When Mark Melloan takes to the stage
during the After Hours series at Public Theatre of Kentucky on
Friday, he’ll be backed up by one of the legends of bluegrass
music – Curtis Burch, the legendary dobro player and a
founding member of New Grass Revival.
“Curtis has been great,” said 21-year-old Melloan, a
Western Kentucky University senior who plays folk music with
bluegrass instrumentation. “He’s been a real supporter of my
songs”
Burch is co-producer with Melloan of Melloan’s first album,
“The Shadowlands,” which was released independently in
September. Burch also plays dobro on the album, which features
musicians like world-famous banjoist Bela Fleck and well-known
Nashville fiddle player Casey Driessen. Driessen has performed
with Steve Earle, Nickel Creek, John Mayer and others, while
Fleck has recorded with such artists as Garth Brooks, Neil
Young and Phish.
Melloan met Burch a couple years ago after playing with
friend and local musician Kurtis Matthew at Two Keys Tavern in
Lexington. He told Burch about his songs and Burch seemed
interested. Later that year, Melloan ran into Burch after
Melloan and Matthew played a gig with the Kentucky Headhunters
in Memphis, Tenn. It was then that Burch encouraged Melloan to
make a CD.
But Burch went further with his help.
“He called Bela up and said, ‘You got to listen to this
kid,” Melloan said.
Burch couldn’t be reached for comment about Melloan, but
Pat Ritter, a circuit rider who scouts talent and helps
artists for the Kentucky Arts Council, said she suggested
Melloan to be the musical focus of a Kentucky Educational
Television episode of “Mixed Media,” which will feature
several Bowling Green artists in December, because a couple of
people sang his praises to her.
“I was so impressed because for such a young guy, he’s got
well-known players out of Nashville” working with him, Ritter
said.
Erika Brady, director of programs in folk studies and
anthropology at Western Kentucky University, and host of
Western Public Radio’s American roots music show, “Barren
River Breakdown,” recommended Melloan and local musician Pat
Haney to Ritter for the KET spot.
Brady was impressed that Melloan’s first album was so well
produced.
“Many first CDs that were independently released sound like
they were made in somebody’s garage,” she said. “And that can
be charming. But the musicians on this CD are remarkable.
They’re the best Nashville has to offer. I think it’s a
tremendous vote of confidence to have a seasoned act like
Curtis to take up his cause.”
Brady was impressed with Melloan long before she knew he
was a songwriter. Brady once taught Melloan in class.
“He had such a feel for the literary material we were
using” in a class about the roots of southern culture, she
said.
After she found out that Melloan wrote songs, Brady
realized he’d used her class to hone his craft.
“I think he is an artist with extreme potential...” she
said. “His voice as a writer is very distinctive, and he’s a
good performer.”
An Elizabethtown native, Melloan is an honors student
studying English writing and religious studies on scholarship.
He says he has a love of words and often writes lyrics about
rural Hart County, where his dad was raised.
“Hubert Atwell’s Store” is one of Melloan’s favorite songs.
It’s about an old country store that Hubert Atwell has run for
several decades.
The song is a far cry from the first song he wrote at 11 or
12 years old, when he abandoned piano lessons to teach himself
guitar by writing songs.
“I wrote the standard first song for people – something
about wanting to be a bird,” he said of the song titled “Bird
in Space.”
Melloan talks about such memories with affection. He
reminisced on Tuesday about how he learned to play guitar on
his dad’s old Gibson, which was given to his dad by a pilot
who crashed his plane into the farm his dad lived on when he
was a child.
In the early 1970s, Melloan’s parents had been in a gospel
band called The Gospel Voices.
“They traveled all over Kentucky,” he said. “That’d be
early ’70s, so they have the platform shoes, the big jewelry.”
Melloan said he remembers his dad later accompanying his
mother on guitar as she sang in church.
Now, Mark is lead guitarist in his church’s praise band in
Elizabethtown and is a Sunday night youth group leader there.
His plans for the future include promoting the album and
playing concerts, but he’s always working on something new.
“He set himself a goal that he was going to write a song
every day,” Brady said. “He knew some of them weren’t going to
be very good.
“But, that’s the sort of commitment where you expect
progress, and not just someone who wants to get on stage and
wow the young girls.”
Melloan will perform 8:30 p.m. on Friday night at Public
Theatre of Kentucky, just off Chestnut Street on 545 Morris
Alley. Tickets are $5 at the door.
Melloan also will be recorded singing live at Spencer’s
Coffee House on the Square on Nov. 19 at noon for the KET
“Mixed Media” series. The public is invited to attend the
taping, which will feature Ritter as a co-host with Chip
Polston.
The show will air on KET 1 and 2 on Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. and
Dec. 7 at 5 p.m.
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