Wichita Eagle, KS
Feb 23 2007

Girl power fuels touring trio

Folk-pop artist Melineh Kurdian returns to her hometown with a few
friends this week for a show at the Anchor.

BY JILLIAN COHAN
The Wichita Eagle

Although she’s a grown woman, there’s an impish quality to Melineh
Kurdian’s phone manner. She’s prone to the sort of run-on sentences
that indicate she’s thinking aloud, yet she never comes across as
scatterbrained.

But to engage Kurdian in conversation is to get only a hint of the
sassy, intelligent attitude she brings to her music.

"I’m always expanding," the Wichita native says. "I’m always trying
to learn new things, getting better on vocals and expanding what I
can play on guitar."

The East High alumna traded Kansas for New York City soon after she
graduated from the University of Kansas in 2000. She now lives in Los
Angeles, where she performs regularly at troubadour-friendly
nightspots such as the Hotel Cafe. Her self-financed debut CD, "From
Where You Are," was released in 2004.

This week, Kurdian will trade her solo gigs for a
three-and-a-half-week stint with Girl Parts, a folk-pop trio she
formed with New Yorker Liz Clark and Chicagoan Julie Lloyd. The group
stops at the Anchor Tuesday on a Midwest tour that begins in Memphis
and ends in Austin at the South by Southwest music fest.

"They are some of my favorite musicians," Kurdian says of her
bandmates. "We decided, we’re all touring anyway, why not do it
together? It’ll be a good time."

They also decided to make the tour a benefit for the National Center
on Domestic and Sexual Violence. All of the proceeds from the sale of
their live EP will benefit the center, and local representatives of
domestic violence shelters will be on hand at their performances to
raise awareness for the cause.

"It’s going to be a great show," Kurdian says. "If anything, I want
people to know that when they come to our shows, they are going to
laugh so much. I don’t think there’s going to be one grumpy day on
tour because we have so much fun together."

She and her bandmates produce the sort of inspired harmonies and
sassy lyrics that make critics reach for comparisons to Ani DiFranco
and the Indigo Girls. Those influences certainly are there, Kurdian
says, but so are elements of funk and soul, inspired by the hip-hop
her cousin listened to and the jazz her father was always playing.

"Whether it was the Beatles, the Indigo Girls or Joni Mitchell I was
listening to, solid melody and lyrics are what I look for."

She continues: "I say in my bio that my mom wouldn’t let me play with
the neighbors’ kids until I’d finished practicing my classical piano,
and it’s completely true."

Growing up Armenian in Kansas had its challenges, she adds –"People
always thought I was Albanian or Romanian" — but she wouldn’t trade
it for the urban environments she’s since adopted.

"I always say I’m really glad I was raised in Kansas, because it made
me who I am."

The laugh that follows is at once impish and worldly, like the woman
herself.

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