by Paul Riley

So here is some more evidence that not all country pop is bad. In fact Aussie singer Melissa Bajric's new 4th CD is a very entertaining ride.

The singer got her first record deal when only 16, and she is not well known outside Australia but if she keeps making albums as strong as Diamonds & Wine that may well change.

The bouncy country pop of When I'm With You hits the target with a fine vocal, strong melody and tight backing track. It is short and sweet, and quite a way ahead of most recent tedious Nashville pop.

Even better is the wonderful Mexi-lite I Knew It which bristles with more passion than Sara Evans has mustered for years. The track has the swirl of a drunken dance floor. It's songs like this that remind us that country music still has so much to offer.

Other highlights of this entertaining CD include, the country rock of Back To My Boots, country ballad It's Not For You, and the heartache of Neil's Song. The very commercial 1980's style romp Rock Star would have been a monster hit years ago, now sadly it won't even get on the radio. What a track though!

Melissa Bajric's CD ends on another high with Too Many Tequilas, with 1960's style guitar, an engaging melody, and a strong vocal. If an Aussie understands how to blend country and pop together, why are so many Americans making a mess of it? At the moment Melissa Bajric is a long way ahead of Carrie Underwood, Lady Antebellum, etc. The production by Lindsay Waddington is also very good.

Melissa Bajric also seems keen on entertaining her audience, instead of just "chasing the money". As she is still young it is highly likely that we will have many more delightful discs like Diamonds & Wine, which does include quite a few gems. Melissa Bajric understands country pop, only a handful of current singers/bands seem to.

                                                      Country Music People, England - April 2014

by Denise Torenbeek

In a departure from the modus operandi of most independent artists, the MELISSA BAJRIC Show has evolved it's own business model for taking 'the show on the road'. The tried and trusted white line and backtrack trawling from town to town does not work for them.

As Melissa explained "There are five musicians in the band and we have to consider the fact that they have families, day jobs and a homelife; and to work around that, we fly in to our concerts or festivals and are rarely away for more than two nights. That has advantages in that we can have the full band for the shows instead of trying to make do with economical divisions cutting down to a duo or trio.

"The full MELISSA BAJRIC Show utilises theatres as opposed to clubs as the environment is always very comfortable, and because we fly in we don't transport our own sound gear and the theatres come fully equipped apart from our occasionally needing to hire some extra gear. They also have state of the art lighting rigs most of the time, which we synch with the songs and visual effects backdrop.

The video backdrop is a major component of the show with a lot of content that has been created to augment what is occurring musically, and in theatres it is no problem to accommodate that element.

Melissa has just released a new album Diamonds & Wine, her first since Small Town Girl a number of years ago. In the interim she says there has not been any time that wasn't busy and rewarding, as she's developed as an artist, matured as a woman, become a wife and found her creative niche with writing and singing. She says the new record is radically different in style and very much more branded with her own personality. After three albums with Lindsay Butler, Melissa's new material led them both to decide her Musical Director since 2007, Lindsay Waddington, would be the ideal producer for this project as he had an innate familiarity with the intricacies of the singer. the songs and the show.

"The new songs are all written with that multi-instrumental production and full band sound as that is now our standard live unit, so the songs are created from that perspective. Knowing that we can faithfully produce live what we're putting out on the record, I don't have to find the balance between the record and the show, or compromise either."

Obviously caught up in the passion of talking about her new 'baby', Diamonds & Wine Melissa laughs and says, "I hope I'm better at writing songs than talking about them!".

"I've also grown up a lot. I was 21 when we did Small Town Girl and at that stage of your life you're still shuffling things and setting things up for the rest of your life, trying bits on to see what fits and testing everything - the whole of life is like shopping for shoes - some were permanent and others a phase, as you would expect."

She talks about individual tracks. "Neil's Song is very close to my heart, as when I started out very young, even back in the talent quest days, Neil Buttsworth was in the band and such a staunch support. He became ill at the beginning of putting the MB Show together. Neil did rehearsals and one show, and too soon succumbed and left us. In that situation the band is closer than a family and the loss is irreplaceable. I still to this day have not put another bass player in but use the keys instead. This song was my attempt to say goodbye in a way that he would have appreciated. He was Waddo's father in law too, and he'd shared every faltering step of my career.

