The Nautilus Studio M31 Files interview The Lindells (part 2)

Studio owners Mr Bill (Nautilus Studio) and Yves LF Giraud (Studio M31) interview singer-songwriters Kim and Chris Lindell (part 2)

For more info on the Lindells, please visit:
https://www.lindellsmusic.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Let me ask you this. What was uh do you remember the first gig the the date or the um the first time you actually got to play in front of people together with your songs, your own songs? Do you know what I mean? I know one of them.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Okay. My brother's wedding.

SPEAKER_04 0:42

Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

1983, I think. I think eighty two or eighty three. And I wrote my own song for uh for your brother and his wife. Yeah, and so they had this big band, a Christian band. Mm-hmm. Huge Christian band. And they're set up in the backyard at my dad's house, and I did my one song in a break, and you held she actually held the notebook for me so I can read.

SPEAKER_04 1:09

That was silly. It was super funny.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

So you you didn't play that.

SPEAKER_04 1:12

I did not play. No, no. It was so new that we didn't really have a chance to. I think I think he wrote it like three days before. Okay. Yeah. Um and as far as our first our first gig together, I can't even remember. I mean, there's been there's been so many over the years. I will say there was one time when we were still in high school and we were out in Joshua Tree and we were taking a a rest day because we were we were just all scabs all over from you know the the rock in Joshua Tree is really, really large crystals and it tears your skin apart. Oh my god, imagine that's where I'm gonna go, yeah. Yeah, right. Well maybe you've seen pictures of people and they they have these tape gloves that they'll wrap tape around their hands so that they won't get all torn up. And so we were taking a rest day, we're like, we're really tired. Um and so we go out to this um this desert area around one of our favorite climbs um called Headstone, and we're out there in the sagebrush and the rabbit brush, and we're we're playing this song, and I don't even remember what it was. And the people that were on Headstone climbing at the time, they topped out on the top of the rock and they turned around and like, yeah. Yeah, then audience like yeah, an audience of two. Yeah, great. That's why it starts. Yeah, yeah. So we're like, huh, maybe we're doing something right. Nice, powerful shooting.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

At least nothing wrong with Panchie. No, no, no, here we are. Yeah. So um you uh was there um what what brought you from California to um Mangus? Was it was it the master? Work? It was mostly work.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Okay, yeah, it was uh a lot of construction work. So and then I I came in and kind of infiltrated that scene and had done really well at it. Uh now I'm a paid insultant, so I insultant. I I can I walk into any of the ongoing channels. Without even needing to. So that's what I do for a living. I was a message therapist for drafting. Right, right, right. I just finished up with a client this morning and they wanted all this stuff done for their house and uh didn't even try to tell them that they couldn't afford it. So I'm doing good. They will find out.

SPEAKER_04 3:33

They will find out it's troubling times for a train, yeah, affording things these days. But anyway, yeah. I I want to speak to um a really amazing show that we did, kind of uh topped for us at the time. So in um 1999, we're living less than a half of a mile from where we are right now. Okay, just oh yeah, just south of the highway here. So um I you may have visited us over there because Bill was still here. Bill Dale was in here.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

We were in Star.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

Oh, well, you're right. Okay. So at a so uh in 99, so we had this band with our friend Todd Wright, and he is an amazing jazz drummer and mandolin player. And so we got together and we got all these songs, and we thought, on a whim, let's just enter the tie ride bluegrass competition. And we don't consider ourselves a bluegrass band, yeah, but because Todd was playing mandolin, like maybe it could work. And and this was the last time 99 was the last year that they did um separate mics for each of the singers. Uh in 2000, they went to single mic technique where you really had to be a a a bluegrass band and do you know, around the single mic. Um so the three of us get up there and we we get accepted and we drive into Telly Ride and we're trying to find a parking space. So we we unload our gear at um the Sheridan Opera House, which is where the um the Friday competition was to to get into the finals. And um so Todd and I are staying with our gear. Chris tries to go find some other parking space where he can fit the van and he runs back down, and the first thing that the the organizers say is, You're going on first. Oh, okay. Okay. So we go on first, we play our three songs, and then we're like, okay, great. Well we'll load all our stuff out, we don't know what happened, and we come back, you guys made it! Yeah, we made it, yeah, we we're back. No, no, you made it to the finals. So you're gonna play Saturday on the mainstay. So it was a competition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was two days of the city.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

So we got to play the mainstay.

