Mel Guarino of the Bluebillies – An Xperience Interview

Photo: The Bluebillies – photo by Daniel Hinkle

It’s Never Been So Right

Mel Guarino from The Bluebillies talks with Sara Busone about WAMM, past and future projects, and their “third tone.”

By Sara Busone.

RRX: So how did you come to be involved with WAMM (Women Are Making Music)? Did Nikki Lee reach out to you?

MG: I introduced myself to her when I was at the first WAMM Festival. I was really excited about the whole WAMM concept and the way she was organizing everything … so I gave her a CD that I had produced in 2016, which was a CD of all women singers from the Lower Adirondack area called “Adirondack Angels – Legacy.” I really felt alone … I felt that being a woman musician around in the area, there was hardly any other women at any of the events that I was going to play, you know … to jams or anything like that.  So, I decided … knowing the women that I did know and how wonderful they are … I got a grant from LA to produce a CD of these women singers. So, that was great. It was a great event, and that came out in 2016. And so, I gave that to her … just to show her that, you know, I’m on board with this. I’ve been on board with this for a long time and … even my mother, who was a musician all of her life, she had an awful time. Can you imagine, you know, the ‘50s and the ‘60s being a woman musician, a solo artist?  It was very tough. 

RRX: Well, that is a perfect segue to another question I had!  Your band carries a deep family history. Your mom was part of an annual old-time gospel revue, and I was wondering if you could speak a little bit to that.

MG: Oh yes. So my mother was the youngest of six children, and my grandfather, her father, started a family band called the Bathurst Family Singers, and everybody was in it … Dad and Mom and the six kids, my mom being the youngest.  She was 5 when she started singing with the band, and they sang all of the old favorites like, “Every Time I Come To Town You Gotta Stop Kicking My Dog Around” and, you know … the classics of the day in the Midwest! This was in (like, they lived in) Sioux City, Iowa.  When that broke up eventually … because the kids, they formed different interests when they got older … my mother quit high school when she was 14 and went on to become a professional singer from then on. So, this year was the 100th year anniversary of the Bathurst Family Singers. We figured out from books that my aunt had written that the band was started pretty much in 1926. 

RRX: Speaking of family … you and your husband are together in the band. Do you feel like this adds to this deep understanding of one another musically, or to your stage performances? 

MG: Oh, definitely. Well, for one thing, I’ve always been into harmony. I mean, I was raised listening to the girl groups, and they did harmony … old classic country bluegrass, and they all were harmony … the Everly Brothers, everybody right across the board. And so, I fell in love with harmony and the older songs which we kind of stress in our group … Mark and I sing harmony together, and I find that when you’re singing harmony, you just get so close because you’re just singing together so closely. It really forms a bond, and we were close already … obviously, right? So, it just was natural. When we sing together … I just get the chills because sometimes the tone is just one tone and it’s not me and it’s not him, it’s like a third tone, and I just love it. So, it’s really exciting. And because we love each other personally, our fans get a kick out of that. 

RRX: “The Bluebillies”, that’s a mash-up of blues and hillbilly, right?

MG: Bluegrass and hillbillies.

RRX: I love that. That’s a cool name!

MG: Thank you! Well, they get it confused sometimes. They call us “Blueberries” or “Bluebellies,” you know … I’m always having to correct them. Since it’s a made-up word, they don’t get it.

RRX: That’s funny! Now you guys have played everything from intimate acoustic sets to larger setups with full instrumentation. Do you feel like you’ve learned more from one or the other? 

MG: I do like the smaller sets.  Smaller configurations are better.  I’d say, you know, three to four people is my favorite, but I’m thinking only because of rehearsal time, how much time you have to get together to rehearse … which means how tight you can get. Mark and I and Greg have played the most together and we spent the most time rehearsing, so we’re pretty tight, and so when we add a fourth person, like when we have our fiddler, Tucker, he’s just a fabulous musician and beautiful fiddler and beautiful person, I might add … when we add him … we don’t rehearse with him as often, but he knows right where to go on these songs, with such taste. But the more people you add, of course, the more time you have to rehearse because each person has their own place; they have their own solo, or they have their own place in the chord structure or whatever, and so I just let the guys work that out.  I have the soloists all work it out. And/or if I want to hear something, you know, we’ll work on it, whatever. At times we’ve had 55 musicians, but usually not over five people … just can’t …  just haven’t done it, actually. I don’t know, we could. But it takes a lot of work.

RRX: I get that.  So, the last album you put out was “Never So Right” in 2025. Tell us a little bit about that. When the album came out, did you have certain expectations? Do you feel like there’s a difference in your sound from the album prior?

MG: Yes, it’s totally different, our (first) albums … it was a gal from Iowa that was like an introduction, “Hello! Here we are!  I’m from Iowa, from Sioux City!”, and we did mostly bluegrass and old country, classic country, and the early tunes, and then we did a bluegrass gospel CD at that time too … and then a couple of years later the “Adirondack Angels,” which was not just me.  And what we did, what we released last year, was a single. It was a two-sided single, two-song single, and one of the songs was “Run Daddy Run (Mama’s Got a Gun).”  That was about a story from my childhood, my dysfunctional childhood. And the flip side of that was “Willow and the Oak”, which was a love story to my husband for when, at the time, he was working so hard during COVID … he was the only person going to work besides the bosses there, and he had to cover everybody’s jobs … and so it was a love song for our anniversary.  So that was the single, and we did both of those on the “AHA!” segment on WAMC. Those two songs are there, and so … we rerecorded those and released that single.  But we have three songs that we’re working on, also. The one that you mentioned … and a couple more tunes. So, what we want to do is finish those this year, and then next year, early 2027, release all five songs on a limited-edition CD. So that’s exciting.

RRX: That is exciting!

MG: I can’t wait.  We’ve been transitioning from old-timey traditional bluegrass and classic country to more of an Americana alt-country band. In our recordings that we released this spring, “Run, Daddy, Run (Mama’s Got a Gun)” and “Never So Right,” we use drums and some electric guitar, for instance … different than our simpler bluegrass lineup. Onstage, we have the same vibe, but we don’t always use those instruments. Our sound is definitely evolving, and I love it! We still concentrate on vocal harmonies.  Our other songs that we are finishing this year are (two more originals) “How’d I Ever Get to Bed,” “Willow and the Oak,” and a bluesy take on an old traditional gospel song, “When I Lay My Burdens Down.” We’re really looking forward to going back to Rockwell Pro Studios and working with Justin Metz on the finishing touches. When finished, we will be releasing these three songs plus the two songs on our single into an EP called “The Bluebillies in Paradise,” set to drop next spring.

RRX: Great!  Circling back to WAMM, just one more question. What are you most looking forward to at WAMM this year? 

MG: I want to watch all the bands. I want to watch all of the women playing music. That’s going to be the thrill for me and, of course, doing our songs.  Performing will be exciting, very exciting, and I know that it’s going to be a wonderful crowd. I love the audience there. Not just the singers and everybody, but the audience is so friendly. I was just really knocked over … friendly audience. Everybody was smiling. Everybody was happy, and it was a wonderful, wonderful get-together of everybody, and there were women, and there were men. There was just a mix of everybody in the crowd, so it was just a great human experience. So, I’m looking forward to having that happen again.