"I Knew It is a cornerstone song - it was my first co-write ever. Another personal progression - I wrote two songs on the first album and eight on this one. Waddo (Lindsay Waddington) and I were both looking for a sound, we could identify it theoretically but we couldn't find a song to do in that style. After thrashing about individually trying to get it, I gave him the words I had and said 'Here, you have a go. It's your turn.' And he aced it in no time flat. That was such a Wow moment! I thought 'I don't have to do it all on my own!' It was like the song was telling me to wise up! We put a funky backbeat behind the chorus, that everyone that hears it says 'Oh that's Mexican, or that's so and so', but it's not - it's a meld of a lot of things but it's different."

"When I'm With You is the first single and another of my own songs. I was determined to get some happy uplifting songs on this album. There is that old saying about country music that it is all maudlin, desolate and downtrodden... but I'm happy. I'm in a great place in my life and it would be just wrong to have a miserable album! I've travelled a lot lately and when you get up in that plane above the clouds, and you look out there is always a cobalt blue sky. So I used the 'always a blue sky somewhere' metaphor. We added a banjo but in a really contemporary way and all the guitars are bright and bouncy and as soon as we launch into it you see the faces light up and smiles spreading in the room."

"I Can't Turn Around was sent to me, and it's about a relationship splintering, but it's a very powerful song, and those energies sometimes colour songs more so than the theme. While it might be a tragic topic the song is moving on of it's own accord."

"Travelling overseas has been an eye-opener, and probably had the most profound effect on my growth and writing. In Australia we have such a short history and our outback and aboriginal culture is so raw and earthy, that empty seething silent red heart of a country with us dotted around the perimeter. When you travel overseas for the first time and see things like Notre Dame or the Eiffel Tower, or some astonishing edifice I struggle to assimilate how architecturally constructed (man-made) older cultures are in comparison to ours. Just trying to take all that in, pondering the age and what motivation caused someone to bring it into existence... all those impressions alter you and how you look at everything."

"The years in between the last two albums have been packed with change. Mostly good change , but not all. Through all of that, I was writing simultaneously shuffling life, songs, producers, musicians... nearly everything!"

                                                      Country Update  February 2014  Issue 72

by Susan Jarvis


When MELISSA BAJRIC recorded her last album, Small Town Girl, back in 2006, she was writing and singing about her life.

"I really was that small town girl - the little village where I grew up in the Hunter Valley had a local pub, a corner shop and a service station, and that was about it," Melissa said.

However, it was clear from the title track of that album that things were about to change for Melissa. "I remember singing a line in Small Town Girl that went 'I'll fly over Uluru...' I always wanted to go everywhere and see everything - to experience it for myself," she said.

And for the past six years, that is exactly what Melissa has done. She's travelled extensively in Australia and overseas - including to Uluru. In fact she's currently on another international trip, to her father's home country of Croatia. And she's watched, listened and lived every moment of her travels, turning them into songs.

"Between my last album and the next, I decided I needed to live life. A lot has changed for me - I got married, I've moved to Sydney," Melissa said.

Now 28, Melissa is already a veteran of the country music scene, having recorded her first album for Drover Music, Believe In Me, at the age of 16. She then joined forces with Bob Easter and Graham Rodger to release Drovin' All Over. It showed Melissa's talent as a bush balladeer, a style of music she still adores.

However, she's diversified her musical tastes and style over the past decade, as Small Town Girl demonstrated. Most recently, she recorded a duet with her musical director and guitarist, Lindsay Waddington. Their version of the Merle Haggard classic Silver Wings was released on an album Lindsay recorded with Charley Boyter.

Now Melissa is focused on her own career - in particular the very successful Melissa Bajric Show and her forthcoming album Diamonds And Wine.

Her live show, which features Melissa with a band and slick multimedia production, is booked all over Australia. "The show is very much my journey - I do some of the old songs, and take the audience with me through the years and right through to the new material that's going to be on the album," Melissa said.

