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Melanie Shelley

Presented by 3rd and Lindsley Bar and Grill at 3rd and Lindsley Bar and Grill

December 7, 2011

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"If Melanie Shelley knew what fate would throw her way while she realized her musical life, she would have thought more than twice about following her talent. A mystical woman from a tiny desert town, she has given birth, cheated death, been excommunicated and impaled, gone financially boom and bust, found and lost husbands, tussled with faith and made peace with it.

The path that this singer/songwriter has traversed is what her debut album, "Melanie Shelley" (arriving on vinyl March 2012 on Happy Marriage Records), encapsulates. Armed with elegantly trippy, straight-shooting alt/folk/rock compositions, a voice as pure as Karen Carpenter's and clear-eyed wisdom, Shelley gives a testimony relatable to anyone who has ever loved, lost, or both.

Focus track "Dry Creek" displays Shelley's talent for conveying an authentic sense of time and place. The song paints the landscape of her hometown, Joseph City, Arizona, buffeted by dry wind and the slow crawl of time. Here, the fifth-generation Mormon started her remarkable journey to completing the album—one that saw her abandoning the church due to philosophical differences, as told in “Chosen Daughter,” and embracing a universal spirituality that is not only told, but sonically experienced by the listener in "Ascending Spiral Sea".

Produced in Williamsburg, Brooklyn by Mark Ephraim and Chris Moore, "Melanie Shelley" was a labor of love in the making. In her lifelong quest for spiritual truth; falling upwards into a successful celebrity hairstyling career; falling deeply into love with Big Country front man Stuart Adamson and recovering from his untimely death; navigating a surprise twin pregnancy, Melanie never abandoned her earliest direction: to live life as a storyteller. While lyrically, Shelley leaves no truth unturned, she also lays herself bare on her album cover by displaying the 12-inch scar on her back, the result of being accidentally impaled by a candelabra during the frantic weeks when Adamson went missing before his death in 2001.

Finally, this year, after decades of God, superstars, lovers and babies consuming her time and her heart, Shelley completed the album, supported by a stellar roster of musicians that includes guitarist Tom Bukovac (Sheryl Crow, Rob Thomas, Keith Urban), fiddle player Andrea Zahn (James Taylor, Vince Gill), cellist John Catchings (KT Tunstall, Jars of Clay) and horn players Kelly Pratt and Jon Natchez (Arcade Fire). It's no wonder that once the masters were finished, she wept with relief. Now she's wasting no time preparing for a live performance taping show at the newly renovated 3rd & Lindsley theatre on December 7, 2011 in Nashville, and release performances in New York, Phoenix and Nashville in March, 2012.

-Christa Titus
@ Billboard Magazine