The Nautilus Studio M31 Files interview singer-songwriter Mimi Genheimer

Studio owners Yves LF Giraud (Studio M31) and Mr Bill (Nautilus Studio) interview singer-songwriter Mimi Genheimer.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:29

Mr. Bell, you want to introduce us?

SPEAKER_04 0:33

This is um a uh another adventure of the Nautilus M31 Studio Files, and uh this morning we have with us Mimi, and I didn't even catch her last name.

SPEAKER_06 0:46

Genheimer.

SPEAKER_04 0:48

Genheimer. And uh we'll have her spell that for us as well. But anyhow, uh we're uh interviewing uh Mimi today, and we're gonna learn more about uh all the things that make her tick. So here we go. All right and my uh uh key interrogator, uh Mr. Eve Gerard, is gonna start off.

SPEAKER_05 1:12

I like the way you're very exotic. Um all right, well, welcome. And yes, uh the first question, Mimi, for you. I think I'll be an easy one. We're gonna we're gonna start with an easy one. Where were you born exactly? Where were you born? Where are you from?

SPEAKER_06 1:30

I was born at the Fairview Hospital in Wyoming, Minnesota.

SPEAKER_05 1:35

Wow, that's to get specific, yeah. Yeah, I like it.

SPEAKER_06 1:38

I know I have my birth certificate and I know where it is, which feels like a really impressive adult thing. It is. Um, I it's something around 1017 a.m.

SPEAKER_05 1:49

Around Wow, that's I could be right between 17 and 18. Yeah. Somewhere in there.

SPEAKER_06 1:54

Somewhere after 10. Where you've made your first cry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

All right.

SPEAKER_06 1:59

The the this is a only a birth-related story. It has nothing to do with the interview. But the um I was basically mostly born, and the doctor had not, you know, washed his hands and put on his gloves. And my dad was like, Well, my baby's about to just hit the floor, man. Like, can you do something? Um and the doctor was too worried about being sanitary. So my dad actually ended up catching me. Awesome. Well, the doctor was too busy trying to wash his hands.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

Oh my goodness, it's time's a good one. Yeah. Thanks for dad being there. So that's really the beginning.

SPEAKER_06 2:41

Luckily, you were already just uh hit my head and hitting your head was gonna be a big part of the You know, it could have been a very good entertainment.

SPEAKER_05 2:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:53

I have nothing to explain how I am.

SPEAKER_05 2:55

So you stay in Wyoming?

SPEAKER_06 2:56

Oh, uh the town of Wyoming of Minnesota. That's why I said it because I knew it becomes a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 3:04

Yeah, yeah. See too many uh towns that are named by uh uh another state. Another state. Yeah, it's kind of that is very true.

SPEAKER_06 3:12

No, I spent I spent my whole childhood in Minnesota. Um my parents still live in the house I grew up in. Okay. And I um against my like internal expectations of myself, I also went to college in Minnesota, in St. Paul, and then while I was in college was when I started working in Glacier National Park during the summer times. Um and that's what connected me to Montana, which I moved to Montana after graduating college and lived there until I moved here in 2021.

SPEAKER_05 3:50

Wow. You moved here in 21.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

Okay, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_06 3:53

At the end, end of 2021.

SPEAKER_04 3:55

Oh wow. And where in Montana?

SPEAKER_06 3:57

I was living in Whitefish.

SPEAKER_04 3:59

Love that area. Like Calus Bell and everything. In Flathead Lake and all that. Oh, I love that area. I used to go every fall up into uh all of Upper Idaho, uh St. Point, and all of that.

SPEAKER_06 4:13

Yeah, I love that area. That's yeah, my partner's from um Court d'Alane. So yeah, yeah. We would spend a lot of time, and I did trail crew for a season, and we worked out of Bonner's Ferry a few times and the Kootenie and the Kenix.

SPEAKER_04 4:27

Such a pretty area, but you came down to another pretty area. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_06 4:32

Yeah. I love being here. Yeah, good.

SPEAKER_05 4:34

So um moving from uh the town of Wyoming to Montana, was that uh a personal decision? Was that a uh your family moved there?

