Bringing the Love to Laycock St

Melinda Schneider

Central Coast entertainer Melinda Schneider received her marriage proposal not from long-time partner, Mark Gable, but from their eight-year-old son, Sullivan.

“A couple of years ago, just before COVID, Sullivan said to me ‘Mummy, can you please marry Daddy’,” Schneider said.

“I told him we have been together for 14 years and you don’t have to be married to be happy, but he said ‘Mummy, I just don’t want anyone else to marry you’.

“How could I refuse such a beautiful proposal?”

With her wedding set for next month, Schneider will present her latest show, Love Songs, at the Laycock St Theatre on August 27.

“After a couple of years we have all had I thought it would be nice to do a show about love,” she said.

“It’s an intimate little show I do with a double bass player and a piano player- they sing with me as well.

“It’s an emotional journey.”

Schneider said the show combines original love songs she has written over the course of her 40-year career withs some of her favourites by such artists as Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Dolly Parton and the Bee Gees.

“There are also singalong opportunities for the audience,” she said.

“Singing together is a very unifying thing – it connects everyone.

“This is quite an emotional show for me.

“I quite often have cried while performing it.

“I do a version of Both Sides Now and it gets me every time.”

The Golden Guitar Award winner and chart-topping singer/songwriter will also feature songs from her 15th studio album, which was released in March.

She continues to tour the country every year as a live performer, while writing, recording and advocating for mental health, having shared her own lived experience of it in late-2020.

She has won six CMAA Golden Guitar Awards and is a two-time ARIA Award nominee and an APRA Award nominated songwriter.

Her songs have been recorded by numerous artists, including John Farnham, Olivia Newton-John and Paul Kelly.

The two-hour Love Songs will be performed at Laycock St Theatre at 8pm on August 27.

See the theatre website for details.

Terry Collins