SPEAKER_04 5:54

So the funny thing about the the Sheridan Opera House, it was a beautiful sound. I mean, if you guys have been in there, it's it's just amazing. Please go see music there. It's a fantastic venue. And um, so it was you know great monitor systems and everything, and I had my electric bass and I could plug it in to something on the main stage. They didn't have um a monitor. They didn't have monitoring. They didn't have monitors on the stage for the people who were in the competition. So what ended up happening is Todd and Chris both have acoustic instruments. They can feel vibrations against their bellies and their bodies, and everything's good. And I've got my electric bass, and it's going through the system, but it's not going through the stage monitors. I couldn't hear it. It was an eight-second delay bouncing over the north wall of Telluride Canyon and back to me before I could hear it.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

So, how could you even? That must have been some jazz. We got fourth place out of four.

unknown 7:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

No, the listening well, this is a detail, but yeah. It's so weird that they didn't have they added all the stuff you needed on the smaller stage, but the big one is kind of like, yeah. Who knows what? Was there like a bigger thing happening afterwards? Maybe all kept everything for that.

SPEAKER_04 7:19

Because the the competition on Saturday morning starts at 10. Um at that time. No, it was Saturday morning. Um and so anyway, it's just a a really strange um experience as a musician to have like, well, I love delay, but I didn't plan on that. I might have approached it differently. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So one of those funny things. But yeah, we got to play Telluride stage and it was it was beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Who were the headliners on that day?

SPEAKER_04 7:48

Oh my gosh. Well, classically, Sam Bush and company and all everybody. All the biggies. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even remember that having to go look at it.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Who was uh Alison Cross singing with? She was there every year.

SPEAKER_04 8:00

Yeah, Emily Lou Harris was there.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Yeah, but didn't she have uh uh Alison Cross have a a band that she was regularly with? Probably that was called something that I thought you guys might remember. Oh yeah, I'm I'm searching for that one.

SPEAKER_04 8:15

Job my memory.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Yeah, anyway, it'll come to us in the same delay that took your music up to Brightabell. Eight seconds. Yeah, yeah. 3 a.m. tomorrow morning Union Stage, Onion Stage. I always thought it was onion stage.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah. And she's done some great work with Robert Plant.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Oh, I know.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Wonderful work there.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Yeah, just was seeing uh watching something on YouTube just the other day with her with somebody, but it wasn't Robert Plant. But anyway, she's got the voice of a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Yeah, I've never gotten particularly close to that voice, but um I get it. Yeah, and I think she's very talented. I there's a lot of singers I don't get, but there's a lot of singers I do.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

So you know, one of the things to me that's beautiful about any form of art is that we have different people with different tastes, and not everybody likes the same thing. Otherwise, you would have one famous singer, one famous painter. You know, like it which we said. Yeah, yeah, you know, diversity is a beautiful thing. I can send Metallica, but people love you know we all have different things. You don't like metallic.

SPEAKER_04 9:22

I love diversity. Metallica, isn't that how it's pronounced?

unknown 9:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:27

Oh, I'm just remembering another concert that we played um in the early 2000s. Um it was up at um Purgatory, and I think it was two years they did this. Um Carol King?

