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The singer/songwriter had her bags packed to get out of her small town since five. In Los Angeles, she's gained success as part of the new wave of Web savvy musicians.
By Lynda Lin, Assistant Editor
Published June 5, 2009
Meiko is calling from Madison, Wisconsin, where she says it's gorgeous.
"It's a big city with a small town vibe."
Of course, before the 27-year-old singer/songwriter announced her coordinates in the Cheese State - one in over 30 stops in her first ever headlining tour across the United States - the Pacific Citizen, along with her other online devotees, already knew where she was, where she was headed next (Denver) and even what she had been snacking on (string cheese).
Thank you, Twitter, for allowing up to the minute dispatches from the road. It's the 2.0 version of a musician's life. And when your self-titled debut album has been released through the MySpace Records label, it's safe to say Meiko, who is one-quarter Japanese American, is comfortable enough to lay her soul bare on the World Wide Web.
Google "Meiko" (she pronounces it MEE-ko) and you'll inevitably come across one of the many videos of the songstress puckishly strumming on a guitar and singing about the heartbreak of growing up without a mom and being broke in Los Angeles. She describes her sound as indie, pop rock and folk - in the vein, others say, of Corinne Bailey Rae and Colbie Caillat.
Except Meiko is like a siren, a poet who seduces with a catchy hook. Listen to "Reasons to Love You" once and it could possibly get stuck in your head forever.
She's no stranger to life on the road. In the past, Meiko has opened for other bands "making small potatoes a night." These days with her music's increasing popularity - thanks also to play on ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" - she's now the main attraction. Now it's her name in lights.
The perks come with some drawbacks. She's away from home a lot and finds herself "wearing the same stinky shirt for three days."
But if that's the worst part, she'll take it.
On paper, Meiko's life reads like a fairytale. When she talks about it, the fantastic becomes almost surreal. A small town girl from Roberta, Georgia (population 808), who was once a star softball pitcher, adopted the nickname Meiko at a young age and told all her friends to remember it because she was going to be famous one day.
"It sounds like a cliché," says Meiko. "But it's all true."
The Roberta Meiko grew up in had two stoplights and one stop sign. There was a soul food restaurant in the middle of the tiny town and a Piggly Wiggly grocery store where everyone's moms and grandparents went for gossip.
"Everyone was in everyone else's business."
She loves her hometown, but she always wanted something else.
Meiko started singing as early as three and writing her own songs at seven, said her sister Kelly Nishimoto, a Los Angeles-based fashion designer. Young Meiko often performed at the local shows, including singing the national anthem at sporting events. Their father, Shep, a retired factory worker, taught her to play the guitar. In her loneliest times, it would be her best friend.
"She's always been shy. She's good in public now, but back then she would sing and twirl her leg in circles looking straight down," said Kelly, 32.
Meiko's grandmother, Chikako, died when she was eight leaving behind fuzzy memories of a woman who loved sushi and bingo. Meiko and Kelly were raised by their father, after their mother left - it's an absence that has become a theme in Meiko's music, including "Hawaii," a song about meeting her mom again on an island far away.
They were virtually the only Asian Pacific Americans for miles. It was a difference they embraced. She always wanted to know more about her Japanese heritage, said Meiko, but she didn't know where to find it in Roberta.
In the eighth grade, Meiko and her entire class were herded into the school auditorium to hear World War II veterans tell heroic war stories laced with racial epithets directed against their wartime Japanese enemies.
"I didn't know a lot, but I knew I was offended by that."
At the end of the presentation, when they passed around the mike for a question and answer session, Meiko took the opportunity to blast the veterans for their offensive language. For her bravery, she was suspended.
"When you're in a small town, people don't always get it," she said. "It needed to be said. It would've bothered me more if I didn't say anything."
She always knew she wanted to get out of town.
Even at five, she kept a suitcase packed, a purple "My Little Pony" filled with crayons, coloring books and all the essentials, said Kelly.
After graduating from high school, Meiko left Roberta for Miami first, then Los Angeles, where she worked behind the juice bar at a gym making protein shakes for celebrities like Fabio. Then she took a job waiting tables at Hotel Café, a music venue hotspot that allowed the songstress to cut her teeth performing and soak up all aspects of her dream job.
Someday, she thought, she would put down her waitress tray forever, and be onstage.
Then came her self-titled and self-released album and a major music label knocking at her door.
The album includes, "Hawaii," the song about her estranged mother Rina, who Meiko is in the process of reestablishing a relationship with, and Meiko's favorite "How Lucky We Are," an upbeat song inspired by a hard time in life when you're "broke as a joke."
She's still writing while on tour.
"I've recorded six to seven songs." And she hopes to release her EP soon.
Her sophomore effort will still be based on her life, but she's a little older, a little more mature and still in search of touchstones with her heritage.
In July, Meiko is heading to the United Kingdom for the international leg of her tour then hopefully, one day: Japan.
"That's my dream."
For more information and tour dates:
www.myspace.com/meiko
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