I recently covered Jay Som (the moniker for Melina Duterte) at The Roxy for US Rocker Music. You can read that coverage here. Like similar times when I've covered a band or artist for US Rocker Music, this Jay Som blog post is a more personalized write-up that focuses on a specific song. (Here are a couple other similar personalized posts: you can read my Sasami post here and my Dove Armitage post here.)
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| Jay Som at The Roxy |
When I was asked to cover Jay Som (I obviously said yes, because there is an article up on US Rocker Music), I knew I had heard of Jay Som. What I wasn't sure about was if I had actually ever seen Jay Som before. The answer is that I did see her once before. I had to flash back all the way to Music Tastes Good in 2017 (a Long Beach music festival that lasted for two iterations). If you're interested, you can read my review of the festival here. I quoted her saying this as she came on stage, "I'm a little dizzy from the rotating." For context, in order to speed up the change over from one band to the other, the festival had a rotating stage where while one band was performing another band would be setting things up behind the scenes.
This was long before I started to keep track of setlists, but the only song that she possibly played at both the festival and The Roxy is her song "The Bus Song" that she concluded her set with at The Roxy. Most of her songs she performed at The Roxy were from her 2025 album release Belong. What gives this album a very unique spin is that she collaborated with various guest vocalists, including a couple well known artists: Paramore's Hayley Williams ("Past Lives") and Jimmy Eat World's Jim Adkins ("Float"). She also performed the opening track "Cards on the Table" with a personal favorite of mine Mini Trees.
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| Jay Som at The Roxy |
The song spotlight goes to "What You Need." The reason is that the song included an extended jam session that (based on all the smiles) the band really enjoyed playing. It wasn't just the band that enjoyed the song. The crowd gave the band one of the loudest cheers of the night for that song.
It is a song about thinking through that final argument before saying goodbye and yet still doing a last final act of kindness.
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| Jay Som at The Roxy |
Washing your dishes
Thinking of the things I'll say to you
Setlist: Float, What You Need, Appointments, Past Lives, Drop A, Casino Stars, D.H., Want It All, Superbike, Tenderness, The Bus Song.
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