Production has already begun on Melissa's long-awaited new album, Diamonds And Wine. Like her previous recordings, the album will be produced by multi-award winning guitarist Lindsay Butler in his Tamworth studio. It will feature a number of her own compositions, including the exquisite Cradle Mountain Lullaby, penned in Tasmania, and When I'm With You, a love song about being content with life and the person you're with.

Melissa says Back To My Boots is a kind of sequel to Small Town Girl. "This small town girl went to the big city - and I absolutely love living there - but sometimes I need to head back to my boots and the dirt and land," Melissa said.

The album will feature two Norma O'Hara Murphy songs - the wonderful Big City Hotel, which has always been a favourite of Melissa's, and Rosie Gray. Big City Hotel has already been released - comp-lete with a video clip - as Melissa's first single, and has received a huge response. "It's a contemporary song that was written before it's time," Melissa said.

"There are also a number of other writers on the new album. I'm aware that I can't always express things as well as other people might, so I choose songs that I can feel and connect with," Melissa said. "It's more important to choose the best possible songs for the album, songs that mean something to me."

The plan is to release Diamonds And Wine in time for the 2013 Tamworth Festival, where Melissa will be presenting her show at the Capitol Theatre on Tuesday, January 22.

                                                      Capital News  July 2012  Vol 37 No 7

by Deborah Minter

Pretty twenty-one year old MELISSA BAJRIC has been making her way in the Bush Ballad genre since her early teens.

Unlike some young performers, she isn’t confused musically; she knows exactly what direction her music is taking her. "As a young kid all my friends were listening to the ‘popular’ music," Melissa said. "It never did anything for me. I’d go home and put SLIM DUSTY on. I found that the Bush Ballads were something that was real to me, something I could understand."

Melissa recorded her first album with Drover Music when she was just sixteen. "On my first album the songs were those I’d been singing since my junior talent quest days," she said. "Looking back you can hear how young I was."

Melissa ‘cut her performance teeth’ in shows with ‘mature-age’ balladeer BOB EASTER. "I used to watch Bob sing when I was four years old and he was a superstar to me," Melissa smiled. "My first trip to Mildura (Country Music Festival) was just after the release of my first album. I was a little nervous. I walked into one of the rooms back stage and it was full of men, all my Dad’s age or older. I felt so out of place. But after two or three shows I found out they were all so nice. They really gave me encouragement."

"You’re put into an adult environment there (in the studio and on the stage); everyone around you is a lot older. There are a lot of very helpful people in the Bush Ballad arena, especially when you start out so young. There’s a lot to learn from everybody. I’ve also had a lot of help with making the transition from singing strictly Bush Ballad music to the way my style has developed. For my second album, I’ve been writing and experimenting with a little bit different style to my first album."
Melissa’s second album Small Town Girl has just been released, once again recorded with the renowned LINDSAY BUTLER as producer and on the Drover label. "Lindsay made everything so easy," she said. "I could really put my trust in him, but he always made me feel like my input was important."

This time Melissa has five of her own original songs on the album. "Some of those I wrote very recently," she said. "Luckiest Girl was written after I had started recording. I had put down a few songs already and was taking a break." Well, from recording at least. Melissa was appearing on the Festival circuit. "You’d get home from one festival, turn around twice and jump back in the car to get to the next festival," she said. "I wrote Luckiest Girl between my house and the first service station."

"We live in a little town with a local pub, a corner shop and a service station; that’s it. There was a time when you could walk down the street and you would know everybody. That’s starting to change. There are a lot of new houses going up, new people moving in, new attitudes, more distance. I felt a bit like a stranger in my own town. I wanted to write a song to capture that small town attitude before it disappears so I wrote Small Town Girl."

"Everybody needs a little place where they can spend time on their own. I was sitting down beside the river with the birds singing and the wind in the trees - even the cows in the paddock mooing. The song Morning Bird just came to me. Everyone goes through tough times in their lives and this song is a message to take time to appreciate the little things."

"I’m always going to stay true to the Bush Ballad style," she said adamantly. "But it’s also nice to explore the other sides of county music. I do try to stay as traditional as possible, but there’s more to traditional country music than just Bush Ballads."                                        Capital News  July 2006  Vol 31 No 7