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 Carlsbad, New Mexico resident has tirelessly worked to keep a band together and book gigs – including 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 first original song, “I Get Excited,” was a reaction to meeting her current husband, and she performed it for him at her open-mic debut. Two years later, the song was included on her 2012 self-titled debut EP, which was recorded at the home studio of Auld’s influential Texas guitar teacher Sam Swank, who also played on the EP, and is known for his work with Olivia Newton-John and Ray Wylie Hubbard.
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.”
“When your husband runs off with your sister, it makes it hard to trust people, you know? And even though you don’t want to blame other people for what other people have done wrong to you, it’s hard to let down those barriers, sometimes,” she says.
But for the song’s recording, Auld was able to trust an old friend who had been there for her, going way back to the backseat of her parents’ car, where she sang along to not only Ronstadt, but Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris – that friend was Nashville. When Auld learned of Nashville’s historic Cinderella Sound Studio, where Ronstadt recorded her album Silk Purse, she didn’t hesitate to book a session. For her band, she assembled a group top Nashville musicians, including drummer Toby Caldwell, who has played with “Nashville” television star Charles Esten (Deacon Claybourne), and bassist Ron Eoff, a country rock legend in Nashville, for his years of playing with The Band and Levon Helm.
“If you take out my kids being born and stuff, that was one of the most awesome moments of my life,” says Auld. But like the Texas firework show she is, the awesome moments will keep coming. Auld plans to return to Nashville to make her first full-length album in 2019.

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