Event

Meiko + Cory Chisel

No one knows the plain language of the barroom better than Meiko (mee-ko). Waiting tables at the Hotel Caf in LAs Cahuenga Boulevard arts district, shes been privy to a few conversations no sober heart would choose to have in public. So it seems a shock when she stands up before that same crowd and openly proclaims the sweetest secrets of her own beautiful heartbreak.

On the self-titled Meiko, the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter is at once tough, tender, raw and funny. Never exactly what you expect, she and her songs all explore loss and loneliness, but none of them seem to live there. I have a hard time writing love songs, Meiko says. I write frustrated love songs. With a keen eye for detail and a vivid gift of narrative, Meiko collects jagged moments and devastating conversational snapshots, and turns them into deceptively simple tunes with hushed, gentle tones and stunning imagery.

Hailing from Roberta, Georgia, (population 808), Meiko grew up in an actual log cabin built by her fathers hands. It was her dads affinity for The Eagles, The Allman Brothers Band and others that gave Meiko her folk sensibility. He had this beautiful old Gibson guitar, she recalls, And he played and sang for me right from the cradle. Of course, a child cant yet discern a cover song from an original. Imagine my surprise years later when I heard some band named Led Zeppelin playing my fathers song Stairway To Heaven on the radio.