Mel Warstler and his band SILVERWING
Silverwing's original music
Songwriting
Mel bought a 4 track recorder and started to lay down some guitar riffs. He would create the verse, chorus, verse pattern, then add a smokin' guitar lead, of course!
But when we got a rhyming dictionary and started to think up stories to go with his tunes, then we realized we could write our own songs!
For example, he had a short riff and would sing "drinking moonshine from a mason jar" but that was it. Nothing else.
So we did some reading on the subject and created a back story about a moonshiner up in a holler.
That became the swampy song "Moonshine" which is the title track on our first CD.
Moonshine
The first CD Mel created was Moonshine, issued in 2012. It has crowd favorites Hands off the Barmaid, Toes in the Sand and Who You Are.
But the most important song on the Moonshine CD was Wide Open Spaces. Mel had the melody and a few phrases, but we couldn't pull it together. So we laid a piece of paper out on the coffee table and everytime either of us came up with an idea, we would write it down.
The song about his father, Carl, and Mel's fond memories of growing up in the Wide Open Spaces.
We played it for a crowd at the
original Pure Country Dancehall in Sparks and by the last chorus the entire room was singing along.
Mel and I knew we had a great song.
At Mel's memorial, the band members joined me in the last performance of Wide Open Spaces.
County Line
The County Line CD was a long time in the making. But it jumped to the top of the to-do list after the passing of Merle Haggard, Mel's musical hero, and Mel's inspired song
Angel Band in Heaven,
which is a tribute to Merle.
Those two things put the CD on the front burner. Then he encouraged Georgina Arze to contribute her song, In My Dreams, and added my two songs,
The Price and Rich and Famous.
Then he tied together with two Merle Haggard tunes, Mama Tried, which Mel and his brother Jack would play for their mother, and of course the band namesake Silver Wings.
Available Online
Purchase the CD's or individual songs,
at amazon.com
Physical CD's can be purchased from the Silverwing management office. which you can contact at
Interview at KHWG Radio Station
Mel reached out to our local classic country radio station KHWG about the Moonshine CD release and DJ Ronzo Baughman brought the band into the studio and did an on interview with us.
What a great experience and a life long friendship was established.
Over the years, Silverwing received coverage in several local newspapers, Lahontan Valley News, Fallon Star Press and the Fallon Post.
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The Silverwing Dancers
To our surprise, our songs were dance-able!
Our friends Connie and Gail chorographed the line dance to our song Hands off the Barmaid, which they performed many times.
They taught to the local line dancers and the group performed the dance at Mel's Memorial.
The dancers used the Zac Brown "Toes in the Sand" line dance for the Silverwing song Toes in the Sand. Couples did the cha-cha to Who You Are, slow danced to Wide Open Spaces, two-stepped to County Line and swing danced to
Hands off the Barmaid.
Amazing!
And when our drummer Brandon asked his girlfriend (now wife) Stephanie to marry him, their first song was
I Give Your Everything,
which Mel wrote for me!
Lovely.
Who wrote that song?
We started to include an original song into the set list and one night a lady came out of the dance crowd and asked us who wrote Who You Are
since she'd never heard it before.
We said it's our song. She said, "No, what i mean is, whose song is that? I understand you are playing it but whose song IS it? "
We said it's our song.
She repeated, "No, you don't understand. I want to know whose song it is."
We repeated, It's our song.
She waved her hand in our faces, and walked off.
She just could not wrap her head around the fact that Mel and I wrote that song.
Oh well.
We are proud and grateful that so many people enjoy our music.
Where to purchase
Both Moonshine and County Line can be purchased at Amazon.
If you would like a physical CD, please send an email to silverwingband@yahoo.com