He would later add guitar and become involved in the self described “acoustic/pop” genre. He feeds off the positive and playful spirit of ‘90s pop music and occasionally throws in the likes of Gnarles Barkley and his biggest hit “Fuck you.” While his covers seem to induce the fervor of the crowd, nothing excites his faithful band of followers more than when an original, to which they all know the words to, pops up in the playlist.

“Song writing is a completely random process for me. I usually have song ideas in my head and sing them into my phone’s recorder to be developed later on. I write sporadically. I can go months without writing a song and then write four songs in a single day. It really depends on the mood I’m in,” said Dailey.

As his love for his music becomes clearer as the night continues, Dailey stops to narrate a personal favorite from his collection of 30 original songs, explaining how one is about a girl he liked in high school who moved around a lot. He remembers the particulars as he explains how she lived in 13 different places, and that even though it didn’t work out, the song was about how he would always be her home.

“I write more when I have a love interest. I use songs to express myself and say things that I would have a hard time expressing in words. I love music because words limit us from expressing ourselves in so many ways. Music has no boundaries,” said Dailey.