When Paul Dandy walked into a New York coffee shop one day he had no intentions of finding anything but a good cup of coffee and a quiet place to write his next song.

But he left with a new friend, a bandmate and a place to stay.

It seemed that waiter Ben Weaver had the same folk singer ambitions as Dandy, so the two hooked up.

“We did a lot of street playing in New York for about six months just to get our whole act together, then went to Boston for two months. It just became a friendship,” Dandy says. “Then he just walked into the cafe and quit after we had played for a while, and we’ve been at it ever since.”

Before the two musicians met at the New York cafe, they both experienced their share of soul searching.

Dandy, who grew up in the Twin Cities, decided that high school wasn’t his thing during his sophomore year. So he picked up his guitar and duffle bag and dropped out, leaving his upset parents behind.

After a few months of traveling, Dandy lived in New York for about nine months before meeting Weaver.

Weaver’s story doesn’t read much differently. Since his father drove a Mack truck all over the nation, Weaver grew up in places ranging from Alaska to Minnesota. The aspiring musician finally landed in New York, where he worked a few odd jobs before taking his last job at the cafe.

Since that fateful day in the cafe, Weaver and Dandy have started their own record label, recorded their own albums and toured extensively all over the nation in their old pick-up truck, which has traveled over 80,000 miles during the past year.

Dandy’s album “Wizard Oil,” which took over a year to start and finish, was mostly recorded over a weekend in Minneapolis. He says he is happy with the way the album eventually turned out.

“It’s like you labor over something for a year, and you get so obsessive over it, and then, when it’s finished, your sound changes to a month later, and you get to wanting to change a whole bunch of things, but right now, I’m pretty happy with it,” Weaver says.

Weaver’s album is much more folksy than Dandy’s Dixieland jazz style. Recorded in roughly three hours one afternoon in Weaver’s living room, “El Camino Blues” is a collection of some of Weaver’s earlier songs that he wanted to record so he could move on to the next thing.

However, Weaver explains that his next album probably won’t be recorded in a studio either.

“Everybody knows what happens when you record in a studio, but nobody knows what happens when you record in a chicken coop or something,” Weaver says.

Weaver plans to experiment with something more diverse than folk for his next record. He claims the stereotype associated with folk is wrong and wants to write for a range of people.

“My next record is going to be much more difficult to classify,” he says. “I want to write songs that Joe Schmo in the bar can understand and some retard in a BMW can understand, too, and I don’t want those people to be my best friends or anything, but I think there’s something to be said for somebody who can speak for everybody out there.”

Dandy and Weaver are driving full speed ahead and have no regrets about their life-changing decision. While on the road, they have met many great people, had many good experiences, and Dandy even found his girlfriend, a costume designer, in California.

“I see this as being a lifelong deal, a lot of people look for what makes them happy and, you know, sleeping until noon and playing till 3 a.m. at some crummy bar in Texas makes me happy,” Dandy says.

Dandy and Weaver have also had their share of odd experiences while on the road and have found out many things about the nation, including one very strange law in the eastern states.

“It’s illegal to sell your own urine in South Carolina — that’s why I’ve never moved there,” Dandy says. “We were pretty broke one afternoon, and we tried to sell some there, but they told us it was illegal. It’s OK to sell other people’s urine, just not your own.”

Weaver says once, they played a three-day run of shows in Texas where the crowd was expecting Honky Tonk and they came in with their megaphones, lighting stuff on fire, along with other stage antics.

By the third night, the musicians had bottles thrown at them. After the show, they talked to the club owner, and he told them to come back the next day because he didn’t have the money.

When they came back, the whole club was gone. Later on, they found out the man was a con artist who moved his club around and spent his days ripping off musicians.

Just another one of the band’s crazy stories:

“In Virginia, it’s illegal to have a bathtub inside your house,” Weaver says. “I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, and I noticed there was no bathtub, so I asked the guy we were staying with, and sure enough, it’s illegal.”

After a year and a half on the road, Weaver and Dandy have collected quite an assortment of odd stories and great memories, all because of that fateful day in a New York coffee shop.