P.B.'s Summer Anthem

“I’m originally from Philly, but I had moved to Sweden to be with a Swedish girl I met,” says singer-songwriter Jesse LaMonaca. “I lived there for about a year and put a band together and was just starting to get things going when, unfortunately, things fell apart. As often happens with love...I was forced to leave everything I had in Sweden. I came to San Diego with just my guitar and some clothes.”

After LaMonaca’s 2007 arrival in Pacific Beach, he founded an Americana soul outfit, the Dime Novels. “P.B. recently served as a shooting locale for our newest video,” says LaMonaca. “It’s part of our push to make our single ‘Left Coast Sunshine’ the 2010 P.B. summer anthem.... The song is available online as a free download, and the video is on YouTube. We shot it ourselves with a local outfit called Flicker Fusion Video.”

Jesse LaMonaca and the Dime Novels’ debut album Until the Stars Came Out will be celebrated with a release party at downtown’s Marble Room on Friday, June 4. “The venue’s theme is that of an early-1900s brothel, so we hope to have an attractive female flamenco dancer for a surprise show in between our sets,” says LaMonaca.

“We’ll be playing the album in its entirety from start to finish, and then we’ll have a secret guest artist do a small set. For our second set, we’ll cover some old-school soul faves of ours, like ‘Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,’ ‘Try a Little Tenderness,’ ‘Hold On I’m Coming,’ and maybe some Band of Horses or Bon Iver to mix it up a bit.”

The Marble Room bill also includes Cactus Bob and Brian Holwerda of Blackout Party.