Melanie Brulée: Live at The Painted Lady

After spending a couple of seasons south of the Canadian border in Nashville, TN, singer-songwriter Melanie Brulée recently returned to her current home city of Toronto armed with plenty of new music to share. Following our recent conversation with Melanie over brunch on a recent Saturday morning, we extended our visit to the city to catch her first live performance in Toronto this Spring. Participating in a Saturday afternoon matinee performance at The Painted Lady (corner of Ossington & Dundas), Melanie took to the stage with just her acoustic guitar, and spent a little more than an hour sharing some great new tunes and telling tales of her hiatus down south.

Mixing a handful of new compositions with a few tracks from her previous albums, the audience were incredibly receptive to the music on offer. As a bona-fide bilingual artist in her own right, Melanie would perform tunes in both English and French, and closed the show by combining both languages during her encore performance of “Ces bottes sont faites pour marcher” (the Nancy Sinatra hit “These Boots Are Made For Walking”). Opening with a brand new song titled “Can’t Rely On,” Melanie would also share from her upcoming album, “Pretty Wasteland” (album version will feature Kevin Neal) and “We Get Lost,” which we had the pleasure of hearing last summer when first introduced to the artist.

There were plenty of tales on offer about her exploits and (mis)adventures in the US, both during this recent excursion and from a couple of years ago. From overcoming her reluctance to write love songs, to crazy adventures with her girlfriends during a lengthy road trip to Las Vegas, Melanie took every opportunity to engage the room with stories behind the music. She would offer props to her friend and co-musician Liz Stringer (Australia), with whom she co-wrote the new song “Whiskey And Wine,” before dedicating her song “Tennessee Years” to the place she has called home for the last few months. “Obtus” would be a French language number performed from her 2015 “Debridée” album, and she would add “Je crie” as a great audience participation number midway through her set.

Declaring that she intends to spend her entire spring and summer in Ontario, Melanie has a pretty busy concert schedule over the next few months (some dates still to be announced). As mentioned in our podcast conversation, Melanie will also be returning to the US later this summer for a few dates. You can find a list of her upcoming shows on her website. If her wonderful 11 track performance at The Painted Lady is any indication of what to expect, we strongly encourage you to experience her music for yourself if she happens to be playing soon in a town near you. We can guarantee that Team GDW will be spending time enjoying another performance from Melanie Brulée later this year, and look forward to hearing many more new songs that she has hidden up her sleeve.

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