MELISSA SIGLER

Blues Keyboard Performing Artist - "...powerful, sultry vocals ... blues with a jazzy edge..."

Contact: Pennie Portie, PenWoman Music 615-838-0548

Though a pianist/songwriter since age ten, Melissa Sigler put her musical career on hiatus in favor of an engineering job for eighteen years while raising her son. She blasted back onto the Louisiana music scene full-time in 1997, undertaking a number of musical projects, including the bands Diamella, the Red Hot Blues Mamas, and Louisiana Blues Women in addition to appearing as a solo piano/keyboard performer. At home in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Sigler is recognized regionally in south Louisiana as the host of the television program "Southern Music Showcase". Her participation in numerous blues and music societies throughout the South has served to expand her reputation, culminating in an appearance at this year's New Orleans French Quarter Festival opening for the R&B great Marva Wright. She hosted a songwriters' night at D'agostino's in Lake Charles monthly. Sigler has also hosted the Blues Jam for the Louisiana Blues Preservation Society. Her tour schedule emphasizes blues education in addition to entertainment. Sigler's touring, primarily in the South and Midwest US and Europe, vary from large venues and festivals to workshops and concerts. Sigler is the recipient of the Best Emerging Blues Artist award from OffBeat Magazine's Best of the Beat Awards in 2001.

Recently, Sigler relocated to Nashville, TN., a logical step for a writer seeking to hone her craft.

A native of the same East Texas/Southwest Louisiana bayou country that spawned Janis Joplin, Sigler's powerful, sultry vocals are blues with a jazzy edge on Secrets her second solo CD. Secrets was produced by the Grammy award winner and multi-platinum bassist Harold Cowart, whose Bluff Road Studios reaps the benefit of his years of working with Barbra Streisand, the Bee Gees, Andy Gibb, John Fred & the Playboys, the Rascals, the swamp pop stars the Boogie Kings, R&B legends Irma Thomas and Wilson Pickett, and numerous others. Secrets, accordingly, features a line of side players who rank among Louisiana's best. These include Bobby Henderson (from the band Toto) on guitar and saxophone; Randy Carpenter on drums (from Wayne Toups); Lucille Almond Ridges on slide and lead guitars (from Little Milton, Albert King, Z.Z. Hill, and others); and Harold Cowart himself on bass.