Melinda Schneider - Fact Sheet

• First stage appearance at age of three with her mother, yodeler Mary Schneider.
• Recorded a duet with her mother at age eight on the platinum album 'The Magic Of Yodeling' and another at age eleven on the gold album 'Can't Stop Yodeling'.
• Guest appearances on popular Australian drama 'A Country Practice' at age thirteen.
• Studied dance from age eight to thirteen (Ballet, Tap, Jazz).
• Studied fashion design on leaving school, attaining an Associate Diploma in Fashion Technology then ran her own fashion label for three years.
• In 1994 featured as guest vocalist and co writer of 'Tighten Up Your Pants' a techno yodeling radio and club hit by Audio Murphy Inc.
• In 1995 won a Mo Award for excellence in live performance
• Appeared on The Howard Stern Show in 1997 with her mother on a US promo tour for Mary's album 'Yodeling The Classics'.
• First single 'Love's Out To Get Me' reached #8 on the Music Network national country airplay chart in July 1999.
• 'Love Away The Night' a duet with Adam Brand (co-written by Melinda & Adam) reached #1 on the Music Network national country airplay chart in September 1999 and #1 on CMT.
• Won a CMAA Golden Guitar Award in 2000 in the category of Best Vocal Collaboration for "Love Away The Night' with Adam Brand and was nominated in the Best New Talent category for 'Love's Out To Get Me'.
• Recorded debut album 'My Oxygen' in Nashville at Sound Emporium in March 2000.
• In April 2000 sang opening title theme on popular Australian TV series 'Something In The Air'
• 'T.V. Or Me' (which Melinda co-wrote with Danny Wells) reached # 7 on the Music Network national country airplay chart in July 2000.
• Performed to 40,000 people at the 'Country in the Domain' concert during the Sydney Olympics and opened the 2001 CMAA Country Music Awards performing 'Count To Three'
• Nominated at the 2001 CMAA awards for Best Album, Best Female Vocal Performance, and Best Video.
• Featured on covers of 'Aussie Post' magazine April 2001 and 'Woman Spirit' magazine June 2001.
• 'Count To Three' (co - written by Melinda & Sam Hawkesley) reached #4 on the Music Network national country airplay chart in May 2001 and #1 on the Music Country video chart in June 2001.
• In July 2001 won second Mo Award - this time for Best Female Country Performer.
• Melinda's second album "Happy Tears" released on July 29th 2002
• John Farnham records Melinda’s song “Eternally” on his new album “The Last Time” released October 7th, 2002.
• December 2002 - Melinda is nominated for 5 CMAA Golden Guitar Awards in the categories of APRA Song Of The Year, Album Of The Year, Female Artist Of The Year, Vocal Collaboration Of The Year & Video Of The Year. Happy Tears is the only album by a female artist to be nominated in the Album Of The Year category.
• January 25th 2003 - Melinda is presented with a Golden Guitar Award for ‘Female Vocal Performance Of The Year’ for her song The Story Of My Life at the Toyota Golden Guitar Awards.
• February 2003 – ‘The Story of My Life’ reaches #1 on the Country Tracks airplay chart & # 3 on the Music Network airplay chart and #1 on the CMC video chart.
• July 2003 – Melinda wins third Mo Award – once again for Female Country Performer Of The Year
• July 2003 – ‘Can You Hear Me Down The Hillside’ (written by Melinda and Jim Lauderdale) reaches #1 on the Country Tracks Chart, maintaining position for three weeks.
• August 2003 – Melinda’s song ‘Reach Out’ is released on Jimmy Little’s album ‘Down The Road’.
• September 2003 Melinda tours Australia with The Dixie Chicks and releases ‘Happy Tears Special Tour Edition’ featuring 7 bonus tracks including duets with Billy Thorpe, Jimmy Little, The Schneider Sisters and Smokey Dawson. Bonus tracks (excluding the Jimmy Little duet) made available separately as ‘The Kitchen Table Tapes’.
• December 2003 – Received four nomination in the 2004 Toyota Golden Guitars Awards, Highest Selling Album of the year with her album Happy Tears, Female Vocalist Of The Year with the track ‘Cootamundra Wattle’ from the album Australian Storyteller’, Vocal Collaboration Of The Year for the track ‘When The Last Child Leaves Home’ which is a duet with Billy Thorpe and Single Of The Year with the track ‘Can You Hear Me Down The Hillside’ both from Melinda’s current album ‘Happy Tears’.
• January 2004 – Co hosted the Toyota Golden Guitar Awards with Colin Buchanan.
• February 2004 – Recorded her much-anticipated third album due for release May 17th, 2004.
• May 2004 – ‘Melinda releases ‘Family Tree’ her third album which debuts at #3 on the ARIA country album chart
• June 2004 - Melinda was presented with her fourth Mo Award for excellence in live performance.
• September 2004 – Melinda was nominated for an ARIA for ‘Best Selling Country Album’
• December 2004 – Received 6 nominations in the 2005 Toyota Golden Guitar Awards, Highest Selling Album of the Year and Album of the Year with her album ‘Family Tree’, Female Vocalist of the Year, Single of the Year, Video Clip of the Year and APRA Song of the Year all with the track ‘Real People’ from the album Family Tree
• January 15th, 2005 – Melinda receives two awards at the 33rd Annual Toyota Golden Guitar Awards, APRA Song of the Year with the track ‘Real People’ from the album Family Tree and Album of the Year with the album Family Tree. This brings her tally of Golden Guitars to 4.
• May 2005 – ‘Real People’ nominated for Most Performed Country Work at the APRA Music Awards.
  

