OGUNQUIT — Stepping on the stage at Woodstock on the first night of the historic music festival in August 1969, the singer known as “Melanie” ignited her career and it’s led to a lifetime of memories and performances for the iconic voice of a generation. At 8 p.m. Friday, Melanie returns to Maine, appearing at Jonathan’s Ogunquit in Ogunquit.

For Melanie, the trip to Ogunquit is like a reunion of sorts as her very first solo show was part of a tour way back when in Maine.

“It was in a college, but I was on the road for the first time with a very small entourage,” she said. “I was already an industry buzz. The promoter picked me up and allowed me to stop in this deserted derelict house that fascinated me. There I found all sorts of beautiful rubbish, old pharmacy bottles and things that no one else was interested in at that time, tin toys and abandoned toys there amongst the broken windows and rotting floorboards and it was there in that old house that an interest was sparked in me of things from other times and antiquities. And not for any value other than my own curiosity of what it must’ve been like to drink from a carnival glass goblet in the 1930s. Or play with a tin wind-up monkey.”

Melanie Safka was born in 1947 in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens and her parents, Fred and Polly, recognized and supported her musical talent early on. She sang on a nationally broadcast radio show at age 4 and encouraged by her jazz singer mother, she began performing in New Jersey and in Greenwich Village after graduating from high school. Signed to Columbia Records, her early recordings produced hits in France and the Netherlands, but it wasn’t until her 25-minute set at Woodstock in the summer of 1969 that audiences in the United States really took notice of the solo artist now known only as “Melanie.” And yes, her mother Polly drove her to the Woodstock concert.

Her first Top-10 record in the U.S. called “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” was written about her experience performing there and suddenly her music was everywhere. She was honored as Billboard’s 1970 Female Vocalist of the Year and in October 1971, Melanie released the melodic song called “Brand New Key,” which climbed the charts to become her first Number 1 song in the U.S., Australia, Canada and New Zealand in 1972.

“I think the thread that runs through so much of my music is a timeless humanitarian message,” Melanie said. “When I was growing up the United Nations was just a few years in existence. We were taught a lot about the UN, why it was formed and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or the UDHR, the document that says what the 30 human rights are. Every person in the world has them, but a lot of countries don’t necessarily respect them. I help United for Human Rights, a nonprofit that gives educational materials about the UDHR to thousands and thousands of people. I think the message of our responsibility to each other is one of the most timeless messages of all.”

With her career now in its fifth decade, Melanie says she relishes performing for audiences of all ages.

“The hardest part is keeping my focus when I am at home,” she said. “I live and breathe in the moments that I am on stage and singing and reaching all the way to the last seat of the house.”

She’s proud to have been one of only three solo women to perform at Woodstock, with the others being Janis Joplin and Joan Baez, and Baez is an artist Melanie says she would like to perform with some day.

“Joan Baez is the real deal,” Melanie said. “And one more Joan, Joan Armatrading, because she is true to herself and brilliant.”

Of all the songs Melanie has written and recorded, she says that her personal favorite changes, depending on what’s going on in her life.

“With so many songs, hundreds and hundreds, sometimes I rediscover something I haven’t done for 40 years and some of my top revisited favorites songs no one has heard,” she said. “It will become my favorite because of a particular poetry that is in it or I discover a new groove in which to do it and it becomes very exciting. A song I am very proud of and would be up in that list of personal favorites is ‘I tried to die young’ with lyrically and an opportunity for expression being the main reason why. Or someone will call out a song and that becomes my favorite that evening mostly because I’m so grateful that I remember it.”

She also loves listening to Mozart, Lotte Lenya doing Kurt Weil songs and an Italian singer of the 1970s and 1980s, Paolo Conte.

According to Melanie, she’s proud of her musical longevity, that she’s still doing it and still writing songs that people like to listen to.

“New generations are interested in hearing my message,” Melanie said. “How lucky can anyone be?”

When all is said and done, she said there is one thing she’d most like to be remembered for by audiences.”

“How I made them feel,” Melanie said.

Tickets for Melanie’s performance can be purchased online at https://tickets.jonathansogunquit.com/

For more information, call 646-4777.

— Executive Editor Ed Pierce can be reached at 282-1535 ext. 326 or by email at editor@journaltribune.com