Melissa Carper

I know Melissa through Anna Moss and Rebecca Patek. Anna introduced me to both.  I sent messages to them separately before I realized they lived together and that the logistics for two tinyboatsessions would be easier and a lot more fun. They lived on a picturesque farm with roads lined with wildflowers outside of Bastrop, Texas where they played music and grew vegetables.

Melissa and Rebecca play in several bands as well as their own songs.  ‘Sad Daddy’ and ‘Buffalo Gals.’

We put in under a bridge over the Colorado River.  Not the one that runs through the Grand Canyon but a no less beautiful, albeit smaller and less dramatic one that flows through the rich soil of central Texas. Twenty minutes of rowing had us around the corner and away from the occasional car humming over the bridge. We might have been in the middle of nowhere.

Melissa’s voice took me back in time. I was hearing her live, but I felt like I was listening to some long-lost gramophone recording that was being reproduced with exquisite fidelity. 

She’s traveled a lot, and the song she played reflected that. She sang a few lines that felt especially close to home, a line about New Mexico and green chili, that essential pepper that defines the place. It’s the state I grew up in and my closest family still resides.  Her dulcet ruminations on ramblings had me thinking of seeing them in a few days when I’d finished up these Lone Star tinyboatsessions. Instagram: @melissacarpermusic