Guitarist Clay Melton: 'At our heart, we're a rock 'n' roll band'

Guitarist Clay Melton is promising an eclectic set and a high-energy show when his band plays hits Pittsburgh later this week.

“We’re a blend of a lot of roots styles, a lot of Texas blues, but really at our heart, we’re a rock ‘n’ roll band,” Melton said Monday afternoon from outside Albany, N.Y. “We’re a three-piece; we’re a small group with a loud sound.”

Melton and his band will play Thursday night at Mr. Smalls Funhouse in Millvale, with the Adrian Niles Band and One Eye Daddy’s opening.

Nightly improvisation is a vital element for Melton, drummer Zach Grindle and bassist Zach Cox.

“Kind of how we go about jamming is, we didn’t want to be a jam band to where things are lasting 20 minutes,” he said. “We try and really give a piece of a structure of a song a chance to be organic every night, maybe comparative to the (Red Hot) Chili Peppers; they have their tunes but when that section opens up for a jam, anything could happen.

Melton’s raspy voice is a little deceiving, as he’s only 28 years old. An emergency tonsillectomy in 2020 forced him to relearn to sing, but he said it actually improved his range: “It’s been a wild vocal experience the last couple years.”

Born in Louisiana but raised in Texas, Melton isn’t bothered by comparisons to other Texan guitarists such as ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Johnny Winter and Stevie Ray Vaughan. In fact, it provides motivation.

“Whenever people bring those up, I say it makes me want to go practice,” he said with a laugh. “It’s definitely inspiring. Those are the players that I was sitting in my bedroom for hours as a kid, playing to their records and stuff like that. That’s really where I grew up first before I got to get out and start playing live.”

Recent shows have included covers by bands like the Jimi Hendrix Experience, ZZ Top and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

“A lot of people say, if you’re going to do a cover, you either nail it like a tribute almost, do it as the recording was, or make it your own — and that’s usually what we end up doing. Kind of a condition of being a three-piece, we’ll pull off songs that have more players than in the recording. We do (Little Willie John’s) ‘Fever’ in the set, but we do it very different. In the middle of the song, we break into this kind of like jazz-swing section that isn’t in any version before. That’s kind of the fun of being a three-piece, getting to push the envelope…”

Melton released a studio album, “Burn the Ships,” in 2017, an EP, “Back to Blue,” in 2021 and a live album, “Live in Texas,” last year. But more music should be coming at the beginning of 2024, with a trip planned to record with their producer in Colombia.

“It’s going to be fun,” he said. “Hopefully we can get some Latin percussion and brass and kind of meld that into the sound a little.”

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If he weren’t playing in a rock band, Melton said the idea of working on a boat as a marine biologist piqued his interest. But ever since he got his first guitar at age 10, music has been his passion.

“I really have been all-in since I was a teenager,” he said. “As soon as I started playing live, I quickly lost interest in school.”