The Small Story

BOSTON — Early in the evening, he can understand it. People are tired from the day. They amble in, they settle down, they sip a pint, they talk amongst themselves. Fair enough.

But by 10 p.m., Mel Stiller has been sitting behind the piano, pounding away, for two hours. So sue him if he’d like to hear a little singing.

Is it really that hard to thumb through the pages of his songbook; call out the numbers of songs you want to hear; tilt your head back, open your mouth, and give him something that resembles music?

“Pathetic!”  Mel yelled at a table full of talkers the other night.

This is not the Mel his family sees at home — the thoughtful husband, the doting dad, the beaming grandfather of four. It’s not even the Mel his staff sees every day, on the seventh floor of some downtown building, where he is president of the nonprofit Consumer Credit Counseling Service.

But this is the Mel who has showed up, nearly every Friday night, at Jacob Wirth restaurant, for the past 20 years — the loud, cranky entertainer, working the crowd in one of Boston’s oldest restaurants.

If you ask Chris Dempsey, a 26-year-old regular, the man bears a striking resemblance to someone else he knows. Works all day in a sterile office. Breaks out occasionally for the greater good.

“He’s a little bit like Superman,” says Chris.

The Way to Jacob Wirth

Mel never expected to play in public. Music was just this love of his, something he shared with his kids, taking them to shows, playing their favorite records after he read them a bedtime story.
 
He picked up piano as a boy, listening to songs on the radio, then tapping the melody out on the keys. But he never did learn to read music; it was always just for fun.
 
Then he became a father, and there was college tuition to consider, and the salary at a nonprofit would not suffice. He had played the odd birthday party before. So a friend connected him with a pub in Fitchburg, then later with Jacob Wirth, and a side career was born.

Today the sing-along is something of a production. No more wandering into the bar, happening upon Mel playing piano, and joining the fray. The event moved into the restaurant area a few years ago; tables for more than a hundred people are booked days in advance. 

But Beth Parsons, 30, still remembers the staccato sounds coming from her father's office all those years ago, as he started typing that songbook—the starts and stops of the music, as he pressed play, rewind, and pause on the tape recorder, trying to get the lyrics down right.

“I can’t believe he stuck with it,” she said.

The “Sing-Along With Mel” songbook is now 269 pages thick and 500 songs long. In it, you can find the lyrics to everything from “Apeman” by The Kinks to “Take me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver to “Runaround Sue” by Dion. 

More than two decades worth of work—bound, laminated and listed alphabetically in an index at the back, just waiting for someone to pick it up, and sing.


Singing by his Side

Those early hours of the evening are tough. Scattered singing, pockets of passion, but not much more. Then around 10:30, the tide turns, and Mel is in some slice of heaven, singing with his eyes closed, his left leg stretched out, his fingers flying all over the keys.

Dozens of people are out of their seats, and surrounding his piano. Fifty-something women are dancing to “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. Thirty-something men are throwing their heads back to “Can't Live if Living is Without You," famously covered by Air Supply. 

Young and old, drunk and sober, corporate and unemployed—all crowded around him, losing the workweek in the good, strong swell of a song.

“It’s a great feeling, to look around and see everyone so happy,” Mel says.

Any of the Friday night faithful will tell you: There’s just something about singing. It sends you straight back to childhood—back to a more liberating time of life, when letting loose was what mattered, not how you good you looked, when you did.

“There’s nothing as cathartic as singing,” said Nick Madden, 34, a commercial real estate lawyer. “I mean—really.”

And it’s a safe space to sing, right by Mel’s side. He makes friends of his fans. Keeps an email list to let them know when he has to miss a Friday night. Meets them for lunch on occasion, doles out relationship advice, discusses problems at work. 

By his piano, people tend to relax. Occasionally, among the regulars, friendships form, turn into flirtations, and end up in long-term relationships. And then there is Grant Callender, a Boston police officer, who proposed to his girlfriend at the sing-along, the scene of their first date.

He hired a violinist and accordionist, and with Mel’s blessing, sat down at the piano and serenaded his future wife with “Lady” by Kenny Rogers. 

Mel was at the wedding, of course. He drove all the way to Scranton, PA the day before, to play for the rehearsal dinner. 


Rules of the Road

For all his sweetness and light, Mel has a few rules. Unfortunately for newcomers, they are unwritten. The other night, the sing-a-long nearly ended without “Sweet Caroline,” the famous Fenway favorite. And why?

“They asked for it around 8:30,” Mel said. “It was a little inappropriate.”

Rule no. 1: All crowd pleasers should be played after 10 p.m., when people are in the mood to get up, gather around the piano, and throw themselves into the song.

Also, everyone should know, there are certain songs Mel does not want to play at all. At any time of night. And not because he thinks they are bad songs, but because, trust him, they won’t work. 

Take "Fat Bottomed Girls" by Queen, for example. Everyone knows the chorus, and absolutely no one knows the rest.


The Tribute

There are those who write to Mel, telling him how much these sing-alongs mean to them. People from other parts of the country, or other parts of the world; every time they visit Boston, they make a point of stopping by.

And then there are the locals, like Nick, who prefer to pay tribute in person. 

The other night, he stood with a friend, yelling Mel’s name near midnight in a rousing rendition of “The Piano Man.” Serenading him a cappella, with a special version of the AC/DC song, “Highway to Mel.”

These days, he comes once a month. But before girlfriends came on the scene, Nick and his friend Chris showed up every Friday. They started as Mel’s fans, then became friends. 

A couple of years ago, as a special request, Mel taught himself one of Chris’ favorite songs from childhood. And so it was that a 24-year-old project developer for MassDOT got the chance to sing the Policeman’s Song from Sesame Street on his birthday.

After 20 years of doing this, there’s no denying Mel is tired. It’s not easy to leave the office on a Friday, then launch into a four-hour marathon of music. He is, after all, 61. 

But then the night ramps up, and he is surrounded—a fan-turned-friend from Switzerland is singing alongside his sister, and a middle-aged newcomer is saying she hasn’t done this in years, and Nick and Chris are back with half a dozen of their friends, standing by the piano, arms raised, faces contorted, performing one of the ultimate yellers, “Aquarius.”

And there is no feeling like it. He smiles as he sings.