Cabrera, Secondhand Serenade bring peppy Revival to former church

PITTSBURGH – There were soul-wrenching ballads with tattoo-worthy lyrics.

Add some happy songs with pep and a couple of covers and you get a co-headlining gig from Secondhand Serenade and Ryan Cabrera. The singers’ (and former roommates’) Radio Revival tour made a rainy Monday night stop to Altar Bar in Pittsburgh’s Strip District.

Each singer performed a 12-song set filled with old and new songs for a few hundred fans packed inside the former church. And if you didn’t know Altar used to be a place of worship, it would be pointed out to you at least five times by the night was done.

First up was Secondhand Serenade, which is singer John Vesely backed by his band. Sounding a little pitchy at times, Vesely serenaded the teen-and-up crowd with his arsenal of swoon-worthy songs (mostly ballads), like “Maybe,” the “oldie but goodie” “Vulnerable,” “Price We Pay” and “Undefeated,” the last one being from his new album of the same name.

There was some pep in his step as well, with “Shake It Off.” No, not that “Shake It Off,” the one that will get stuck in your head and stay there for days on end. Vesely’s song with that title was written four or five years ago, he said, boasting that it was the first happy one he wrote.

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“And then Taylor Swift happened. And then I was like, I’m going home.”

Vesely snuck in two cover songs before his set was over: Coldplay’s “Fix You” and Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball,” which he performed on the piano before segueing into his biggest hit, “Fall For You.”

Next up was Cabrera – with his perfectly coiffed spiked hair – for another set featuring familiar songs from the early 2000s. The Dallas native promised he’d span the past decade, and he did with “True,” “Shine On” and his biggest hit, “On the Way Down.”

Cabrera also cleverly snuck in “Sing Along” and “House on Fire” from his March-released EP, “Wake Up Beautiful.” He too added a cover song to his set, a couple of lines from Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” before launching in to current single, “House on Fire.” Cabrera ended with “Sin to Get Saved.”

Neither singer did the pretentious encore routine of going off stage for 90 seconds while fans cheer and holler for more. They just played their straight-forward sets for their fans.

Hanging out at Altar Bar for the Radio Revival tour was a good way to spend a Monday night. But, here’s what would’ve made it better:

Better opening acts. We had to get through three mediocre alternative bands to get to our headliners. While the acts (Nick Thomas, Wind in Sails, Runaway Saints) weren’t bad, their sets didn’t add anything to the show. One quasi-known band with a half-hour set would’ve been enough.

Lineup swap. Cabrera was our second headliner of the night but he should’ve went first and Secondhand Serenade should have closed the show. Monday’s concert certainly lost momentum after Vesely left the stage. There wasn’t a bunch of banter, storytelling or personality in either set, but Secondhand Serenade was the clear-cut reason most fans were there. And Altar Bar’s floor cleared out quite a bit after the set as fans made their way to the merch table for a five-second hug from Vesely.