Sara Melson
Sara Melson grew up in a small town in Indiana, the daughter of two college professors, in a house with books covering every wall from floor to ceiling. She was fed a steady diet of Beatles, Stones, Dylan, The Band, Bowie, CSN&Y, Simon and Garfunkel, the Velvet Underground, Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison, as well as a huge swath of classical and jazz. Classically trained on the piano, Sara picked up a guitar and began writing immediately, with lyrics from her many journals.
After graduating from Harvard, Sara moved to Los Angeles and formed several different band incarnations. Just as comfortable playing solo as with a full band, Sara lives somewhere between rock, pop, and folk, with timeless songs that blur boundaries between the genres. A prolific writer, she’s amassed an extensive archival catalog of music, self-recorded on everything from cassette 4-track to two-inch tape and beyond. Sara’s insightful lyrics, confident piano and guitar playing, and unique, distinctive voice––always solely her own––led Yahoo Music to call her “one of the most fearless singer-songwriters on the planet.”
Her self-produced debut full-length, Dirty Mind, came out in the spring of 2008 on Nettwerk Records. The record was selected for a feature on iTunes, and placed high on the iTunes pop chart. Sara was featured on the Myspace Music homepage, and Yahoo.com chose her as their “New Buzz Artist” while featuring her video in their Who's Next/User's Choice promotion. The album's first track was placed in the climactic closing montage of a two-part episode of Grey's Anatomy, with other of the album’s tracks heard on NBC’s Lipstick Jungle, ABC’s Men In Trees, Viacom’s South Of Nowhere, MTV’s Exiled, ABC’s Family Channel, and in the independent films Spectres and Safety Harbour. She was aired on American Airlines' Radio and featured in their in-flight magazine in the fall, and featured on the Filter Magazine Summer Compilation CD. Her song “Anywhere Anytime” was the theme song for a national Chevy campaign.
Sara has shared the stage with Ben Folds, Juliana Hatfield, Ben Lee, the Silversun Pickups, Jill Sobule, Inara George, Mojave 3, Neil Halstead, Marc Broussard, and the BRMC, among others, and performed as guest vocalist with both Mojave 3 and the Dandy Warhols on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic. She sang backing vocals for Moby on the Tonight Show.