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"Open your ears and you're influenced."

Why you should know who he is: If you’ve attended a live music event in downtown Buffalo in the past 30 years, chances are good that your life has intersected with that of Michael Meldrum, whether you’ve realized it or not. A Buffalo-based singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and founder of the Buffalo Song Project, Meldrum organizes annual tribute concerts to John Lennon (Cold Turkey) and Bob Dylan (the Bob Dylan Imitator’s Contest) at Nietzsche’s in Allentown. Not only are the events well attended but they also draw some of the best-known names on the local music scene.

Meldrum hosts both the Monday Night Singer-Songwriter showcase and Buffalo’s longest-running open mic each week on the front stage at Nietzsche’s. The performers at these shows run the gamut from first-time players to seasoned touring musicians. Meldrum is always there to encourage the new players and pass the hat for the non-local performers, who occasionally end up crashing at his house. Over the years, Meldrum has sponsored concerts by many musicians who later went on to fame and some level of fortune, among them Townes Van Zandt, Suzanne Vega and Michelle Shocked.

Meldrum’s simultaneous roles as performer, emcee and promoter have brought new definition to the phrase “wearing many hats.” But Meldrum has played his greatest role as an educator. Working in both the school system and on the stages of Western New York’s coffeehouses and nightclubs, he has always helped to foster aspiring young talent. (Full disclosure: At age eight, I attended one of Meldrum’s concerts with my mother. Between sets, the musician entertained my questions and gave me a harmonica, which I still have to this day). Many of his students have gone on to become both lifelong friends and recognized performers in their own right.

This year, Meldrum’s most famous pupil, Ani Difranco, has returned the favor of early inspiration and performed on, mixed and co-produced the musician’s first CD, Open Ended Question, releasing it on her successful independent label, Righteous Babe Records. “I met Michael when I was nine at the guitar shop where I got my first guitar,” says Difranco in an e-mail to Artvoice. “From the beginning, he treated me as a friend, not as a kid, and immediately started bringing me to his gigs and letting me perform with him. He taught me to respect the art of song-crafting and inspired me to be a musician by trade. He taught me that music can be the fire around which a community can gather. To me, Michael exemplifies the notion that music is not just something you buy, it’s something you do. Releasing his record on Righteous Babe is an honor for me. After everything he’s given me in life, I am thrilled to be in a position to give something back.”

Difranco wasn’t Meldrum’s only friend to take a hand in the project, though her lead vocals on “Please Say Yes” and production are notable contributions. The album boasts a veritable “who’s who” of Buffalo performers—including Alison Pipitone, Jim Whitford and John Brady, to name a few—who have played with, sung alongside and learned from Meldrum over the years. Musical donations from Meldrum’s nine-year-old son, Alexander, and seven-year-old daughter, Julia, and colorful artwork by the musician’s wife, Diane Gall-Meldrum, further reveal the recording’s spirit of friendship and familial warmth.

Some 30 years in the making, Open Ended Question is an auspicious debut containing songs ranging in style from straight folk to uptempo country-honk and exotic-sounding chants. On Saturday (Feb. 18), Meldrum will perform a CD release party at Nietzsche’s. The concert will feature guest performances from a score of Buffalo-based players who are all friends, pupils or peers of the musician. The show begins at 8pm.

Can you tell me a little bit about the genesis of your first record? Thirty years is a long time to wait. My generation didn’t make that many records because there was only one way to do that and that was to get signed. Most of us didn’t have a clue as to how to do that and really didn’t try too hard anyway. That’s why many people that I came up with in Buffalo are only just recently releasing their first albums. It’s just a different mind-set.

What is the time-range of these songs? Do they span the length of your career? Yes. “Tavern Road Tune” was written in 1976 on a bar napkin at Bullfeathers; “Please Say Yes” was written in 1979; the song “Open Ended Question” was written after 12 cups of coffee at Buff State about 11 years ago; “Falling Down” is quite recent.

So what inspired you to finally head into the studio? Working with younger players who were more comfortable in the studio than I was. Ani was also a big influence there. She never asked permission to put out a record, there was no timetable. If she had three records to put out in one year then she did it. I was just sitting back and watching that process…

How did Ani become involved with the recording and eventually decide to release the CD on Righteous Babe? Ani had been recording with me all along. I was having trouble getting the mix done just because of my own indecision and inexperience. At one point, Ani downloaded my tracks and said that she’d be back with it. Then, out of the blue, Scot [Fisher, Difranco’s manager and president of Righteous Babe Records] called me and said, “We really like the record and would like to put it out.” I could have been knocked over with a feather! I just couldn’t see it as a record yet. It was an archive to me and she made it a record.

The two of you have an interesting relationship…when she was starting out you were an early inspiration, now she is sort of inspiring and guiding your career. It’s been written in different magazines that I was an inspiration for Ani, but I can’t play like Ani Difranco and I’m just not as fearless as she is. But yes, the tables turned and she became a mentor to me.

Can you tell me a little bit about your own inspirations? What songwriters have influenced you over the years? Any of the Southern writers influenced me. Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark are people whose music continues to influence me most. The Southern writers stop and smell the flowers, so to speak, they know the names of the flowers and birds and know their calls. Neil Young was a big influence on the way I sing, although John Prine and Dylan are right there too. But my favorite songwriter is Townes Van Zandt. Bringing him to Nietzsche’s was probably the biggest point in my inadvertent career as a producer.

In what way was it inadvertent? I never set out to be a producer for a living, there’s certainly no money in doing it, but I wanted to hear this music and no one would bring it to me.

So why do you still continue to promote shows after all these years? Well, now there’s more people that understand that this is a good thing to do, so I don’t feel like a prophet out in the wilderness anymore. For me, new voices are like scripture is to a Bible-thumper. Songs are my scripture; in three or four minutes you’re introducing characters and telling what happened to them.

What serves as inspiration for your songs? There’s only so many things to write about. What I look for is the left-of-center or sidelong glance at a different perspective. Every writer is going to see the same thing but from a slightly different angle. That’s what I love about songwriting; you can have 10 different people have the exact same experience but you’ll get 10 different feels from each writer.

Now that your first record has finally been released, should we expect a follow-up in the near future? Well, all of my political songs are sitting out the dance on this new record. I’m writing another album right now. I don’t want to become the Phil Ochs of Buffalo or anything, but I’ve got two young children and the gang that runs the country has their eye on them all the time as cannon fodder. So right now I’m writing in self-defense again. “Self” in the sense of my family, which is part of myself now.

What was it like to have your children in the recording studio with you? Did they need any coaxing to sing or play? No, they grew up with it. I wasn’t going to force them. From the earliest stages when ’Zander was crawling across the rug, I left guitars and harmonicas and all kinds of instruments laying on the floor. Presently, I hired John Brady to teach my son music and he’s already reading music—and I don’t even read. He’s nine years old and he’s going to have a better background than I ever did. Julia knows every Beatles song by heart and can go up and sing the most complicated of their tunes. They both write songs and sing all day and grew up with the guest room always full, so they became very comfortable with adults and especially artists.

Along with your family, there seems to be a lot of friends appearing on this album with you. Well, if you can judge a person by the friends he chooses and keeps for life, then I come up looking pretty good.

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