Melissa Engleman

Artist Information

Biography

If a ghost town came to life with music, you would find Melissa Engleman there, with her lonesome lyrics and forceful vocals that dance in the saloon until late in the evening. Empty streets carry the haunting melodies of her restless guitar tracks. Amid these notes and sounds, ghosts dwell, clamoring for the chance to tell their stories of business left undone, violent ends and what's left when even malaise has faded. Melissa summons tales from the long ago and finally lays their spirits to rest.

Seeing Melissa perform live is like reuniting with an old friend. Her music speaks of community and the comfort to be had through shared experience. Her vocals hit like an emotional twister, but the guitar lines gently pick up the pieces left behind. Melissa's songs share a willingness to engage the listener on a personal level, songs with courage and soul that give a blues-y feel to an otherwise folk-y nature. The melodies pick up the audience and take them for a ride through the dusty, abandoned parts of rural America that this songwriter has long called home.

Instrumentation

Melissa Engleman, vox and guitar

Discography

Demo 2009

At the Hotel Cafe 2010

Official Website

http://mesingpretty.net

Links

• Facebook
• Last.fm
• MySpace
• Twitter
• Reverbnation
• Youtube

Audio

• My Heart is Open
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• Sailing
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• 01 You Don't Even Know Me
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• This is a Song
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• Lay Down Your Head
  Listen  

Lyrics

• Shade of Shame

Video

Honeyfest2010_Ukelele Song_Melissa Engleman

Photo Gallery

Press

• Just a Girl and Her Guitar: Happy Hours With Melissa Engleman at Hole in the Wall [+ Show ]
  

  Melissa Engleman has taken over happy hour at Hole in the Wall on Saturday evenings with just her gu...Melissa Engleman has taken over happy hour at Hole in the Wall on Saturday evenings with just her guitar and firecracker vocals leading the way. Not only that, but there’s a chance to win a $25 bar tab for the same time that she will be playing which is a sufficiently good way to kick your weekend festivities off right.
  
  Embracing a sense of pure Americana, Engleman is known for her lyrics that capture the charm and wistful sense of community and folksy sound.
  
  Seeing is believing and in order to fully appreciate the talented strums from Engleman it’s advised that you find her at the Hole in the Wall every Saturday.

• Unsigned Treasures Melissa Engleman at the Hotel Cafe [+ Show ]
  

  by Nick DeRiso Austin-based singer-songwriter Melissa Engleman explores life with a tough vul...
  
  by Nick DeRiso
  
  Austin-based singer-songwriter Melissa Engleman explores life with a tough vulnerability on the urban folk set At the Hotel Café, often displaying a fortitude so quiet as to deceive. She gets knocked to the ground, while brilliantly fusing alt-country, singer-songwriter folk and whispers of blues, but notice that she never hints at staying down.
  
  That tenacity is best heard on tracks like the album opener “You Don’t Even Know Me.” With a voice as insistent as her strumming, Engleman repeats the chorus like a mantra, like a plea, then like a sadly accepted truth. She later talks about the struggle to frame old hurts, and to move on, amidst the riveting jangle of “This is a Song.” After rattling off a series of injustices (“the things you did, what you wouldn’t say, what you couldn’t give, what you didn’t have”), Engleman’s character eventually ends up at a devastating conclusion: “You were cruel,” she sings with hushed finality, “and I was a fool.”
  
  Her subject matter is unflinching and evocative, and she approaches each lyric like her life depended on it. This raw devotion is put in high relief by the sparsely presented two-track recording, made in front of an intimate Los Angeles crowd. They sit so quietly that “Lay Down Your Head,” a lullaby that Engleman wrote for her niece, sounds like it was recorded in a high-priced studio.
  
  As Engleman offers a wistful trip into the sweetly innocent night world of child, it’s easy to imagine everyone in front of the bandstand slowly drifting off to sleep. But then the angular passion of “My Heart is Open” begins working in direct contrast, as she makes a call for love as disarming as it is sensual. She carries the lyric up into a softly exhaled, almost luminous moan, only to return to a cyclic guitar signature that suggests the maddeningly slow ticking of a clock.
  
  “Sweetness and Wine” finds Engleman on a friendly ramble through the giddy questions and curiosities that bloom in anticipation of an evening’s date. In the end, she gives herself over to the romantic notion of how things will go. “Will my heart run off all my good sense by morning?” Engleman asks, then dives back into the song’s incessant, almost impatient acoustic riff. “Darling, let’s count down the time in sweetness and wine.”
  
  Her dream-state passion is shaken awake by the angry cinematic imagery of “Shade of Shame,” as Engleman’s character comes upon a lover who once wronged her. Wounded all over again, she latches onto the smallest, more particular items, trying to steady herself once more. “The crack in the window is new,” she sings. “And I don’t recognize that break in your voice, and I don’t recall that scar above your eye.” He wants to go outside for a cigarette. She wants to try to talk about things. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. “Shade of Shame” comes crashing down then, as they reach this impasse. “It’s been so long,” Engleman concludes, and the song vanishes.
  
  Finally, there’s “Sailing” which provides the perfect sendoff. “I’m braving your rocky shores; I’m walking the coast line until my feet are cut,” Engleman sings, with a reborn hope. “And I won’t turn back. I’d rather break than be safe and missing you tonight.” This is the underlying emotion that holds At the Hotel Café together.
  
  Like much of Engleman’s gently assertive new release, it’s not simply a fond memory, and doesn’t take too much time for regret. It’s a resolute commitment to keep fighting, to keep loving, to keep feeling.

Setlist

Basic Requirements

Calendar