by Mark McDermott
Unlikely dreams are a part of rock and roll mythology, from a 12-year-old Elvis sneaking into the Black areas of Tupelo, Mississippi, to hear the blues played at the juke joints, to Eddie Van Halen leaving his classical piano behind to play electric guitar with his brother at their Pasadena elementary school’s lunch break, calling themselves the Broken Combs.
Salem Meade has an even more unlikely story about how she came to rock ‘n’ roll. When she was three years old, her mother, Kelly, wanted her to learn Mandarin Chinese. She found Salem a tutor, but those lessons had unexpected results.
“He was attempting to teach me how to speak Chinese, but he had a piano in his apartment, and after our lessons I loved to just fool around with the notes on the piano,” Salem recalled. “And then one day he told my mom, ‘Oh, she’s great on the piano, but Chinese, not so much. He happened to be a Juilliard trained violinist.”
Hence the Mandarin Chinese lessons shifted to violin and piano. She wrote her first song at age 5.
“Music is definitely more my thing,” Meade said.
That led to Meade picking up the red Squire guitar that had been kicking around her house growing up, which led to a kid band called the Illusions at Coast Music in Manhattan Beach, where both Meade’s charisma and her lack of fear made her a natural frontwoman. Then, at the ripe old age of 9, Meade met drummer Dax Corcoran, who was two years older and ready to start a real band. Thus was born XYZPDQ.
“Dax is amazing,” she said. “He is one of the best drummers that I’ve gotten to work with. He’s also great at songwriting. We’re just a really good team.”
By age 10, a video of Meade, wearing a red bandana and leopard skin tights and playing lead guitar in a cover of Guns N’ Roses “Sweet Child of Mine,” was reposted by Guns N’ Roses on Facebook and went viral.
One of the XYZPDQ’s first gigs was at the Hometown Fair’s Battle of the Bands. Meade showed that she possesses gifts that can’t be taught, leading a ripping set that left both the audience and judges gasping. The band won the battle, the first of many accolades that have steadily accumulated. At 14, Meade won the top prize in the international John Lennon songwriting contest (in which Yoko Ono is a judge) and earned an endorsement from Gibson guitars. That same year, Meade appeared on Kelly Clarkson’s television show, where the Grammy-award winning host said “she is what rock and roll is all about” and compared her to rock icon Joan Jett. Clarkson then brought on surprise guest Melissa Etheridge, who enthused about Meade’s guitar and songwriting chops.
“I’m so excited that a girl her age, and even younger than she is now, went, ‘Wait a minute, I want to play electric guitar.’ There is no barrier to a woman playing the electric guitar, and I love that you keep doing it. You keep going,” Etheridge told Meade. “And you know what? You’re already starting to become the artist you are…. You got this, girl.”
There’s a reason Meade and the band so readily capture attention. Their songs have a smart, infectious verve, akin to Olivia Rodrigo or Lana Del Rey, while Meade’s guitar work has that classic Eddie Van Halen vibe with a darker touch of Marty Friedman and even a slight hint of local punk thrash. On stage, the combination is mesmerizing.
“I feel like I can really connect to the audience, especially when we play our original songs,” she said. “Because there’s a lot of meanings to our songs and sometimes, I see people in the audience having a good time, or looking like they relate, and it just forms like such a strong connection. I feel like it just brings everybody together. People can be so different but enjoy the same music. I feel that connection when I’m onstage, and that’s why I love it so much.”
XYZPDQ has been a band for the better part of a decade already. Meade is now a senior at Mira Costa and will attend USC’s Thornton School of Music, specifically its pop music program, next fall. Corcoran is already off at college, but XYZPDQ is still gigging, releasing occasional singles (check out “Deny Deny” “Strange” and “I Don’t Care,” as well as the upcoming “Out of Time” on all major streaming platforms), and working towards its first album.
“Our goal is to just keep writing as many songs as we can,” Meade said. “We want to figure out a release schedule to follow and just start releasing more music.”
Readers recently voted XYZPDQ “best underage band” in the annual Easy Reader Best of the Beach awards. While the honor obviously means a lot to the band, the “underage” part seems almost too limiting for artists who’ve already accomplished so much. Yet the road has just begun for XYZPDQ.
“I’m super grateful,” Meade said, referring to the awards and the attention she has already received from rock royalty. “It really just inspired me to keep going, because I didn’t expect any of that when I was seven years old and fooling around with a guitar. It keeps me going because you never know what’s going to happen in the future. You’ve just gotta keep trying, keep doing what you love, because good things will come of it.”
See XYZPDQofficial.com for more information. The band opens for Orianthi at the Whiskey A Go Go on May 18 at 7 p.m.
