Melora Creager

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Melora Creager (born March 25, 1966) is an American cellist and singer-songwriter. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, she grew up in Emporia, Kansas, with an older brother and a younger sister; all children were adopted. Her mother was a graphic designer and her father was an administrator and physicist at a university; both were very supportive of the arts, and encouraged their children to take up musical instruments. Creager began playing the piano at age five, and the cello at age nine. She gave up the cello in the eighth grade (not wanting to be involved in the orchestra scene), only to pick it up again several years later in college. In the mid-1980s she moved to New York City to study photography at Parsons School of Design, where her friends encouraged her to resume playing the cello. In 1989 Creager formed a duo with Julia Kent called the Travelling Ladies' Cello Society. Kent remained in the band for ten years, finally leaving in 1999 amid much drama and disagreement; she and Creager's relationship has been described by Creager as a "decade-long dysfunctional marriage." In 1991 Creager founded the Brooklyn-based alternative band Rasputina, which originally consisted of six other cellists (whom she found by placing classified ads in the newspaper). The group was influenced by both rock and classical cello music. By 1996 the band was trimmed down to two other cellists and a drummer. Creager also played cello for Nirvana on the European leg of the In Utero world tour (including the band's final show in Munich).^{[citation needed]}

Creager is known^[who?] for her unique fashion sense, including an obvious interest in corsets and Victorian bloomers, which she wears during her live performances.^{[citation needed]} She is also fascinated with historical events and people of the past, including the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, Howard Hughes, Rose Kennedy, victims of Josef Mengele, and others. She weaves these stories into the lyrics of her songs, as well as creating fictional stories of her own, sang in her wispy, tremulous vocals. The song "Mr. E. Leon Rauis" on the album Thanks for the Ether was inspired by a black-and-white photograph of a man she found in an attic, and expresses the wonder she felt about him and what his life could have been like. It is now known that his name was actually E. Leon Rains,^{[citation needed]} and he was a fairly well-known opera singer from around the turn of the 19th century till the middle of the 20th century. Creager's lyrics employ a sly, dark irony and quirky humour. Her songs can be enigmatic and vaguely ominous.

In 2003, Creager starred in the 13-minute film On My Knees, based on The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick.

Creager is the mother of a young daughter named Hollis Willa Lane, who wrote and sang the lyrics of the song "Nov. 17dee" on the album Frustration Plantation.

[edit] Discography

Transylvanian Concubine/The Vaulted Eel, Lesson #6 - Oculus Records, 1993
Three (3) (promo) - 1994
Thanks for the Ether - Columbia Records, 1996
Three Lil' Nothin's (promo) - 1996
Transylvanian Regurgitations (EP) - Columbia Records, 1997
How We Quit the Forest - Columbia Records, 1998
The Olde HeadBoard (EP) - Columbia Records, 1998
The Lost & Found (self-released limited edition EP) - 2001
Cabin Fever! - Instinct Records, 2002
My Fever Broke (EP) - Instinct Records, 2002
The Lost & Found (second edition EP) - Instinct Records, 2003
Frustration Plantation - Instinct Records, 2004
A Radical Recital (live) - Filthy Bonnet Recording Co., 2005
Perplexions (solo recording) - Filthy Bonnet Recording Co., 2006
Oh Perilous World! (Vinyl LP, CD & Limited edition CD) - Filthy Bonnet Recording Co., June 26, 2007