The Songs
The Cast
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The Songs The Cast |
Slipping away from Thanksgiving meals and Labor Day chatter, I’d toss stones at the ’57 Fairlane rusting behind the barn and wonder why my parents left the farm, why now we were only visiting, why my cousin, Brian, had a horse and a beagle, why I wore Nikes instead of Redwings—most of all, I never understood how the entire Melloan family could be so indifferent to the presence of a fifty-foot cave opening just yards from Papa Melloan’s steadily fading farmhouse. My parents had elected to raise their children in a dry county seat, a Kentucky highway hub that sprang to 20,000 during the latter half of the great century, several farmers cutting their land into lots to provide storekeepers and factory workers neighborhoods where they could grill out, play croquet, and talk about Elizabethtown’s tradition of excellence, namely high school baseball and the oldest churches west of the Alleghenies. So, as a teenager, I forgot the boy tossing stones at the ’57 Fairlane. Occasionally, he’d slip past my peripheral—I’d help my buddy, Phillip, haul tobacco in East View, ride in Granddaddy’s rattling blue Chevy, or spend the weekend jumping hills in Brian’s Ford. But, on the whole, E’town’s city limits were the very edges of my universe. The revival was gradual. Bowling Green being the halfway point between home and the hazy dream I knew as Nashville, I took what Western offered me and bought some books. My songs soon revealed that rural Kentucky and the karst between Bowling Green and Elizabethtown had again taken hold of me. I was unaware that I’d soon win the approval of New-Grasser Curtis Burch, and, ultimately, cut an acoustic album with musicians like Bela Fleck, Casey Driessen, Ron de la Vega, Rex Wiseman, and Peter Young. The twelve cuts on the album were written when I was twenty.
Mark Melloan
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'Mark is a young Kentucky songwriter with a lyrical depth beyond his years.' |