Show Review: Jesse Malin with Alone at 3am and Le Whorenettes

Just days before Jesse Malin took the stage last night at the Historic Southgate House, he was sharing the stage with the Boss, Bruce Springsteen. It was last Saturday, that Malin and his band, The St. Marks Social, rocked a sold-out crowd of just 1,600 at Asbury Park’s Paramount Theater for the Light of Day Parkinson’s disease benefit show, with artists Alejandro Escovedo, Willie Nile, Joe Gruschecky and the Boss, who was an unannounced performer. While I can only imagine how high the level of incredibility was at such an intimate show, I was actually surprised with how high that very same level was at Malin’s Southgate House show.

Surprised, yes, though I had absolutely no reason to be considering the quality of music I’ve heard on every single release from Malin. I’ve been listening to his music for the better part of the last decade, and yes I discovered him through Ryan Adams, his best friend with whom he’s collaborated with a number of times. Like Adams, Malin has written a lot of songs over the past decade, and I don’t think he could make a bad album if he tried. I honestly believe that Jesse Malin is one of the best kept secrets in the music world because of his ability to craft a song, which I discovered last night, channels the true, gritty meaning of rock and roll when these songs are brought to life in the live setting.

He pulled songs from all corners of his catalogue, opening with “Cigarettes and Violets” from his 2002 debut The Fine Art of Self Destruction, as well as several older hit singles like “Wendy”, “Downliner” and “Brooklyn”. While he did play a handful of cuts like “Burning The Bowery” and “Disco Ghetto” from his 2010 album Love It To Life, he didn’t maintain focus on promoting only his most recent material, which I all too often see. At one point during the encore, Malin left the stage with his microphone, singing from within the crowd and even on top of the bar in the back. He also threw in a couple of covers to close the show, in John Lennon’s “Instant Karma” and an unknown Bad Brains tune.

Malin was also a bit more vocal during the show than most national touring artists I’ve seen, noting his love of bands like Bad Brains, the Dead Kennedys, the Hold Steady and the Gaslight Anthem, and sharing a story about telling his grandmother he’d dropped out of college to go on tour. He also made his love for the Southgate House known, which was not just seen in his aforementioned antics of leaving the stage to sing from the crowd and on the bar, but also noting the beauty of the red curtain backdrop in the ballroom, and even joining his fans for drinks afterwards in the lounge, where he talked to anybody and everybody who wanted to meet him.

However, the night actually all started for me (because I was late and missed the first band Le Whorenettes), with the second opening band, Alone at 3am. I’ve seen these guys in different capacities and more times than I can remember thru the years, and if last night’s performance and their latest album, 2010′s Cut Your Gills, are any indication, then they have quickly become one of the better bands in the Cincinnati music scene. It was Alone at 3am like I’d never seen them and in the way I’ve been dying to see them since hearing Cut Your Gills, and that was mostly due to the addition of Jim Gaines, who rounded out their alternative country/punk rock sound on the pedal steel.