SPEAKER_06 4:47

No, it was it was a personal decision. Yep. They're still in the same house, um, which is in North Branch, Minnesota. You're getting all the Minnesota names now. But yeah, not too just about an hour north of the Twin Cities.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 5:01

Um yeah, and and I moved to Montana Um after having spent three summers working in Glacier National Park. I worked in the northeast um part of the park in the many glacier valley. Um serving tables and managing a restaurant there, and then climbing mountains and partying a little bit too. A little party throne in that uh something relevant maybe to this conversation is that the I worked at Swift Current, Motorin and Cabins, and down the road is the historic Many Glacier Hotel, which has a huge musical history. Um it's um like this Swiss lodge Japanese um fusion um in the decor of the hotel, and then in its early days, in the main restaurant and dining hall, um they would have singing waiters and live piano, and by the time I was working there that was no longer the case, but they were still maintaining the history of music in the hotel with a hoot nanny every Sunday. Oh every Sunday night I would, you know, drive my minivan or walk myself or find an old bike and go to the hotel and we'd play music for the guests for like an hour, and there was a group of us who, you know, worked at the various lodges or worked for the boat company or for even the park service, and we'd put together a set and do a hoot and annie.

SPEAKER_05 6:40

Sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, it was great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 6:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:43

Another question for you. So um talking about music, because basically you're here for that.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 6:50

When did you start music? What what and and what made you uh interested in it?

SPEAKER_06 6:57

Well, I it started before I can remember, but what I'm told is even before I talked, I would sing happy birthday. My own version, but you know, phonetically, I don't know how perfect it was, but you know, before I was speaking words, I was singing.

SPEAKER_05 7:17

Yeah, the melody going on.

SPEAKER_06 7:19

And you know, music is on both sides of my family, really. Um so it was always around it. But I guess formally um I started when I was five, I asked my parents um to learn the violin. I had seen uh another like young kid playing it and was really intrigued by it. And you know, they uh took my consideration or took my request into consideration and um kind of came back with let's do piano lessons first.

SPEAKER_04 7:57

So yeah, instead of the hardest instrument then there is too much.

SPEAKER_06 8:01

They're like, let's let's get you and I'm and I'm really grateful for it. I did like two I mean I took lessons on the piano for ten years, but for two years I was just doing piano from age five to seven, and it's a really great uh visual platform for learning um kind of basic music fundamentals, but also music theory under because you're really you're seeing the notes, it's very spatial. Right. Um so I did two years of piano um and then when I was seven I was still asking about the violin, and so that's when I started my violin lessons. Wow, okay. And I um was mainly classically trained on the violin, but my teacher was also a fiddle player, and so as I got you know, kind of a foundation, we started moving into a little bit more of improvisation. Um but throughout um yeah, high school and even college, I was still mostly doing classical music, and then um in college I started um doing some more not even bluegrass or americana, but exploring improvisation with with other musicians and um the Hoot Nannies were great for that as well. Um it's just the more you sound bad for a long time and you just slowly start learning how to sound good.

SPEAKER_05 9:36

Yeah, that's right. But yeah, I I've played in and did you um did you take some um like in college or university or whatever, um, did you go for like s music school uh or a music degree or did was that okay?

SPEAKER_06 9:54

I have a yeah, I I went to a liberal arts school. I didn't end up going to a con I toured some conservatories, but ended up at a liberal arts university and um have a Bachelor of Arts in violin. Okay I'm like a chronic creative dabbler, so it was it was a great place to take you know philosophy and ceramics and then you know like human anatomy and you know just a little bit of everything. Um but at the time I minored in psychology and took some some science courses to set myself up to get a master's in music therapy and then got completely burnt out from academia and moved to Montana.

SPEAKER_04 10:44

Didn't get your master's?

SPEAKER_06 10:45

No. Yeah, not yet.

SPEAKER_04 10:46

Yeah, but you're still maybe working on it.

SPEAKER_06 10:49

Yeah, there's there's time.

SPEAKER_05 10:51

Yeah, sure. Um so once you ended up here, um right now here in the band called Well, you might be in several things, I have no idea. I know you're in goathead.

SPEAKER_06 11:01

There's some uh things in the incubator, but yeah, the the main group that I'm with right now is Goathead.

SPEAKER_05 11:08

Okay, and how did you end up booking up by those guys?

SPEAKER_06 11:12

That's that's another group of uh lunatics. Yeah, well, you know, just like all of us. They yeah, yeah, yeah. They found me, and uh that I think that means I'm a lunatic too.

SPEAKER_05 11:26

I'm afraid so.

SPEAKER_06 11:27

Yeah, we're uh we're all we get along very well. Um so I think I I had already met Bobby and Willie through the acoustic jam at the um Dolores River Brewery. Um but you know, just kind of knew them peripherally through that. Um but Bobby had asked me to sit in on a couple tunes with Last Nickel at a gig they played at Wild Edge. Okay. And so I went and played a couple songs with them, and then um Mo and Tomo happened to be there that night, and Mo approached me and was like, Hey. And at that time I think they were going by Harvesters, and it was him and Tomo and Bobby playing together. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's been a while, but so that's how it that's how it started was that gig at Wild Club. Okay. And then I yeah, we played another gig as Harvesters, the Four of Us, and then Yeah, and then and then we unearthed that Willie is just such a prolific and excellent songwriter that Goathead was born.

