NEW YORK (Melissa Manchester Official Website/Koch Records press release) - Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter-musician
Melissa Manchester will hit the road March 19 in support of her March 9 release
When I Look Down That Road (Koch Records) and the single
"After All This Time," graced by Keb' Mo' on slide guitar.
Melissa's set list will include songs from her first new album of all-new studio material in nearly a decade on the cross-country trek, the first leg of which will last through most of April. In the midst of the dates, Melissa will perform March 27 on CBS' "Saturday Early Show."
Co-produced by Kevin DeRemer and Stephan Oberhoff, When I Look Down That Road reinforces Melissa's commitment to a new creative method of stripping aside the extraneous elements in order to get to what really matters: the heart of the song. Melissa wrote or co-wrote every song on the stripped-down album that forgoes heavy production to reveal the warm, intimate side of her voice that highlighted early hits like "Midnight Blue" and "Come In From The Rain."
On "After All This Time," the elements come together: a melody that nestles into a comfortable groove, Keb' Mo's sensually empathetic slide guitar rising like smoke through the air of Melissa's piano. "Me and that silv'ry moon watched silently as you breathed," sings Melissa. "I wouldn't break the spell, even to steal a kiss...After all this time, baby, we got this right."
Melissa describes the tune: "Blue Miller wrote this melody and I took it home with me to Los Angeles. Sometimes, when I need to shake some words out of my brain, I'll read through books by the great lyricists. In this case it was Johnny Mercer: I kept reading his lyrics and thinking, 'What would he do with this kind of a song?' He had such a magnificent way of writing sentimentally. So I sat next to my bed, at my desk, looking through his lyrics, playing the tape of 'After All This Time'--and the words just rose up from the dust and came to me."
Melissa Manchester 2004 tour dates are as follows:
March 2004
19 - Kalamazoo, MI - Miller Auditorium
20 - Sandusky, OH - State Theatre
21 - Clinton Township, MI - Macomb Center
24 - East Lansing, MI - Wharton Center
25 - Westbury, NY - Westbury Music Fair
26 - Purchase, NY - SUNY / Purchase
27 - New Brunswick, NJ - State Theatre
28 - Schenectady, NY - Proctor's Theatre
30 - Bradford, PA - High School
April 2004
1 - Wilmington, DE - Grand Opera House
2, 3 - Storrs, CT - Jorgensen Center for Performing Arts
4 - Glenside, PA - Keswick Theatre
6 - Mableton, GA - Mable House Amphitheatre
7 - Sarasota, FL - To be announced
8 - Melbourne, FL - Maxwell C. King Center
9 - Daytona Beach, FL - Peabody Auditorium
10 - Lakeland, FL - Youkey Theatre
12 - Fort Lauderdale, FL - Broward Center
13 - Naples, FL - Philharmonic Center
15-18 - Pittsburgh, PA - Heinz Hall (w/ Pittsburgh Symphony)
