Rick and Mimi Noland
RICK AND MIMI NOLAND
Music always has been center stage in the lives of this brother and sister. They were caught up, like many children of the ‘60s and ‘70s, by the Beatles and the riptide of musical talent that rolled over the country. Their parents piled them into the family station wagon with a rear-window banner that read BEATLES OR BUST and drove them to the Chicago stockyards to hear that famous Beatles concert. The roar of the crowd—like nothing heard before or since—drove them under their seats. They grew up in the chaos of a house where music crowded out living—playing beneath (and later at) a grand piano constantly in use, maneuvering around sound equipment and guitars, and tripping over cables. Although other pursuits—antiques (Rick) and horses and law enforcement (Mimi)—have entered their adult lives, these two, separately and as a team, keep coming back to music.
MIMI NOLAND
Mimi Noland owns and operates a horse farm in Maple Plain. She is a prolific songwriter as well as a singer, writer, author (her first book was published at 17), photographer, and illustrator of best-selling books. Mimi's drawings of Thurber-like bears romp through the Hug Therapy books, now with over 100,000 in print and in 30 foreign editions, and the Bearables books, (what real Minnesota bears can teach humans), co-authored with her mother, also in overseas versions.. After attending Concordia College in Moorhead, she graduated with a B.A. in psychology from Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY. While at each school, she toured with a high-profile, a capella double octet. As a Wayzata Police Reserve Officer, she and her Champion Pinto horse were Wayzata's first mounted police team. She went back to school for an A.A. in law enforcement and completed her program with police skills at Hibbing LETC, but the demands of her horses overrode career plans. Now the farm and horses—her own and her boarders'—and all those other animals lucky enough to live with her are her first priority, along with nonstop songwriting. Mimi sang with her brother, guitarist/singer Rick Noland, on his first album "The Road Back Home" (Blue Zoo Music) and is working on “Flowers Without Rain,” her own album of originals
Mimi Noland makes heart-to-heart connections with lyrical songs that are life sketches—intimate and sometimes stunningly honest. Her voice has a shine to it that, according to one devoted listener, “goes right on shining after the song ends.” A bit on the folk side with an echo of Judy Collins (a comparison made by many, to her humble amazement!). Her music has been picked up for play on internet radio, especially Jazzy J.’s Twin Cities Radio, and featured on radio out of Bloomington, IL. She adds effortless harmonies to her own recordings and to her brother’s (and others’) performances, sometimes making her audiences blink with an impromptu surprise—improvised lyrics or descants or vocal sound effects. Mimi and Rick Noland, with their unique brother-sister blend, have performed in cafes and coffee houses, at benefits and other special events.
See YouTube for songs performed by Rick and Mimi.
https://www.youtube.com/user/ricknoland
https://www.youtube.com/user/MImiNoland