SPEAKER_05 12:42

Well, and talking about songwriting, so you are also a songwriter. I am and beside the fact that you are a multi-instrumentalist, um, can you tell me how what instrument where how did you start songwriting beside, you know, learning how to play and everything? Yeah. What was the you remember the moment? Or your first song, maybe.

SPEAKER_06 13:07

Yeah, what was well I don't know if this was the first occurrence of me attempting songwriting, but I have this memory of writing songs with one of my cousins when she was probably 13 at the time, so I must have been 10 or 11. And we wrote like three songs together. I know, late summer songwriting. Um but you know, music was always, you know, I'm always singing something. So who knows? But I do remember, yeah, she and I were um really into the idea of writing songs. You know, they were staying with us for a little bit at that time, and yeah, so we would sit down and we had this little Klavinova keyboard with like do you remember when they had like the the floppy disk drive where you could record your little tracks or you could put tracks in and we would write songs at the electric piano.

SPEAKER_05 14:12

That's a good way to do it. A workstation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um recently I went to see you at Zoo Gallery. You were playing piano and you were doing a school, basically school music for uh live for some very early Charlie Chaplin movies. Yeah, right. There were four of them and which was awesome. I never seen any of those because you you know I know the big ones, yeah. Totally but like the small ones, like they're they're short too, which is very interesting. Um Were you there, Mr. Bill? I keep remembering. It was really interesting. It was fun.

SPEAKER_06 14:52

It was so much fun, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:53

And so how how did you get to wh why that? Like how how do you go from good head to this?

SPEAKER_06 15:01

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think I've you know, in the broader sense of chronic incurable, creative dabbling, it applies to smaller spheres of music too, so I love um and uh maybe you resonate with this too as and I don't know if you're a multi-instrumentalist as well, or yeah, I guess you could say that. For me, playing the fiddle or even like playing the fiddle versus playing, you know, classical music on the violin versus playing a guitar versus playing piano, they all s like posture a little differently in my brain. So I love playing fiddle in goat head, and then I also love the challenge of you know, arranging um and playing piano for Charlie Chaplin films. It's such a different s creative space in my head.

SPEAKER_05 15:59

Um for sure, and it's true that you you arrange all that music. You uh can you can you tell us how you found I know you you kind of told me a little bit that night how do you get this old process?

SPEAKER_06 16:14

Yeah, it was a process, and maybe that's part of what I liked about it as well was you have to like there's a lot of research involved in sourcing music, so um, and a lot of learning happened too. I learned about how, you know, even initially when the films were made, how people would arrange music for them. Um or even there were just a lot of musicians at that time who would have, you know, they'd know hundreds of of excerpts or tunes for different moods, and they would sometimes show up to play a film never having seen it before and just be which I was not doing that, but I was like, that is so cool um to be that kind of a companist. But I um yeah, did a lot of research online about the silent film era. There's some cool databases out there um where people's private collections have been are being archived and they're accessible, and you have to do a lot more like wading through things for that. And then there are some um publications that are like collections of um I guess you call it incidental music, or the one one of the ones I used was called motion picture moods. So it's all uh you know, it's various classical pieces or even pop pieces um in excerpt form assigned to different actions or feelings or locations. Um so you can kind of page through those. One of the books I used was it was published in like 1924. So even that early on, they were publishing these collections, and then you know, there's another one I used that I think was published in the 80s, and I would um I should have brought my notebook, but I would watch the films um and just take note of different moments or moods or like places where I would see a transition and then work to kind of assign my own mood or like main um feeling to it. Yeah. Um and then search for the right piece of music.

SPEAKER_04 18:47

Right. When when they tire to the railroad track, what what you get real dissonant on that?

SPEAKER_06 18:55

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 18:56

So when somebody falls off a cliff, yeah.

unknown 18:59

Bang.

SPEAKER_06 19:00

Well, by I ended up doing um two n two nights of it, and even the second night I was um, you know, because I I basically pick the music, then you have to figure out where sometimes you're vamping because you might not be playing it at the exact same tempo, or um, you know, a piece of music might not be the right length, so you have to figure out how to adjust it and cut it. So I made, you know, whole scores with everything and cues and places where I know to repeat until the next thing happens on screen.

SPEAKER_04 19:34

Was that recorded? Uh is that uh did anybody record it?

