I was riding my bicycle and I was hit by a Jeep. And the damage that was done to my body was gradually diagnosed, instead of immediately, so the recovery process for me was probably unnecessarily long: It took nearly two years for me to say that I could successfully walk. It was scary. And in a way, when you're faced with something like that, it forces you to change, and very quickly. I think that unconsciously, I felt called to a challenge-a challenge to regain something.
Melody GardotI learned to play guitar on my lying back while I was bed-ridden. I only thought to record the songs because sometimes I would I couldn't remember what I had just done. Eventually I started singing, because I thought if I sang it that would help to remember even more. But I wasn't trying to sing. And then one day-this is really weird -I just wrote a song. It came out at a rapid rate and I recorded it and I listened back to it and was like "Wow, it's a tune."
Melody GardotIn college, I was a painter, and I had a strong interest in fashion. I just like this concept of being able to dream something, materialize it, play with it and design it for the sake of someone else and for the sake of the joy in your own heart. So it's kind of like art that you're unattached to. It's art that you give away freely and I liked that about fashion.
Melody GardotI had an affinity for music and could play anything I heard on the piano, but I wasn't scholastically advanced in any way. It was more of a habitual tendency. I would work on weekends at piano bars playing jazz when I was an art student, but the music wasn't mine - it was covers: everything from Radiohead to really old jazz. But other than that, the only training I had was piano lessons from when I was nine until I was eleven.
Melody GardotI'm a bad walker but I can dance tango. You know why? Put your hand up. Push on my fingertips and just hold it. In tango, your feet are free but the top of your body pushes, so if I feel like I'm gonna fall, my partner can catch me. So I walk with a stick but I can totally dance the tango. It's a romantic kind of thing.
Melody Gardot