Coffee shops beware, a new artist is about to hit your playlists. Hailing from British Columbia, Melissa Ruth brings easy-to-feel lyrics and an earthy melody to listeners who may know her through Humboldt State University. Ruth, who graduated from HSU in 2005, now teaches music in Eugene, Ore. Her hometown-folk picks at the memories of warm autumn nights and good company. "It's good, it's music I would listen to to relax," said Freshman Kinesiology major Adriana Conrad-Forrest. Ruth's first album "Underwater and Other Places" is available now. She will have a CD release party at Mosgos coffee house on Nov. 8. Lumberjack: So your new CD, "Underwater and Other Places," is out. Can you describe the songs on it? What's the general feel of the album?
Melissa Ruth: Some of those songs are five or six years old and I basically decided that I'd written 'X' amount of songs and it was time to record them. As I was putting them together, it was what songs needed to get out now. I would say that overall, the theme of the songs are similar, but in terms of style, it's not as coherent as my next album will be. Now I have more of a direction of which to write. Before, I was just writing about anything and everything.
LJ: How did you choose what songs to put on the album and which ones to leave out?
MR: I would say that probably the songs that kept nagging at me and wiggling at me are the ones that got on. Those were the songs that I played most often and seemed to speak to people the most.
LJ: Is singing your dream?
MR: I think that I've always wanted to be a music teacher in some capacity, whether it's in public school or for a while I wanted to do private lessons. I never saw myself putting out an album. I was a flutist and I wanted to be a writer. So this album thing is a recent revelation.
LJ: How much did your experience here influence your music?
MR: Oh jeez, well, going to college you meet all kinds of people and you do all kinds of interesting stuff. The other part of it is that Humboldt is a really unique kind of place. I read some kind of statistics that Humboldt has the highest number of artists per capita in the state or nation or something like that. I mean, I can see why: the way the fog rolls in off the ocean or the big trees…
It was a combination of the fact that I was there and going through school and relationships and drama.
LJ: Where do you get your inspiration from?
MR: Most of the songs started with a kernel of an idea and kind of blossomed from there.
It's one of those things - you can't sort of help it. When you get all full of an idea, you got to put it down. More than anything else I read a lot of news and current events and that kind of stuff. I grew up in a story-telling kind of family, not much of a television set. A face in a crowd or a story I read in a newspaper. It's really kind of random.
LJ: You pretty much do all of your music, from writing to producing to recording. How is that going?
MR: I do all my own booking and promotions and stuff...because I'm a teacher. (laughs) But it's showing me the ropes and I'm really enjoying it a lot. My husband does it with me and so it's been really amazing. Teaching has been too, but right now I'm here! You know? I have my whole life to do all kinds of stuff and my attention is going towards performing. I still love teaching very much, I'm pretty committed.
LJ: Was that your intent… to make this album purely your own so you really show through?
MR: Oh no. I wish that there was somebody that could do all of this. In terms of a work ethic… my parents instilled that as being a decent value to have, and so it's just part and parcel with who I am. I don't know, I just wish that I could make music from a place of fantasy, like the Ditty-Bops.
I'm glad that I'm doing all this stuff, but as terms of how it affects how I write, probably not. I guess it comes with the idea of working hard to achieve your goals, whatever they may be.
But yeah, it shocks me every single day how time-consuming it is to research gigs and do press releases and stuff. It's so involving. It teaches me a lot; it's such a full time job.
LJ: Is there a part about producing music that you like more? Writing, playing guitar or singing?
MR: My voice to me is like a tool for expression. Definitely I love to write. As I said I wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, but I picked up the guitar along the way and met some really inspiring people. My dad is a musician and so I was inspired by people like him. It was definitely the writing that hooked me, but still I never really thought of singing as a career.
LJ: And you're coming back in November for a CD release show, what will that be like? Do you expect it to be a homecoming with a lot of familiar people?
MR: Well, teaching is not always conducive to the touring schedule. (laughs) We hope it's a homecoming, but lots of people that we went to school with have moved on. My husband lived in the area for years and so he knows people and I have family there. We play often with Rick Duvall, who is a bassist in the area.
I'm having the release show at Mosgos. When I was there, Mosgos didn't exist.
Humboldt is a really wonderful place, I'm just excited that we can come back and play.
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