The residency
Melanie Peterson recently scored a residency at the Cameron House for the month of November. For 4 Mondays, Melanie can try out her new music. She is organizing a 5 song EP with 5 cover songs. I made it out to the second of the four shows at the Cameron House. You have two more chances to hear a set of her original music and the 5 new cover songs at the end of the second set.
The Show
The evening started off with me sitting next to the ATM machine inside the bar at the Cameron House. People would walk up to take some money out and this particular machine is really slow. I was watching people looking pretty panicked as they seem to wait for a very long time before the machine spit out the money.
And there was Melanie who was up on stage now, singing her happy songs trying to decompress a wound-up crowd. Can she do it; can she put us in a different place?
Her music is really easy to listen to. She doesn’t do anything complicated, just honest sweet songs. It is a great way to unwind from a downtown job.
Melanie can tell a good story as well. She told us about a train ride that saw her and another woman who talked for hours about life. She eventually turned this into a story about having the perspective about being here which should be Heaven on Earth. Melanie can also get a little dark and creepy. She proved that with a Halloween style song called, “Dead to the World”.
The song of sweet advice has a strange twist at the end when everyone could hear sirens racing along Queen St.
Melanie did have a couple of friends in the audience who walked onto the stage to do back-up vocals for her song, “Liilian”. This was a song about a toxic relationship and having the knowledge of not being able to discuss this with your friend.
Melanie finished the set with her novelty song, “One Tequila”. This is a really fun song that will be in her repertoire for a very long time.
The Band and Beyond.
We already know about Jen and Paul on Back-up vocals, now the rest of her band consists of:
Jonathon Billings on Guitar
Lucky Pete Lambert on Drums. By the way, he has the gnarliest set of drum sticks ever. They are plastic nylon Brush sticks, and he has been playing them for 30 years. See photo below.
Peter Collins on bass guitar
For the second set, Melanie came back on to play her new cover songs. I was very surprised by the diversity of the songs. Each song completely stands out on its own and there were even two songs that I never heard before.
I just decided not to tell you the name of the songs. Instead, you should head out to the Cameron House on Nov 17 or Nov 24th to see Melanie play these songs live. Her show starts at 6pm. This is a perfect way to unwind on a Monday night after work and still be home early enough to be ready for the next day.
You can see more of Melanie on her Instagram page- (1) Instagram
Here is Melanie and a pair of drumsticks:
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