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Bio:
Melinda Schneider's journey across an engaging emotional terrain - which began with the confident and promising My Oxygen album in 2000 and gained inexorable momentum with the accomplished Happy Tears in 2002 and the triumphant Family Tree in 2004 - continues with album four, Stronger - her first recordings since taking out the two most prestigious gongs at the Tamworth Country Music Awards for her brash, sassy blended country - Song Of The Year (for Real People) and Album Of The Year, having previously picked up the Golden Guitar for Female Vocalist Of The Year.

For an artist who has opened her life and willingly shared the experiences and emotions of that life with her audience over an evolving and impressive body of work, the words "This is the most honest record I've done" comprise quite a statement. "I've found that I’d rather feel things than bury them," she adds. "A songwriter has got to go into emotions and not around them. There are songs on this album that bring emotions to the surface and that's what I believe gives it its strength."

2005 was a difficult year for Melinda, which saw the end of her 10 year relationship with producer and label head Graham Thompson. Stronger is not the first album to emerge from the end of a marriage - artists from Bob Dylan to Chris Isaak have been driven to enhanced creativity by a sense of loss and change. “I know I’m not the only person in the world who’s ever gone through this, but I am lucky to be able to process these emotions through writing. Life changing experiences - that's often where great songs come from," says Melinda. "You think about things much more deeply and you find things you perhaps didn't know were there. Even though I've lived with the title track for a while now, getting the album together, it still surprises me - sort of, ‘wow, where did that come from?’ The Letting Go, which I wrote around the time that we were breaking up is also a very sad song. No divorce is ever easy but I think we're doing it pretty well. We work so well together professionally, it's a credit to us both. We like and respect each other and we care what happens in each other's life." Both Stronger and The Letting Go were collaborations with Nashville tunesmith Jerry Salley, who had worked with her on the striking Dream Him Home on the last album. "I had written most of ‘Stronger’ and then took it to Jerry, who's a very sensitive guy, a deep-feeling guy. For something that close to me I needed someone with those qualities."

But it isn’t all heartbreak and tragedy and, for the most part, Stronger is a very uplifting and joyful album. Melinda sees the good in the bad and has an unwavering belief that what’s meant to be will be. This philosophical outlook on life is evident in Send Them Love and in That Was The Plan, a humorous take on the story of an at times overwhelmed mother of five who says: ‘I only meant to hold your hand, at least that was the plan’.

The environment in which the album was initiated and created certainly personalised the proceedings and, perhaps as a result, she can now claim: "There's not a song on it that I don't absolutely love. I've worked harder than ever before on my songs and I've taken some risks. Discipline is everything. You can sit back and wait for inspiration to come and wait forever. It's a creative job but it is a job and like every job, hard work is needed for the best results."

Between February 2005, and February 2006, Melinda wrote in excess of sixty songs. She also visited Nashville four times. She entered into songwriting collaborations with scribes she knew and scribes she had just met. Two of the most notable were Gordon Kennedy, who penned If I Could Change The World for Eric Clapton, and saucy Southern belle Elizabeth Cook, who has just recorded her own album with Rodney Crowell as producer. "You click with certain people," she explains. “I cover as much ground as possible while I'm over there and come back again to the writers that I work best with. In the end, it's hard to leave many of them off. If I had my way it would probably have been a double CD!"

While there was an obvious motivation and muse this time, Melinda hastens to point out: "Some of the album is about me and people close to me and some of it is about life in general. People will just have to figure out which is which." The wide reach of a good song comes from its ability to articulate universal thoughts and feelings or, as Melinda expresses it, "You can't always write literally about yourself. Even the things that you go through in your life are things that, in a general sense, millions of other people are going through as well.”

Stronger was recorded at The Tracking Room studio in Nashville with a core of crack musicians, along with evocative accordion master Tim Wedde from Australia's The Flood (who will 'Special Guest' when Melinda tours nationally from August) The flow was rich and swift. "Took about a month to record" she reveals. "I normally take 6-7 weeks but in Nashville everything happens quickly. We cut all 13 band-tracks in two days. When things go down too quickly, it can make me a bit nervous because I like to experiment with my songs. But these guys are magic and I've learned not to direct them much because they’ll usually give you something that wows you on the first or second take if you give them their space."

