A sampling of some of Melody's original songwriting, recordings, videos and the stories behind the songs...

FAMILY BAND - appears on Gold Rush Goddess (2012)

     "I wrote Family Band in 2010 and it was one of those 'gift songs' that came out all at once. I woke up from an afternoon nap with the first chorus in my head and then followed the form and finished it in under ten minutes. For a year I thought it was too simple and sentimental to get away with playing live, but we started doing it and the response was overwhelming. I guess you can't question songs like that, that never really came from you in the first place. Just another lesson music keeps teaching me over and over again - check your ego and let magic happen." 

GOLD RUSH GODDESS - appears on Gold Rush Goddess (2012) and This is Front Country (2013)

   "The Gold Rush Goddess is a character that is a mixture of dark feminine archetypes, exacting revenge on those who would ravage the earth's resources. I imagine her as a ghost, an apparition of mother nature, setting up shop in a one-pole shack at the bottom of the mountain to lure miners in for a good time. Presumably, they never make it back out, and she returns their payment to the earth from whence it came.  The end of the song quotes an Afro-Cuban chant for the goddess Ochún, who rules the rivers and loves gold. The deadly aspects of Hindu goddess Kali are also present, luring lovers willingly into her fatal embrace. "

BLACK GRACE - appears on Gold Rush Goddess (2012) and We Made It Home (2014)

  "When we went to MerleFest to play this song in the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest, in rural North Carolina, I was literally shaking in my boots as we approached the stage. The other two songs in the gospel category were earnest Baptist numbers about the end times, and then there was me: a west coast hippie with an agnostic (at best) philosophical diatribe, debating the existence of a biblical heaven. If it were an audience vote I doubt the song would have placed, but it the songwriter judges loved it and it won first place - making me technically an 'award-winning gospel songwriter'. Go figure."