Melanie Beth Curran

Part singer, part scholar, Melanie Beth Curran is a folk songwriter inspired by the traditional music of America, Ireland and Brittany. Her mélange of old-time banjo, country guitar, warm vocals, and acerbic lyrics nourishes the nostalgic and unbinds time’s clutch. Her performance melds music with history as she expounds on the intricate lore of American song.

She is based in Rockaway Beach, New York City and originally hails from Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Oct 10 - Seattle Tickets Available Here: https://givebutter.com/SongsSung

Mel’s Zine Shop

Zine 1: Do Me Justice: The Mary Wallopers, Arena, and Vaudeville Clairsentience — $33

Zine 2: Happy Within: An Irish American Songbook — $33

A Songstress For The Ages

With a film noir flare and a folk repertoire to make any bard jealous, Melanie Beth Curran comes to the stage in a fire of American song. Her songwriting started while slinging pizzas at the waterfront nexus of northwestern sound, the Doe Bay Cafe on Orcas Island in Washington State. Her very first song, The Lonesome Construction Worker Blues reflected the angst of living in that small town. She had to go.

With a bevy of songs and vintage dresses in her truck, she moved to her grandparent’s abandoned manse on Scenic Hill in Kent, Washington. There she recorded her first EP, Honky Tonk Highway. Her music was inspired by the legions of old time musicians, punk songwriters, and country crooners like Loretta Lynn who had all made Washington State their home. Melanie brought forth a riotous combination of banjo ferocity and big haired glory with a down home casualness that listeners loved.

Such winds brought her to down Los Angeles. She worked at Figaro Bistrot and strutted her stuff around Los Feliz at the dawn of the Instagram era. She cavorted with drunks and drivers, mingling with the traditional music scenesters at 1492. She honed her craft playing at dives in Culver City, cafes in Fullerton, house shows in Echo park, on the radio in Santa Barbara, and for the very bedbugs which lined her apartment in East Hollywood. It was time to go again. She absorbed the talents of legions at the Los Angeles Old Time Festival and was featured in The Agora Acorn picking at the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest.

She busked and danced her way through the years of big tech development in Seattle. She lived in this city, right across from the Island where she was reared, Bainbridge Island. Curran played fiddle tunes fast at the Pike Place Public Market and cut her teeth singing songs on ferries. She helped form The High Waisted Ramblers Stringband in 2016. The quartet gained local traction and regaled square dances, honky tonks, taverns and weddings with song.

They went to Alaska and poured music on the fisherman. During the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, she’d become part of the country’s most talented young songwriters, found lounging in mini pick up trucks, keeping the dream alive with infinite melodies, as the sun sank on a golden grass type summer. Melanie wrote music in earnest. In the Fall of 2016 she released her first full length album, Hot Sauce in Kitsap County. The collection was lauded in local publications like American Standard Time, The Kitsap Sun, and The Bainbridge Review.

Curran moved to New York City in 2017 to follow in the footsteps of writers she’s long adored. She gained a mentor in the personage of beatnik Hettie Jones, who taught her the ways of New York Bohemia. While gaining her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School, Melanie fused with New York’s rich folk music scene.

She became a regular performer at Jalopy Theatre’s Roots and Ruckus show. She played around town, on Governor’s Island, at the Windjammer Hootenanny, at the Brooklyn Americana Festival, at Sunny’s Bar, and at the now defunct Anyway Cafe in the East Village. She played the Folklife Festival in Seattle, The East Vancouver Old Time Social in Canada, and The Woodstove Festival on Cumberland Island.

Curran was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 2019 to write about traditional music and dance cultures in Bretagne, France. She released a collection of psychedelic heartbreak jazz standards with acclaimed guitarist Jake Sanders. This EP is called The Lost Love Tapes. In the summer of 2021, she was awarded a City Artist Corps Grant by New York State’s Foundation for the Arts to celebrate the release of her second album, San Benedito Beach. She shared her songs of sorrow and social change, longing and release, at the renowned Crabtree Sessions Songwriter Series on North Haven Island in Maine during the fall of 2022.

The Covid pandemic affected artists in numerous ways. It broke spirits. It destroyed lives. It tortured souls, especially those of musicians longing to connect with audiences face-to-face. Melanie created a Youtube streaming show in 2021. Her spirit was breaking. For a solid year she made no music at all. She didn’t even listen to the stuff.

In 2022 she accepted that her music life was over. She’d seen so many dear friends rise to stardom, come into their country fame, and rightly so. She was not one of them. People told her that music had gotten her nowhere. She struggled to get by, receiving unemployment, taking weird work as an extra on TV, battling bad health, working at a host stand at a hotel music venue in Chelsea, getting through on food stamps and prayers. She became an adjunct professor, teaching college writing at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Her students were badass. They helped her reconnect to music through their beautiful essays about its role in their lives. The heart is tenacious. Melanie is a melodious soul.

In 2023 she made a friend and began to busk again at the Fort Greene Farmers market. She started playing in jams in living rooms and going out dancing. In the winter of 2024, she put on two beautiful, cozy, intimate house shows where she served potatoes dishes to happy guests in Brooklyn. These were called The Potato Shows. The people spoke of how powerful her performing was, how nourishing her music. She played again.

In 2024, Melanie’s music comes from a spiritual place. Her music and literary writing is grounded in reverence for Brigid, Irish Goddess and Saint. Melanie is of Irish ancestry with relations in Letterkenny, Donegal. Brigid brings songs into her life as she is well known to give inspiration to poets. The music Melanie performs today is a beautiful combination of Irish and American folk, rock, and country music. She is writing a new album, lush with songs she’s written herself and songs of American and Irish tradition. Her new songs, Glenswilly, Landed Gentry, and Laoghaire ní Sidhe are flush with life, color and vivid human detail.

Let’s be in touch!

please send emails to: hello [at] brigid [dash] arts [dot] com