MELINDA SCHNEIDER – ‘FAMILY TREE’ BIOGRAPHY
SONGS FROM A TRUE PLACE

“I feel I have to sing from a true place” Melinda Schneider proclaims. “There is something really liberating about being a hundred percent honest. When a subject is very real there is more power in the writing.”

Power, confidence and impressive accomplishment are at the very heart of Family Tree, Melinda’s third assured album; one which continues her journey across an engaging emotional terrain.

There is an exhilaration that comes with the honesty that permeates this striking work because, as Melinda wisely observes, “People know when something is real”. Of course, an artist does as well, at least this one does. “It’s boring to get up on stage and sing a lot of songs that you don’t believe in” she offers. “Nothing is more beautiful than moving people with music and that happens when you take them with you. An audience likes to think that they know something about you.”

They came to know quite a deal about this daughter of a yodeller and a policeman who spent time as a fashion designer on her inexorable path to a country music career through The Story Of My Life, the daring song that proved to be, head and shoulders, the most popular, commented-upon and requested track on her 2002 Happy Tears album.

With the acceptance of that song has come a greater ease and openness, an endorsement of her craft that has shaped Family Tree into the most personal and appealing of her three albums. “With every album you grow” she believes “and I’m really pleased with the growth that has brought me to this point – where I’m writing songs that are important to me, recording other songs that have connected strongly with me, and working with musicians I trust and admire. I hope by my tenth album I’ll feel the same way!”

Recorded in Australia and produced by husband and bassist Graham Thompson, Family Tree was cut with a small tight core of musicians led by the mighty Mark Punch on guitar and including Michel Rose on pedal steel and Tim Wedde of The Flood on accordion, the tracks had fiddle and dobro embellishments added in Nashville by expatriate producer Mark Moffatt at his Big Dog Studio. “I love the playing on this album” says Melinda. “You feel something special when you hear a song recorded right. Graham worked harder than ever to engineer my voice. Production can sometimes take out some of the spirit of songs but he’s made the whole album rootsy and real.”

The set opens with the sprightly and playful title track, one of five written with fellow Australian country recording artist and performer Michael Carr. “We write really well together” Melinda enthuses. “Michael was my very first songwriting partner and there’s just something special that happens when we write together – you can’t really put your finger on it but it doesn’t happen very often with songwriting partners.” Destined to strike a very responsive chord among a great many women of Melinda’s age balancing aspects of their lives, Family Tree comes straight from the heart and hearth. “Yes, well Graham is very clucky” she laughingly admits, “and so is my mother Mary. Let’s just say that the baby thing is looming and my only fear is that I might just want to stay home when it happens!”

Sgt. Bean is a touching and loving tribute to Melinda’s father, who passed away at the end of 2003. “I had the chorus for quite a while but hadn’t been able to finish the song” Melinda details.

