Maleena Dominick, 18, steps away from the Charge-Ups with debut album
When you ask an 18-year-old about her biggest music inspirations, you don’t expect her to name-check an artist who doesn’t have a major hit and has done some of his most high-profile work as a producer.
“I never try to replicate anything that anyone has done before,” says Maleena Dominick, “but one of my favorite songwriters and my biggest inspiration is Butch Walker. I’m a big fan of real, raw emotions in songs and that’s something I try to do with my songs.”
Walker’s influence can be heard in Chip and the Charge-Ups, a Pittsburgh power-pop band fronted by her father, Chip Dominick, in which she plays bass and sings backup vocals.
On Friday, Maleena veers off with her first solo record, “Bruises to Prove It,” a six-song collection of pop-rock topped with her airy vocals, honed as a member of the Pittsburgh Youth Chorus.
Starting with recorder and viola in school, Dominick set out to become a bass player when she was 10.
“At that time, I knew I couldn’t play guitar,” she says. “It wasn’t something that was easy for me. I tried before. So, me and my dad went to The Guitar Center and I said, ‘Hey, that doesn’t have as many strings, maybe I could play that one.’ I thought it would be easier for me to play, and it was.”
Within four or five years, she was able to play guitar as well, and when she was 16, she formulated an ambitious project.
“I decided that I wanted to start taking it seriously, so I set up this project that by 2020 I wanted to put an album out and I would write 20 songs and would choose the six best to put on the album.”
Along with playing in the Charge-Ups, that’s what she did. She wrote on guitar and piano and made demos on ProTools while saving money for five days of studio time last summer at Innovation Studios.
“My dad helped out with the guitar riffs and we have a friend from church, Ed [Gourley], who helped out with the drums. I gave them some direction of what I wanted to do with the songs and we all put it together and it turned out really good.”
One song, “I Can’t Find You,” was recorded the summer before that Real Life Music Camp, the program run by Rusted Root’s Liz Berlin.
The title, “Bruises to Prove it,” came during a discussion with her photographer mom, Sharon.
“It came up and it just kind of clicked,” she says. “This is what I’ve been working for the past two years and I have the bruises to prove it. When I started this, there was a feeling of, ‘You’re 16. There’s no way you’re going to be able to pull off a two-year project.’ But this was all self-motivated and self-created.”
Leading up to the release, Dominick, who will study at music tech at Duquesne University in the fall, won the Hall of Personal Expression (H.O.P.E.) contest, which is sponsored by Robbie’s Hope Foundation — a Colorado-based nonprofit with the mission to stop the teenage suicide epidemic — for the single “Don’t Forget Me.”
She will perform songs from the album on release day, Friday at 7 p.m. on her Instagram and Facebook pages.