Melissa Ferrick is a Boston-area-based singer-songwriter who is also a songwriting professor at Berklee College of Music. She does not seem to perform a lot so, after seeing her open for Alejandro Escovedo last month, I decided to see one of her shows at Club Passim.
The shows fell the weekend after Christmas which I would think is a very slow period for concert attendance, but this show on Saturday evening (the second of four shows) was surprisingly well-attended. She had many fans in the audience who knew her music well.
Melissa released an album this year titled Melissa Ferrick and it is a beauty! The set consisted of many songs from this album as well as others throughout her career.
One of my favorites is ‘Run Out of Me’, which has a great story attached to it. Melissa was in a 24-hour pharmacy in the middle of the night and the man in front of her was coughing and sneezing with an armful of cold treatments. He turned to her and said, “I’ve run out of me” and the song was born.
Other songs from the new album that she performed were ‘Relief’ and ‘Say Yes’. The set started with a song from her 2013 release, The Truth Is, titled ‘Love Ain’t Afraid’ which she last performed immediately following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November (which could have been the show I saw). In addition, she played ‘Anything, Anywhere’, ‘Careful’, and ‘I Don’t Want You’ to name a few.
Melissa sported a Debbie Harry t-shirt and sang Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’!
She was backed this night by Richard Gates on bass (I have seen Richard perform a number of times with musicians ranging from Susan Cattaneo to Amelia White) and Steve Scully on drums. I do not know if they perform together regularly, but they sounded tight and very much in sync with one another at this show.
The Boston area is blessed with many fine songwriters and Melissa is one of them. See her if you get the chance.
Click here to see photos of this show on Suze Reviews the Blues.