Which is just as well. For when she sat with good friend Bob Regan in a Nashville writing room, still very fragile from her own loss, it all seemed to make much more sense. “I’ve been to Nashville many times” she reveals “but this trip was really hard. I had to keep working after Dad died so I went there straight after the Tamworth Festival. The plane trip was awful. I felt lost and cried a lot while I was in the air. I didn’t even know if I would be able to write. It’s a terrible feeling being on the other side of the world in that sort of state.

There was something cathartic about Sgt. Bean, the verses for which came tumbling out of her when she sat down with Regan; though she admits “my mum can’t listen to it too often.” Nor to Dream Him Home, another Nashville co-write of piercing emotion and similar leaning which she penned with Jerry Salley (who also worked with her on the rollicking and amusing The L Word) “It’s a blessing to be able to express your feelings at times like that, to let them come out in songs, because you know that somebody out there listening will have gone through the same things and will understand what you’re saying.”

Elizabeth Cook, one of Nashville’s best specialist tunesmiths, came up with the title Goodbye House and Melinda instantly took to it. “I suppose it’s something my mum is now facing but I think anyone who has had to leave the family home will connect with it.” Just as anyone who has endured a dissolving relationship will readily connect with What Was A Thinking?, one of the five works crafted with Michael Carr. “It’s not strictly a country song, I suppose” she muses, though that hardly matters as there is an overdose of country in the song that follows it, the second Bob Regan co-write Spaghetti Is Ready, which also taps into some universal sentiments, principal among them the opening line contributed by Graham in a quick quip (during a discussion of the controversy generated by the book The Bride Stripped Bare) one day: “Sex is overrated but it sure feels good.”

Just as good as the groove of Beautiful Thing, which she and Carr “wrote with Colin Buchanan in a couple of hours. It’s a sort of a soul song; we needed a Bonnie Raitt-type feelgood thing and this is what we came up with. It’s sometimes very hard to write a simple song but this one came flowing.” As did Walk That Wire, though Melinda reveals that “Michael says he can’t quite figure it out. The form makes it unusual – it’s almost Traveling Wilbury-ish.”

Though Melinda was in fine writing form for this album, moved by circumstance to gather her thoughts with power and purpose, she once again interpreted the works of others with the same commitment and involvement. I Wanna Be Married, from Al Anderson and (the former Mr Emmylou Harris) Paul Kennerley, was found by Graham on a visit to Nashville and thrown into the mix. “This is really getting down to it” Melinda laughs. “I’m sure it’s how a lot of people feel – sometimes you want to be married and sometimes you want to be single – occasionally at the same time! I think women are going to like it and I’m going to love performing it for them because the lyric is such fun and it has real personality. On stage I have a fun loving attitude; I don’t like to be too dark and serious about things.”

Which is precisely the sentiment to be found in one of the true highlights of the album –the enchanting The Healing Power of Helpless Laughter, provided by Don Walker of Cold Chisel and Jim Mogine of Midnight Oil. “I Went to Don Walker – we’ve been writing together lately – and he played me a bunch of unpublished songs, which were almost Tom Waits in style. This one leaped out at me - a well written song with such a powerful message” Melinda explains.

“If the lyrics are great and the melody is great a song is going to stand up, always.” the lady declares and such a description could well describe another song destined to be a concert favourite. “Real People has a very Australian kind of message” she reckons. “I don’t like posers and prima donnas and I don’t think Australians do generally. I enjoy the company of down to earth people. One of the things I like about touring is that I get to meet all sorts of people and hear their stories.” Indeed, sometimes she hears stories not even intended for her. The verse which mentions her friend and contemporary Beccy Cole, is certainly not fiction. There really was a country music loving truckie who declared ‘Hey aren’t you that Beccy Cole!’ Not wanting to embarrass the kindly soul, she smiled broadly and signed ‘Love Beccy’ on his hat brim.

With Family Tree, Melinda Schneider once again offers herself to a broad audience, one not constrained by country musical labeling. With each step her craft is honed ever sharper. As a songwriter and singer, she is one of this country’s truly important artists.

For further information please contact:
Compass Bros Records Publicity
32a Halloran Street, Lilyfield NSW 2040
info@compassbros.com.au ph: 02 9555 9144 fax: 02 9555 9188

click here for news archives