About five years back, while most tweens were starting to scream their heads off for Hannah Montana, a young Melia Maccarone was screaming her own off at a Green Day show. During its "American Idiot" tour the band was known for pulling kids up on stage to play - for better or for worse - with the band. Maccarone saw the light.
"I remember he [Billie Joe Armstrong] pulled a kid up on stage," Maccarone says. "And that was one of the first times I was like, ‘Mom I want to play guitar.' She was like, 'Yeah, yeah' - she kind of blew it off. And I said, ‘Next time I go see them I'm going to be on stage with them, watch.'"
Maccarone and her mom caught the band again last year in Albany, where she held up a sign that said "Pick a girl." Armstrong pulled her up and she played his guitar for the entirety of the tune "Jesus Of Suburbia," which she had only just learned the night before. Armstrong told the crowd that Maccarone was the best guitar player they had ever brought up on stage. Maccarone was so excited she took a running leap off the catwalk into the crowd.
"It was the worst stage dive ever," she says. "I literally went feet first. There was so much space between the edge of the stage and the crowd..."
Now 19 years old, this Rochester musician is an incredible guitar player, despite the fact she's only been at it for three years. After the initial Green Day epiphany, mom and dad still made her wait two more years before letting her take up the instrument, just to be sure.
"I think that's what made me so motivated," she says. "I think I was just so motivated to make up for lost time. I worked at it really hard. My guitar teacher told my dad I was a natural, and that inspired me even more and I started playing three to four hours a day. In the summer I'd play six to eight hours a day."
The practicing hasn't tapered off. "Now I do four hours of guitar and four hours of vocals," Maccarone says.
Guitar wasn't Maccarone's first instrument. She had played flute when she was younger, but says she shied away from it. "Just being in band wasn't very cool," she says. "Being a band nerd... Once I got in high school I stopped caring."
She formed her first band, Medula, at Spencerport High School. It was with that band that she took her first stab at songwriting.
"I had always written lyrics and poetry," Maccarone says. "So that part came easily to me. But as far as music, I really didn't know how to write."
But as quickly as she figured out the guitar, it started raining songs for Maccarone. The downpour continues even now.
"Some I'll write in a day," she says. "Some will take two months. I find some of my catchier songs are the ones I wrote quickly. ‘Counter Clockwise' was the first song I've ever written. When we recorded it, it all came together like I had imagined it in my head. I think my writing is better now, but I still love that song."
Maccarone's music is as colorful as her purple-streaked hair, and could very easily be called melodic pop if it there wasn't so much rock in it. Her guitar playing hangs with a structured savvy around well-worn riffs in uncharted waters. Though her music is guitar-driven, it's not to the point where it dominates or crowds the compositions. She moves effortlessly from a thick rhythmic chug to harmonic tapping. It's serious and seriously good. The cherry on top is her voice; plaintive and strong, breaking where needed, and laced with attitude and moxie.
Maccarone is currently in GFI Studios banging out her first long-player in between an increasing number of gigs locally and nationally. The vocals will be laid down at the studio of her vocal coach, Richard Fink. And thanks to Rochester ex-pat Kevin Briggs (Molly Gunner, S.A.F. Project), Maccarone has two showcase gigs in Los Angeles, one at the House Of Blues and one at The Libertine. A mutual friend brought Maccarone and Briggs together.
"He and I have been writing together back and forth," she says. "I'm going out there to record what we've written so he got the gigs for me."
Drummer Dominick Ciaccia will be along for the ride. He's Maccarone's only stable band mate at this point. "Bass players come and go," she says. "The thing about me and Dom is we hit it off right away. The first time we played together it just made sense."
Maccarone appears to be well on her way, musically speaking. And that's a good thing, because aside from her self-described perfectionism in her chosen field, she says she's in trouble.
"I basically suck at everything but music," she says.
Melia Maccarone also performs Saturday, July 24, 9 p.m. at A-Pub Live, 6 Lawrence St. The show is free. For more information call 262-2063.
Melia Maccarone
Friday, July 23
Jukebox, 5435 W. Ridge Road
9 p.m. | Free | 352-4505
facebook.com/meliam1