2020-09-14

Melissa Carper

Melissa Carper (Bastrop, Texas)

Melissa Carper grew up playing bass and singing in her family’s country band. She went on to study upright bass at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln before performing a repertoire of old-time country, Western swing, and bluegrass with multiple groups across the South, including the Austin, Texas-based band, The Carper Family, which won Best Country Album in 2011 at the Independent Music Awards and again in 2013 with their album, Old-Fashioned Gal. In 2013, the group also made an appearance on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion (this was the second time Melissa had been featured on A Prairie Home Companion). Carper has spent many years moving back and forth between her home base in Arkansas and now Texas, where she continues to perform with the Buffalo Gals Band, whose debut album, Brand New Old Time Songs, made it to Number 2 on the European Americana charts in 2018. 

Interviewed by Holly Hobbs, 09/14/2020.

Holly Hobbs

Music; United States; Covid-19 Pandemic

Bastrop, Texas

Musicians in America during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Society for Ethnomusicology