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04 9:42

And Arlo Guthrie and Arlo's daughter um and her s his son, they all they played um Sarah Lee played her own set, and then Arlo and his um son and daughter joined him on that. And so we got to open two times for those shows. Yeah, so yeah. Outside, yeah, yeah. So the first year we played as a duo, and then the second year we brought up our um our band. So we had Todd on drums, and we had um Jimmy on fiddle. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I was on the city. Jimmy Crazy. Oh, yeah, Jimmy. Is he still around? Maybe.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

I don't know. That's high altitude, you know. Like uh, you can get up to Tom for a long time, but I don't know where he went. Yeah, what a character. Yeah. Oh yeah. It was crazy.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

First time I saw uh Jimmy, I was at the Millwood Junction, and we were I think uh it was my band that was playing or the band I was in, not my band. Right. But uh he was sitting in and he had this big long fake ponytail. Oh yeah. And I thought that was him, and then the next time I saw him, no ponytail, and I thought, what the heck? Is this the same guy? That's so funny.

SPEAKER_04 10:56

Everybody loves a costume. Yeah, yeah. That was his little little fang.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

Yeah, he's crazy. Yeah. So uh another question for you. Um, you guys have been recording um I'm assuming for decades. Yes. Um can you tell me how many albums you've done and which ones maybe you've done on your own, or I have they're all been done with a producer in a studio somewhere, or no, I I can tell I can fill you in on part of that.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Okay. Because I can only remember part of it. But um some of the ones that we did in a studio were was uh uh Long Holiday Motel was done in Tucson with Craig Schumacher.

SPEAKER_04 11:38

At Wave Lab.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

At Wave Lab. And he did we did tracking and mixing in five days and got that out of the way after like and then um he also mixed a record that we recorded at home, which was Kim's uh To the Secret Fire To the Secret Fire. I was the mix engineer or the the uh recording engineer and sent everything to him and he did that, which he did a great job on it. Um almost everything else I mixed.

SPEAKER_04 12:13

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

And so that that's over maybe a dozen records.

SPEAKER_04 12:17

Rome we did part in our home studio and part at Eagle Sound with Joke Eagle. Yeah. Okay. And then um Is it Horizon? That was all recorded in our shed. Hey, is that where you stole that name? Don't do all this shit. Okay, that's a good name. Yeah. And so then um, yeah, we sent that out for mastering, but Chris did all the mixing and that was that was an engineering on that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Golden?

SPEAKER_04 12:49

No, it was that was um up in in uh up in Denver. What the c what's his name?

SPEAKER_01 12:56

He's like the biggest mastering engineer in the world. Wow. Yeah, but anyway, you guys all just use this. I know.

SPEAKER_04 13:02

He didn't do that good a job eventually. Okay, so the very first recordings that we ever did were on a um tabletop um cassette player. Okay. Um that was Chris's mom's. Um and then we graduated to a boom box. Um, but we would just sit around the kitchen table and we wanted to send music to Chris's mom because she loved to hear him sing and play. And so we went, here's a latest that we're working on, and uh so she saved a box of all that tapes. Of all the tapes, of all the cassettes that we sent her, and she gave that to us um uh last year before she passed away. And so that's really a really beautiful um gift to have that come back because you know a lot of that stuff you know was lost, we didn't keep it.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Well, yeah, it's probably so if you don't yeah, if you don't have I mean I I I've got the same thing, like you lose everything with it over time, even if you try to keep them something like that boss.

SPEAKER_04 14:00

I know, I know. And then that graduated to um to digital. Um just had the name of it.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

The well I I can help that we went we were early adapters of two-track digital. Okay, the dat tape. The data. Okay, and so we we bought one of those first in like ninety nineteen ninety or something. You know, as soon as they came out, somewhere in that range. I had a Sony DA7, that's what it was called. Okay, the one I have. Same kind of thing. And so you just whatever your front end is, yeah, you plug in, and uh so that you know it wasn't till uh then we used that two track system for uh a couple of of I wouldn't call them albums, but we we we released them on cassette. Okay, and uh but then we moved out here and I bought a four-track cassette just because I wanted to some fun and uh still have that thing, Task and the Bolton one? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's it's yeah, it's probably worth a thousand dollars. Those little Task and Full tracks, yeah, yeah. It's like a 424 Mark III or something, yeah. But it still works great, and I sometimes I just get it out and record on it, and record on the digital system and listen, and you it's so hard to hear the difference. Yeah, yeah. There they both sound really good. It's so funny.

