With a waning full moon lighting up the sky in a mostly still-darkened city, Dave and Tommy Malone brought their year-old act to the delightfully air-conditioned confines of Tipitina’s and delighted a crowd of subdudes fans, the fishhead faithful and roots music connoisseurs.
I have seen the new act a few times since the Radiators and the subdudes called it quits just over a year ago. I have also seen the brothers Malone in numerous configurations over the years including the Malones, a family band that also included Dave’s then-wife back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Dave and Tommy’s dueling guitar work and familial vocalizing are what have made this pair a scintillating musical experience for nearly forty years. But with longtime musical compatriot and multi-instrumentalist Ray Ganucheaux on bass at those early gigs, the Malone Brothers were missing something. While he is a talented musician and sympathetic sideman, he isn’t strong enough on the bass to allow the band to reach the musical pinnacles that the brothers are known for with their former outfits.
Enter Dave Pomerleau, aka “Busta Nut,” the bass-playing monster from Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes. He is part of Dave Malone’s side project with Camile Boudoin and Frank Bua of the Radiators that is whimsically monikered Raw Oyster Cult. Thus he is intimately familiar with a small, but potent subset of songs by the Radiators.
But here’s the rub—the Malone Brothers don’t play many Rads or subdudes songs. The Malones have been writing new material and dusting off some chestnuts from their past musical associations. So Pomerleau had to learn a bunch of new songs for the gig.
Classically trained, he was up to the task albeit with a music stand on stage. But he didn’t get many opportunities to stretch his ample chops, and his face often seemed like he was gritting with focus and concentration. Future gigs with Pomerleau will surely improve dramatically.
However, that is not to say that it wasn’t a stellar show. Since most of the crowd was weary from days of no electricity (mine came on at six Sunday morning—after more than four full days down), we were up for some electricity from the stage, and that’s what we got.
Pundits have speculated for years about which of the brothers is a better guitar player. At this point, the question is moot. They have distinctive styles, but what they share is an intense passion for playing that is rooted in deep emotionality. So all the feelings, both on stage and in the audience, are expressed in their soloing.
Though I am quite sure they have been competitive over the years, the performance Sunday night was not so much about one-upmanship as it was about mutual appreciation and attention to detail. They each absorbed the other’s solos like they were actually in the front row of the audience.
I could go into some detail about the song selection—they played the Rads’ “Lucinda” and the subdudes “He’s Got You On His Mind,” but what is more significant is the tightest of the performance. The young drummer Erik Golson has improved exponentially since the first time I saw him with the two veterans. His rapport with Pomerleau, assuming that he is now in the band, will deepen and they will develop into a formidable rhythm section. Also, (I don’t mean this as a slight to Ganucheaux who I have loved live dozens of times mostly with Tommy’s side projects) when Pomerleau gets the songs down pat, he will be able to add considerably to the band’s sound as a backing vocalist.
At the end of the set, the brothers dismissed the rhythm section, and harmonized so intensely on the soul ballad, “The Dark End of the Street,” that I could feel the collective goose bumps rising in the crowd. At some of their shows on the road this summer, that’s how they ended the gig. But not in Tipitina’s on this night—they came back and raved us out into the moonlight.
