Why Melody Pool And Marlon Williams Are Teaming Up

"Marlon's manager just said, 'Just have a listen to his stuff, see if you guys can do a tour together sometime,'” singer-songwriter Melody Pool, who hails from the NSW Hunter Valley, explains hooking up with singer-songwriter Marlon Williams, who hails from Christchurch, New Zealand. “So I said, 'Righto.' Simple as that.”

Country music was always going to be the way to go for Pool, though how the alt-folk element came into the picture still surprises her. She grew up with a country artist father, seven albums to his credit, playing in his band in her teens (he now roadies for her). Since stepping out in her own right, she's released two EPs and an album, The Hurting Scene, which she recorded, thanks to crowdfunding, in Nashville with producers Jace Everett and Brad Jones. “I was playing guitar and singing harmonies for Kirsty Akers, who supported Jace Everett when he did a tour in Australia,” Pool remembers. “He heard some of my songs and just said, 'If you want to do a record, I'd love to produce it.'”

While she was in Nashville, Pool did a couple of shows, and returned last year to play a showcase at the Americana Music Festival there, but she's also toured Europe at the invitation of California's The Milk Carton Kids who she supported when they toured Australia last year. More importantly, Pool's album, initially released independently, was picked up by Liberation and re-released in July last year. Marlon Williams' original musical path was in classical choral music – in his early teens he toured Europe with the Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament Choir – but it was with a country rock band called The Unfaithful Ways that he first made his mark in his homeland. “We were together up until about two years ago,” Williams explains, “and I was doing a series of albums with a guy from my hometown named Delaney Davidson, duet albums of country songs. I'm still learning how to compensate for not having a band, sometimes.”

He's yet to release his debut solo album, which he says is not a band album but features “a ragtag bunch of guys who play all over the album, so there's a lot of stuff going on”. You can get some idea of where he's coming from in his description, in the kiwi press, as “the impossible love child of Elvis, Roy Orbison and Townes Van Zandt”.

Alternating as headliners from show to show, Pool and Williams will also be duetting on each other's material. While Williams is more of a storyteller songwriter – “the stories have all the bits of me that I care to put out I guess, just observations” – much of The Hurting Scene is more personal, dealing with relationships, some that have experienced the “unfaithful ways” of others.

“I'm used to it,” Pool laughs heartily at being asked if she can trust a guy from a band called The Unfaithful Ways. “I guess I'm prepared!”