SPEAKER_04 15:25

We learned how to bounce tracks. Well, um, you know, our friend also had a portable DAT player, so between us two we had four tracks, and and we could bounce back and forth. Then then we got the four-track task.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

I remember with cassettes, eventually if you try to do that, you used to do that and get more. Eventually you're like, shh, yeah, you get this noise, and they're like, okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

You can't do too much of it. Yeah. Yeah. I've loved recording since you know the very beginning. So um now that we're we we we made the change to all digital like in the maybe 2000-ish. Um and have been there.

SPEAKER_02 16:04

So you guys were pretty early. I mean, some people are still not quite there, so it's it's pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_04 16:09

We were it's just too expensive to go out to a studio.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Um it's sad, but that's the reality of it, you know.

SPEAKER_04 16:15

And it's an excellent learning tool. The ability to record yourself, even if it's on now on your phone, to to to sketch a song and hear it back, make changes. Um the ability to hear how you sound, whether you're playing rhythm, lead, whatever, how your vocal is coming across, that is priceless.

SPEAKER_03 16:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 16:39

It is priceless information.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

A positive critical tool, you can really gain from it. Whereas when you go in the studio, if you've never done it, you can get freaked out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:54

So then when you do go to a studio, you're like, saved up all the money, let's go do this, you know? And you go in there and you're prepared and you know what your production's gonna be, you know what your arrangements are gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Hands five days in the studio to make an album in terms of the takes. You didn't as it you guys didn't try to, you know, back in the days of these bands, they would go in the studio for three months and just what do we do? That's the rest of our records.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Three months, we could we'll spend three years and you know, yeah, not do anything. No, but I mean, you know, when they went there and they they they didn't have any songs, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:31

It was just like, okay, well we'll we're gonna make an out, you know, Beatles and the Rolling Stone. They live in the studio. Yeah, yeah, good. Yeah, yeah. Um what was the last thing you guys did and released in terms of albums? Or are you working on something right now?

SPEAKER_04 17:48

We have enough material to do another one. We're just kind of playing around deciding what we're gonna do. But the last thing we really did was the mixed and mancus. Okay. And so that that um I think it's been mixed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

And how many songs is that? Four.

SPEAKER_04 18:04

Okay. And then Cruce Roma is also on that, and then the Yotis. Um those three bands from March 8th of 2025. And so that is just coming together in its final stages and will be released on vinyl and C D, I believe.

SPEAKER_02 18:19

Do you know where it can be got?

SPEAKER_04 18:22

Um here at Mancas? Yeah, yeah. The Creative District will have it. I think they'll do some kind of announcement when it's ready for sale. And um and then like Chris was saying, we just got the information on uh on one of two videos that our songs will will be on, and so one of them was released to us yesterday um so that we could just uh approve everything, make sure all the credits were spelled right and that whole thing. And so um that should be coming up in the next month or so, I'm thinking.

SPEAKER_03 18:53

Yeah, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

So I guess we need a little thing too. Yeah, you're doing a great job. Um we sure appreciate letting us come on. Yeah, for sure. He does all the hard work. Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Yeah, I just uh throw Bill Bill is the uh the real host of the foil.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

I'm pretending I'm doing he keeps trying to talk to me while you're trying to talk to him.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

No, no, I gotta stop it. Well, because you guys knew each other together, which you talked about. Catching up.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

It's all like 30 years.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

It's all 30 years.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Yeah. We have a lot to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

It's beautiful, actually.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

So let me ask you one thing. So thank you so much for that song, it was beautiful. Um you had a date on when you wrote it, which is I I never thought of writing that.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

17, I think.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

November. I always write what the date is when I write a song and the location.

SPEAKER_03 19:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

So a lot of them are at Summit Ridge, which is where we live. Right. Or it could be anywhere out in the in the desert or wildernesses of the West. I never thought of that, like you know preserve that.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah, yeah. And when you wrote those, you you had a memory, and now thank God you wrote that down because you need them now. You know, I think, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

I think part of it came from uh somebody who's important to me that we just saw is Bruce Coburn. Oh, I like Bruce Coburn. And uh we just saw him in Tucson. Oh, okay. And he did he was 80 years old in Sheldon. But he always would write where uh the date and the place where he wrote a song. Okay. And so we've been following him since 1983. So I kind of give you that sense of I'm gonna do that.