SPEAKER_06 19:38

I don't believe it is the same.

SPEAKER_04 19:40

It sounded like that was pretty special. I I exactly was Jodi um did what did she stream it?

SPEAKER_06 19:48

I don't think she streamed it. Okay, sort of nice. But I even noticed like the second night I was playing around a little more with with tempo or with yeah, adding like a tremolo and a chord or something. So I I could imagine if you do it, you know, if you do that regularly where you're playing those every month, it evolves really in an interesting way. So I had um previous experience um writing and scoring for a performance, um, which definitely helped probably just on like a confidence level that I was like, okay, I know I can do this and get into this space. Um but it was interesting because the previous the previous experience I had had was um making a show from scratch with people, and and I wrote the music and made all these vignettes for the characters and the different scenes.

SPEAKER_05 20:50

So it was like uh almost like a theatrical like.

SPEAKER_06 20:54

Yeah, it was a um it was with some really dear friends in the Twin Cities, um, and our group was called Curiosita, and we wrote yeah, a piece called Fat Cat Fall, and it was partially um you know mapped out. There were certain things that were scripted, but then a lot of um the people I was working with were in puppetry or clowning or juggling, um, where there's a lot of play and interaction and improvisation that happened. Um so as the person who was composing and performing the music, and that all I did on my violin, but that was, you know, you're always adjusting because every performance is different. Whereas for Charlie Chaplin it was interesting because I'm collaborating with this person, but it's recorded, and so each time I'm a little different, but he is the same.

SPEAKER_05 21:51

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 21:52

So it was a slight change in dynamic because there wasn't a two way conversation. But it was really cool to have that one way conversation with such an incredible and like revolutionary creative for especially um comedy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:11

You mean chop chocolate? Yeah. Incredible. Um are you gonna do it again?

SPEAKER_06 22:20

It hasn't been talked about yet, but I would love to do something like that again.

SPEAKER_05 22:25

It's knowing you you're probably gonna try to do something slightly different.

SPEAKER_06 22:29

Yeah, you gotta you gotta like turn the dial a little bit. Not necessarily up, but just yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:33

Somewhere in a slightly different direction. But Mr. Bill, have you heard Mimi uh do one of her originals?

SPEAKER_04 22:41

I have not. Uh but I did see uh when you did the duo with uh was it Kevin that you did with. I wanted to ask you what kind of acts are you playing there? Uh that headstock uh is uh familiar and uh uh tell me a little bit about that just for uh a little side note.

SPEAKER_06 23:02

Yeah, we love uh well and I I love that guitar and I'm I'm my goal I'm trying to gig more with that this year.

SPEAKER_04 23:11

How did you find that? How'd you come about that? And what is it?

SPEAKER_06 23:14

Yeah, the guitar itself is uh it's not the guitar I have with me today, so I'm just asked to imagine. But it's uh a Reverend Flat Rock.

SPEAKER_04 23:22

Oh, a Reverend, okay.

SPEAKER_06 23:24

Um and it has the Flat Rock basically has their version of humbucker pickups on it.

SPEAKER_05 23:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 23:30

Right.

SPEAKER_05 23:31

Yeah, so um I would love for you to to do one of your songs. Is that is that cool?

SPEAKER_06 23:37

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 23:38

Yeah, do you have an idea of what you would do? And and the original, of course, right?

SPEAKER_06 23:41

Yeah, well, I in the spirit of um what's in the incubator for the future this year, um I wanted to play Sorry Baby, which is one of the tunes that I played at the duet night. Oh and in the spirit of yeah, stepping up to the challenge. It's a tune that I feel like is still evolving a little bit. Um, but I've already performed it once, and I find that performance is very revealing. Um so I'm I'm gonna learn something about the song by the way. Anyways, um okay, that's running. I'm good to see what I can do. No, sorry. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

It's probably my nive also heavy. You're scaring me. Just die. No, it's too heavy. You say your bag snack, unforgiven parsley. Fever stuck the water snuck high enough. A word or a phrase to make it okay, trying to stop time, to skip time, forget time. It's somewhere in thin, it's a cavin, and it's fuel on your fire. Impossible mire, whatever I bring, it takes everything. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_06 28:38

It's hard to activate your diaphragm when you're sitting down and you're like it's Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:43

What one are you guys playing next?

SPEAKER_06 28:46

Uh I think Gohead's next show is June 20th. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:51

Yeah, I've got you in there.

SPEAKER_06 28:53

What is it? I'm playing Saturday at the Celtic Fest with sitting in with the band on things.

SPEAKER_05 28:59

Where is that?

