Mel Parsons

About the Artist

Originally hailing from the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island, Mel Parsons is a singer-songwriter whose songs speak for themselves.

Mel grew up on a farm at the beach near Cape Foulwind. When not roaming around making huts in the bush or exploring on horseback she spent many a rainy day marching around the house thumping away on a variety of instruments carefully selected from Mum's educational music table....

While secretly still burning a candle for Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler, Parsons embraces a range of influences in her music. She grew up listening to Cat Stevens, Paul Simon, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac and the like, but was also a fan of groups like The Specials and The Police. Later, influences came in the form of songwriters like Tracey Chapman and Jesus Rodriguez. Current favourites include Ray LaMontagne, Damien Rice and Gillian Welch.

Always a fan of a catchy tune, and a sucker for sweet vocal harmony, Mel's style has unsurprisingly ended up sitting somewhere in the country infused pop-folk sort of a vein. And despite four years of music study her songwriting remains purely intuitive:

"The songs themselves come from goodness knows where a lot of the time. I am not a prolific writer but it seems that when songs do come out there is often something to them. Lyrically, I think the feeling behind a lot of them is obvious enough! Of course there is always a bit of poetic license thrown in there, but in general, my inspiration comes from from my heart and things that have touched it in good or bad ways..."