About a year ago, Melaniejane, a fixture on the Milwaukee music scene, packed up and headed up to the relative tranquility of Door County, where she continues to write, perform and record.
Eleven months later, "Purgatory Hill" has arrived. The disc is the latest outing by singer and songwriter Pat MacDonald, who is best known as part of the group Timbuk3, which cracked Billboard’s Top 20 in 1986 with its hit, ""The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades."
So, what does the bluesy "Purgatory Hill" have to do with Melaniejane?
"The CD are all of pat's songs all played on the cigarbox guitar," she says. "I'm just his ‘side-guy’."
The cigarbox instrument is a Lowebow "Purgatory Hill Harp" fashioned from a cigar box and two poles with three guitar strings and one bass string.
Melaniejane performed various percussion, organ, backing vocals and did a recitation, too, on the disc; contributions that MacDonald obviously believes were important to the project, because he features her likeness as prominently as his own on the sleeve.
So, how did this collaboration come to be?
"I met Pat years ago through Sigmud Snopek and always made it a point to go see him play whenever he was in Milwaukee," she remembers.
"That was probably 2004. I really didn't get to know him until fall of 2007 after we started playing together. In June 2007, pat invited me to be in the songwriter's Construction Zone at Steel Bridge SongFest. It was that summer that Pat saw me play electric cello for the first time. ‘We gotta do something together sometime,’ he said. ‘Bring it!,’ I replied. One song led to the next and here we are almost two years later playing non-stop, touring whenever possible."
Now, in addition to working as one of the main coordinators of the Door Coutny music festival -- of which she says, "it was such a life-changing experience, I have been dedicated to it ever since so that others can come and share the same experience" -- Melaniejane tours with MacDonald.
"We’ve been as far east as Charleston, S.C. and did a February tour of the South and managed to finish ‘Purgatory Hill’ in the interim. Whew ... what a ride! We will be going back south in November and then heading out west. I am pushing to get to Europe I was hoping by the end of the year but now it's looking like spring is more realistic."
Collaborating with MacDonald is what led Melaniejane to leave Milwaukee, she says.
"We were working so much together that I ended up moving in August 2008 to Sturgeon Bay, where he lives, to make things easier. I was gone most all of the time anyways. It just didn't make sense to keep an apartment in Milwaukee anymore. We are constant companions and have become the best of friends," she says.
"Not only do we work on making music together and doing all of the booking andpromo that goes along with making ends meet in this business, we also work side by side on Steel Bridge SongFest."
Although she is not officially involved, Melaniejane also helps out sometimes at the Holiday Music Motel, a really cool ‘50s-style Sturgeon Bay motel which MacDonald owns along with a number of other investors, including Jackson Browne.
Melaniejane expects to perform in Milwaukee -- where "Purgatory Hill" was recorded by Steve Hamilton at Makin Sausage Music -- in September.In the meantime, you can check out "Purgatory Hill" at www.purgatoryhill.com.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