SPEAKER_06 29:00

In Durango. Oh, yeah. And then April 4th, I'm playing fiddle with Alex Dunn at the pub in Dolores.

SPEAKER_05 29:10

Okay, nice.

SPEAKER_06 29:11

And then I'm doing that Dolly Parton event in April.

SPEAKER_05 29:14

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 29:15

So, yeah, go ahead, doesn't play till June, but I'm busy. You're busy.

SPEAKER_05 29:19

That is awesome. And that's perfect because I would have asked you uh what you had coming up. So we need to know that. And um man, that song was really, really nice. So what what is it called? I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_06 29:31

Sorry, baby.

SPEAKER_05 29:32

Sorry, baby. Okay. Um, and do you have an idea of how many songs including any anything you've done, like plays and all how much stuff you've written? No, I don't count.

SPEAKER_06 29:47

I have a lot of um well, you were asking about what I do with Goathead, and I have like I've written the two originals that I do with them, I wrote for Goathead. Um because a lot of the um the songs I just write for myself um don't tend to be in the Americana genre. So it's kind of it's a fun practice to, you know, I've done I've done composing for, you know, performances, and I've you know been like, okay, let's write some Americana tunes for this band I'm in, um, and then to write things that just kind of come out of me. But it's kind of a fun exercise. I like trying to or like I've had songs or sometimes I'll have lyrics for something and I'll try to put it to two different styles styles and just see what you find. Wow from doing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:43

So what are you doing with the songs that you're writing for yourself that aren't Americana? Are are they just part of the inventory that popped out at any time? Well, it kind of sounds like you may use them with Kevin.

SPEAKER_06 30:55

Yeah, that's the hope of a lot of these songs see the su the light of day. That's right. Right now they're all just on the rec recording app on my phone.

SPEAKER_04 31:08

Good. Don't lose them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 31:11

Yeah, and I think, you know, what I'm working on as I've as I've gotten older is like I'm such a perfectionist that I like when I a lot of the songs when I write them, I hear sonically what I want everything to be. And there's often there's just a lot of um different parts to each song and each and all the sounds that I want to hear or that I do hear in my head. Yeah. And for a long time that kept me from wanting to play them for anyone because I was like, well, and I just like play it on an acoustic guitar. That's not what it is, really.

SPEAKER_05 31:50

No, it's much more than that. I I know that feeling so well. I mean, it's incredible. It's it's very odd.

SPEAKER_06 31:56

For me, it's like lyrics. I I don't always write lyric first and then you know, tune, ver I it goes both directions. Yeah. Sometimes I'll have a little lick or a chord progression first, sometimes the words.

SPEAKER_05 32:14

Um well for something like that play you're talking about, I'm assuming that's a different approach. It's not like we suddenly have an idea for uh a music or some lyrics. It's it's specific. So you have to be able to kind of juggle both sides, I think.

SPEAKER_06 32:31

Yeah, and I think you know, that's where a lot of when I haven't shared music before was because to me the sound of it is so important. Yeah, it's not just I'm not a lyricist, I'm a songwriter.

SPEAKER_05 32:43

I didn't realize you got here in 20 uh late 21 though. So I met you probably by 23, maybe.

SPEAKER_06 32:51

I feel like I started I started coming to the jam. I like first checked it out probably in like January of 2022. Okay. And I think I started going to the jam.

SPEAKER_05 33:04

That's where I met you the first time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 33:06

Yeah. Um but I can't remember.

SPEAKER_05 33:08

Yeah, somewhere in there.

SPEAKER_06 33:09

Somewhere.

SPEAKER_05 33:09

I used to go when I could, not all the time, but then once I started doing fence fine too, uh both my Sundays were like, okay, too much. I'm here.

SPEAKER_06 33:19

Yeah, it was like once I started working there, because I worked there three nights a week. Oh and it was just like by the time I've been there for three nights working, I don't really Where where are you working? Um at the pub in Dolores.

SPEAKER_05 33:32

Oh, at the pub, yeah, yeah, yeah. Were you were you serving at the bar?

SPEAKER_06 33:36

Yep, bartending.

SPEAKER_05 33:37

That's another thing I cannot do. My brain cannot retain all the names of these drinks, and half the time I don't understand what people are saying in a loud environment.

SPEAKER_03 33:46

Oh yeah, you know, totally.

SPEAKER_05 33:48

So somebody's screaming uh I don't know, what do you mean? And then I'll forget people won't pay and walk away. Yeah. I don't remember what it all that you know. I'd be a mess.

SPEAKER_06 33:59

It kind of feels similar to um accompanying Charlie Chaplin films. You gotta your brain is very stimulated the whole time.