MELISSA JONES AULD

Melissa Jones Auld is a Texas firework show, whose fuse was lit when she stepped on an open-mic stage for the first time at age 36 – as a three-times-divorced, single mother of two children – and played an original song. Since then, she has spent the past decade exploding across the Southwest, setting the places she’s called home in Texas, Utah and New Mexico ablaze with her fiery country rock.
“I just love to sing. I absolutely love to sing,” says Auld, who learned as a child by singing along to her hero, Linda Ronstadt, in the backseat of her hippie parents’ car, while being drug to “every concert in Dallas.” But the road from the backseat to the stage – and a legendary Nashville recording studio where Ronstadt herself once recorded – was a long one, winding through a frightening punk rock adolescence, motherhood, marriage, and, yeah a few divorces, including one where, Auld says, “My sister ran off with my husband.”
If her life sounds like material for a country song, that’s because it is. While the Texas City resident has tirelessly worked to keep a band together and book gigs – including winning the 2015 KNEU Country Showdown, two high-profile state fair performances, and supporting slots with mainstream country acts Little Texas and Trick Pony – her authentic, autobiographical songwriting has come more easily. “I can’t really sit down and write a song because I feel like writing a song,” Auld says. “It’s more like somebody says something or does something good or bad, and all of sudden, I have all these lines running through my head.”

Auld’s latest single, “Insecurities,” examines the difficulty of trusting new partners after being hurt in a previous relationship. Auld’s vocals – which have drawn comparisons to a young Loretta Lynn – soar on the upbeat song’s chorus, “I have waited for so long/for a place to call my own/I’ve been searching for that certain sense of peace/but I keep running away from everyone but me.”

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Excerpt from 2019 interview with Jack Evan Johnson - Honkytonkbadonkadonk Zine