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NASHVILLE, Tenn. - With catchy tunes like "Brand New Key" and "The Nickel Song" as well as dark, riveting numbers like "Save Me" and "Momma Momma" among her repertoire, Melanie commands a spectrum of emotion and musical style few, if any, can claim.
But given her eclecticism, Melanie agrees it does sometimes frustrate some because they can't pigeonhole her in a specific genre. To them, she says: too bad.
"It is unfortunate but everything is so marketed, so specific," she said recently in an exclusive interview with The Lebanon Voice. "I tried to find a genre but I couldn't."
Melanie Safka, but known for almost a half century by adoring fans as just Melanie, will bring her unique, sometimes quirky, but always heartfelt and sincere brand of music to the Rochester Opera House stage this Friday in what could be reminiscent of a '60s love-in.
Melanie said she always tries to "resonate" with her audiences and harkens back to her life-changing involvement at Woodstock as the bellwether of such a singular sentiment.
Funny thing is, she said, she almost didn't go.
"My husband (the late Peter Schekeryk) worked in the same office as the folks putting together this Woodstock festival," she said. "It was supposed to be arts and crafts. So I was picturing a pastoral setting with picnic blankets, and so I said, 'Yeah, sounds great.' I was officially booked a year prior to the festival."
Then she said she was hired to write the film score for an Olivia Hussey movie and was working on that in England as the summer of '69 approached.
"I was thinking maybe I should stay here in England, but I talked with my husband and we decided I would come back and do it (Woodstock)," she said in a phone interview from her Memphis, Tenn., home.
So on Aug. 15, 1969, her mom picked her up to drive her to Bethel, N.Y., for what would be the Concert for the Ages.
"When we saw the traffic we knew this was going to be huge," Melanie recalled. "Then we go to a motel in Liberty (about 12 miles from Bethel) and it was surrounded by media trucks. In the lobby there's Janice Joplin slugging Southern Comfort; this was all too much.
"Someone said, 'Melanie go to this helicopter,' and a guy wouldn't let my mom on. 'No moms,' he said. I was so mad. I didn't even think to say she was my 'manager' so I was off by myself.
"When I got there (to Woodstock) I was led to a tent with a dirt floor."
And there, she said, she waited, for what seemed like forever.
"I could hear Richie Havens singing, 'Freedom.' They kept saying I was next but I wasn't. Nobody knew what was going on.
"Then it started to rain and I thought, 'Great, they're going to go home.' Then someone said, 'You're on next, after Ravi Shankar.'"
Then Melanie, who had never played to more than 50 people or so at Greenwich Village clubs, was now playing for a crowd of 500,000.
She said she "resonated" with the crowd, which had just been given candles by concert organizers.
"I was so terrified before I got on and the candles were coming toward me, but we really resonated," she remembered. "That was the phenomenon, a real moment just for me. I've done festivals and I perform, but this was magic. I walked on that stage an unknown and left a celebrity."
She finished her 30-minute Woodstock performance with "Birthday of the Sun" because it had references to rain, she said, adding "I didn't have a set."
The moment so profoundly impacted Melanie she wrote the song, "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain). She said she had to fight with record producers who wanted to call the single, "Woodstock." The song skyrocketed to No. 6 on billboard charts and launched her career.
The next year, she was voted jazz vocalist of the year at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, though she admits she certainly didn't consider "Lay Down" jazz music.
Melanie often makes light of critics who have a hard time categorizing her music and putting her in a specific genre.
"Just recently I was a keynote speaker for a Midwest Folk Music Convention, but I'm not a folk singer," she quipped.
Her mom, however, was a jazz singer and Melanie grew up in the Astoria section of Queens idolizing jazz greats like Lena Horne and Billie Holiday.
She said the first instrument she played was a baritone ukulele, but she found it too "Arthur Godfreyish" and took up guitar instead.
"I wanted to play like Joan Baez, so I got a Goya guitar and tortured my fingers with an F chord," she said.
She said she never intended to be eclectic.
"I guess I tried to imitate Billie Holiday, Lena Horne and Joan Baez and Brenda Lee and just got it wrong," she laughs.
Soon after "Lay Down" put her in the limelight, Melanie left Buddah Records and formed her own record company with her husband called Neighborhood Records, which released her top-selling single of all, "Brand New Key," also called the "Roller Skate Song."
She was awarded Billboard's No. 1 Top Female Vocalist award for 1972 and has been awarded two gold albums (and a gold single for "Brand New Key").
While much of Melanie's success can be attributed to pop hits like "Lay Down" and "Brand New Key," it is her deeper tracks like "Save Me" and "Momma Momma" where her rich bluesy voice and powerful lyrics spell some of her greatest genius.
One can hear hints of Billie Holiday in the heart-wrenching ballad "Save Me."
Hey you in the distance,
you smiled from my past
Here's a song I wrote for you
and all I'm left to do
Is feel when I sing it
Equally rich and darkly disturbing is "Momma Momma."
Momma Momma, I fear you reared me wrong,
Momma Momma, I fear you reared me wrong,
'cause I lift up my head and I can't tell where I belong.
Momma Momma Momma Momma, something's terribly wrong.
After a decade of success, however Melanie said she became disenchanted with the system in the 1980s.
A song she released in 1969, "Tuning my Guitar," could have foreshadowed her deep desire not to be "managed."
Knock once, I got ten minutes
And every night's the same
You know I wish I wasn't in it
When I hear them call my name
Same people all around me
And I wonder who they are
I know they're not not my family
And they're not my friends by far
They're all the ones around me
I wonder who they are
They stand behind my curtain
And they hope I'll be a star
They say, get out and sell them
But selling's not my aim
I'm gonna sing the life I'm living
And try to ease the pain
"People were looking to superimpose the sound of my voice on the next hit record," she said of the '80s. "But it's hard enough to do what you do and be who you are.
"The '80s became all about production, not the voice," she added. "It was pasteurized through technology and I wanted to stay true to myself."
From Woodstock until his death in 2010 Schekeryk had always been her record producer. They were together 45 years.
"I live in a totally different universe now," she said, adding she now has to wear all the hats as her musical career moves forward.
When she's at home in Memphis, when she's not working, she likes to paint, "make things" and go to flea markets.
She also keeps busy with her involvement in humanitarian efforts like the United for Human Rights Day of Peace. Earlier this month she sang at a concert in East Nashville celebrating a Human Rights Day there.
You can also catch her with Miley Cyrus on back yard sessions on You Tube.
On Friday night, she'll be performing with her son, Beau-Jarred Schekeryk, who plays guitar.
And with a career that spans 50 years and 45 albums, which songs will she be singing?
"I'll be performing the songs people know me for," she said.
She'll also take requests.
And will she sing, "Brand New Key?"
"They never ask for, but I'll probably do it anyway," she said.
Also sharing the stage with Melanie will be EVA, an international female folk group with roots in the USA, Ireland, and Australia.
The show begins at 8 p.m. Click here for tickets.
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