How do you play/succeed as a melee bard?
 

As in a bard that fights toe-to-toe instead of kiting? Tips?

A bard can barely go toe to toe with something solo. Kiting is a solo thing. Bards have an AC penalty iirc so they don't make the best tanks, but at low end they do alright considering they can hold aggro with certain songs and twist in other melee oriented songs to increase output, but a bard's dps doesn't match up with a monk, rogue, ranger, warrior because of lack of double attack and tanking ability doesn't measure up to SK, Pally, or warrior because of penalty and other defensive oriented things that factor in. In group situations, they are there to fill in for what you don't have, which is anything outside of a healer, althought their regen song really saves mana for the healer. Playing a bard up to around 20ish on P99 with lowbie twink gear (had hp rings, PGT, mino ribcage, etc.. cheap stuff) I could tank very easily and swap in instruments for song twists at right times for maximum song strength.. but it gets tiring. I'm sure a well equipped bard can tank well up to 40 or so.

Our bards tank (50's) in old seb and do very well at it. Are you talking about toe to toe soloing? I would just charm something to aid in the kill-make sure to have your damage shield up.

Toe-to-toe soloing and actually causing decent damage via melee and not DD songs.

You could fear kite once you have the song I guess. Too hard to go toe to toe as really any class.

How do bards solo in extremely tight quarters where kiting isn't an option? For example, geodes in Crystal Caves (Velious)?

They don't.

You might be able to play a game where you tank something, get low on HP, then twist mez + regen until you're at full, then go at it again.

But you'd be getting down to low HP rather quickly. It might be possible though.

A lot of very small rooms still allow for some amount of kiting, but if you have absolutely no space you could stack dots on a mob and then charm it. For the 12 seconds that it's charmed it can't hit you and you can spend that time healing yourself. I used this to solo FG's although it can be a bit tedious.