SPEAKER_04 20:35

It's kind of a sense of journaling, if you will. Yeah. It's actually really cool.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

I think it's great, I just think it's well, right. And so, as a total aside, Bruce played in Mankus. And I got to have all his Manzer guitars. Oh, yeah. Very expensive guitars, and we both had the same haircut at the time. But we had this this one. Yeah. And uh and we're setting up, I feel like we're really getting along. And then he goes, Chris, what's the history of Mancus? And I'm just like, I was starstruck first of all. Right. Then I was like, oh. I think it has something to do with cows and feet and uh weather. And he was just like, oh god, forget it. And so I I I ruined my best chance with the hero. But then I just wrote a song for Cortez that's gonna be coming up on May 2nd for as part of their Heritage Days thing. And uh I figured out that there's no interesting history to Cortez at all. Um I wrote about Hernan Cortez, who's a Spaniard that came and conquered the Aztecs in 1320.

SPEAKER_02 21:55

What was his uh his first name?

SPEAKER_01 21:56

Hernan. I have a song about him.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

You're you too. It's called The Cinema's Gone about him killing all the other people.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Yeah. We have to get together. So that's my my contribution. It's actually an anti-Cortez song, but I'll tell you, that's really gonna go over big over here.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

I think so.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

It's because it was like a kind of a competition, and then they they got rid of the competition. I'm like, good, I get to say what I want to say. Yeah, yeah. All I talk about is like the liquor store and Hernan, he's upset with the Aztecs because of their language, and he wants to buy some vowels because it's all concept. Right?

SPEAKER_02 22:40

That's you near song? Yeah, I like it. Um I'd like to ask you, do you do you guys have a website or a way so people can actually follow more things about you than once they see this?

SPEAKER_04 22:52

We do, yeah. Lindellsmusic.com.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 22:54

Yeah, and uh it definitely needs some updating and we'll get that. Um when the the videos from Mixed and Make has come out, we'll probably do a big push to get some new material on there. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Okay, so um Facebook. So you own Facebook as well. Do you have some YouTube stuff also, maybe? Yeah, yeah, some yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

You have to uh sort through because Mike Lindell comes up. Okay. We're not Mike Lindell. We're not and we're not the pillow guy.

SPEAKER_04 23:23

We're not the pillow guy, and there's a there's a there's a bunch of folks I think I think they're in the Midwest that um do a lot of religious music. And yeah, they're Lindels as well, but we're not part of those Lindells. Yeah, we're just like the hippie Lindels.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

You the hippie Lindels, yeah. If you can find that, great, then you've got lots of music to listen to.

SPEAKER_04 23:44

Lindell's music and and then band is always a good place to start for a search.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

Okay, that's cool. Do you have a show coming up? Something we can maybe announce on this that would be interesting to mention.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

The only one that's uh pending is the May 2nd Heritage Days. At the zoo gallery.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Okay, that's good to know. So that's uh tell me the name, the the date again. It's May. May 2nd Saturday at like 6-ish or so in the zoo.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

At the zoo gallery. Okay. I know you're a zoo person. Yeah, we're zoo supporters. Yeah, we love it. We are too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:23

What our drummer is um an educator, outdoor educator for Fort Lewis, and so he is often out in the field at this time of year with his students, and so we kind of this is a good time for us to write new material while he's gone. And then as soon as he's done with school season, then we are kind of like, okay, let's start booking shows and get back in the studio for rehearsals and recordings and so.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

Awesome, awesome. Yeah, that is great.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

So uh yeah, we'll be looking for you at the zoo uh May 2nd, that's not too far away. No, he's coming up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

Sounds great.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Yeah. Thank you both. Thank you. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Thank you so much for being here. Love you guys. Love you. It was good to see you again.