The Latest: Jessica Manalo hasn’t met a risk she wasn’t willing to take. From busking on the Strip to quitting her day job to gig full-time, the bluesy soulstress approaches life with tact and tenacity. “I’m that way on purpose,” the 29-year-old says, “because you don’t know what’s out there if you don’t try.”
In 2019, Manalo made her largest leap yet, packing up to move to Portland. “I felt I did a lot in Vegas musically; I had played everywhere I wanted to play,” she says. “[But] I had never tried to do something on my own, something so big like that. I had no family out there and hardly any friends, but I wanted to try a whole different scene.”
Once in the Pacific Northwest, Manalo says, she realized, “I could be anything I wanted to be, “not that I couldn’t do that here, but it was like a breath of fresh air.”
When Portland’s venues shut down due to the pandemic, Manalo improvised with Magic Mondays, a series that found her performing covers in the lush outdoors. But she missed home, and returned to Las Vegas in the summer of 2021. “I figured out a lot about myself and what I needed,” she says. “It was a soul journey more than anything.”
Rediscovering Magic: Back on desert soil, Manalo had a lot to adjust to. Beloved music venues like the Bunkhouse had closed. And new ones, such as Taverna Costera, were kicking up. “It was a nice little shock,” she says, “Like, damn, this is what I’ve been missing.”
The singer took a barista job on Main Street and moved closer to the Downtown scene. In October, she released Magic, an EP of material written before and during her time in Portland. Many tracks touch on spirituality and growth, while others, like “Far Away From Home” and “One Hell of a Year,” seem to reference Manalo’s time away from Vegas. She says the title track—which former President Barack Obama added to his 2021 Spotify summer playlist!—remains a favorite. “I wrote this song while I was working at a coffee shop in Portland,” Manalo recalls. “It was about how I wanted to stop working so much for the man and sing for people. “I was so into my hustle that I forgot a lot of what makes me really happy.”
When she looks back on her pre-Portland life, Manalo sees a woman still in bloom. “You could tell that I was reserved and constricted all those years ago,” she says. “But now it’s all about having fun onstage and not really caring anymore. “Sometimes I don’t even have a setlist … my bandmates probably get pissed … but I go with what I want. It’s more jamsesh-y, but it’s real.”
Upcoming: Manalo performs at Nellie’s Southern Kitchen at MGM Grand every Thursday from 6 to 10 p.m. She also just released a cover of The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” and plans to continue putting out more covers and videos this year.
JESSICA MANALO linktr.ee/jesssicamanalo
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