As with each album before it, Stronger ranges from the contemporary to the past in its range of emotional touchstones. Fifteen Again came to her in a Nashville bathtub and was so fully fleshed that all that remained was for Gordon Kennedy to touch up the bridge. You Are Something Else was another Kennedy collaboration - this time with Wayne Kirkpatrick, Gordon's collaborator on the Clapton hit. "It's one of the best songs I've ever had a hand in writing" she insists. "I don't usually write pretty songs that paint pictures, but this one does. I think it's the ultimate love song. It compares the object of one’s affection to all the beautiful things in life. Also close to her heart is one of the album's true standouts, the touching Rest Your Weary Mind, written with Elizabeth Cook (whose hillbilly father was a moonshiner once nabbed and jailed) on an incredibly productive day. "The chorus and title came to me before I got together with Elizabeth" she explains, "but with her involvement it came out exactly the way I wanted it. I think it's so soothing to the soul, it really does affect people.”

Just as another Cook collaboration does - the controversial Sometimes It Takes Balls To Be A Woman, which closes Stronger on a wild and rambunctious note. Destined to be a sentiment that raises the roofs at gigs and will be sung back to her lustily by audiences fully in agreement it is, in her own words, "An empowering song. I've done it at four shows so far and had women come up to me to tell me what it means to them. Elizabeth and I wrote it on the same day we wrote Rest Your Weary Mind, at her house in East Nashville. We were just talking about life, as we do, and she, with her broad southern accent said, 'you know what Melinda, sometimes it takes balls to be a woman'. I laughed and said 'You speak in song titles Elizabeth' and then we got down to work. It was quite a day! When Rodney Crowell heard it he said to Elizabeth 'Ah love that song. I have four daughters and ah love that song!' Her husband was listening to us work from another room on that amazing day and at one point he yelled out: 'Can this get any better?'."

Perhaps not, but Melinda gave every task every opportunity to yield the most positive results. The Schneider/Cook axis also came up with the boisterous, audience-participation-guaranteed Men In Trucks. "I like to think that our songs have spunk and attitude and could be the sort of song that Loretta or Dolly or Patsy could have sung." The only song not co-written by Melinda was You Got Me, which was the work of two of her collaborators, Chris Stapleton and Jay Knowles (who wrote the exhilarating album opener Big World Small World with her, as well as Truly True Love). "I loved the groove, that Little Feat thing," she says. "I was really keen to do the song."

With each collaboration, each album, each award, each step along the way, Melinda finds something else about her talent and where it could take her. "I'd love to be an Elvis Costello type act - diverse, with so many places to go. After all I'm not a strictly country girl - I grew up in Sydney. I'd love to get a mainstream audience but I don't want to change what I do or who I am in order to get it. Here, I like to think I've done country in a really cool way. I listen to people like Patty Griffin, Nancy Griffith, Loudon Wainwright III - artists who reach people who don't think of themselves as liking country music."

Taking her further down a road of myriad possibility will be her upcoming participation in the Broad Festival with Deborah Conway, Ella Hooper, Mia Dyson and Kate Miller-Heidke. Billed as 'Five of Australia's most engaging singer/songwriter/instrumentalists on stage together singing each other's songs and talking about what makes them tick', and with shows at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney and the Athenaeum in Melbourne, it will ensure that her next album will have her positioned further along a trail of evolution and discovery.

"With every album you grow." she concludes "and I'm really happy with the growth that has brought me to this point, where I'm writing songs that are important to me, recording songs that have connected strongly with me, and am working with musicians I trust and admire. It doesn't get much better than that, does it?"

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.
Nominated at the 2001 CMAA awards for Best Album, Best Female Vocal Performance, and Best Video.
'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 recorded by Jimmy Little for his 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’.
September 2003 – Melinda is presented with an ACE award for Female Country Performer.
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.
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.
August 2004 – Real People reaches #1 on the Country Tracks Chart.
September 2004 – Melinda was nominated for an ARIA for ‘Best Selling Country Album’
October 2004 – Melinda is presented with two ACE awards, Performer Of The Year and Female Country Performer of the year.
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.
March 2005 – ‘I Wanna Be Married’ reaches #1 on the Australian Country Tracks Chart and holds that position for five weeks. May 2005 – ‘Real People’ nominated for Most Performed Country Work at the APRA Music Awards
October 2005 – Melinda is presented with her 4th ACE Award for excellence in live performance.
February 2005 – Melinda is invited to be part of the National tour of BROAD with Mia Dyson, Deborah Conway, Ella Hooper and Kate Miller Heidke.
May 2006 – Melinda records her fourth Album in Nashville TN.
July 2006 – Melinda appears on Spicks and Specks.
August 2006 – Melinda’s forth album, STRONGER is released.

Melinda Schneider - Fact Sheet:

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