This past Saturday, Cleveland duo mr. Gnome returned home to finish up their recent tour for their newest album, Madness in Miniature. To a packed house at the Beachland Ballroom, the duo comprising Nicole Barille and Sam Meister proved they aren’t just another married pair.
Meister plays HUGE on the set while Barille brings a powerhouse voice and killer guitar skills to her side of the stage. A mr. Gnome show promises to be an transcendental experience. Close your eyes, and you’ll begin to feel your soul spill forth from your body and float off to travel through time.
We had an opportunity to catch up with Barille to talk about the new album, how it is being in a band with her husband, and what’s really up with that white rabbit in all their work.
Can you tell me a little bit about how you and Sam met and started playing together?
We met in high school, and we’ve known each other ever since then. We started jamming throughout college, but it didn’t really ever turn into anything. Then when we graduated college we were playing in this band, and he was singing and playing guitar, I was doing lead guitar and backup vocals. In our free time between that band I kind of brought some songs I was working on to him, and he sat down behind the drum kit, and that’s kind of how mr. Gnome started. We just started writing and recording and having a lot of fun with that, you know?
What’s the story behind the name?
We have a bunch of stories that we made up, but there’s really no good story. We were called Gnome at first, but then we thought there was another band called that, so we just slapped a “mr.” on there. There’s a David Bowie song and a Pink Floyd song with Gnome in them, so we’ll just say that it came from there.
So are those two of the musicians you’d say you grew up listening to?
Yeah, we’re both kind of all over the place. Sam’s dad is a big classic rock collector, so when I met Sam, he turned me on to David Bowie, the Ziggy Stardust stuff, and Pink Floyd, like really old Pink Floyd, Otis Redding—I hadn’t gotten into soul stuff like that. You know, I grew up in the grunge age, so I was always into dirty rock ‘n roll and stuff like that, then together when we went to college we started listening to Portishead and more spaced out things. That’s definitely what influenced me to try and sing. You know, I wasn’t really attracted to the girl rocker singers, so when I heard things like Portishead it was really cool to hear a different way that girls could sing over music and kind of take a more spaced out approach.
Does it ever get weird being in a band with your husband?
No, man, I don’t know how other people do it in bands with a group of like dirty guys. I don’t know, we’re so comfortable with each other so it’s a lot of fun, and we can be really honest with each other when we’re writing. I don’t know a group of guys or girls or whatever that are just friends who are kind of more worried about hurting each other’s feelings if they don’t like where the song is going, but we’re brutally honest with each other if we don’t like where one or the other is going, so I think the songs evolve a lot quicker because of that. We kind of cut to the chase and figure out where we want to go. We always just try to get the songs written and get to a point where we’re both happy with them.
How do you approach the writing process?
I always have this crazy urge to get music out of me, it’s kind of like this therapeutic thing that I’ve been doing since I was thirteen when I got a guitar, so I’m always tinkering away, trying to work on melodies and riffs. Half the time, I’ll bring those initial riffs and melodies to Sam and just let the sound evolve and grow, and sometimes we’ll just jam for three hours and see kind of what comes from it.
You’ve got three albums out right now. How do you think Madness in Miniature compares to the other two?
I think with any job, if you’re working at it every single day like we are, you’re going to get better at it and grow with what you’re doing. Or just figure out what you really like with what you’re doing. I hope that’s what’s going on with Madness. I think finally we were able to take a lot of time with this record and make a full record and have it be more of an experience instead of just a bunch of songs on a CD. We’ve always been really attracted to albums like that, you know, you just put it on and it flows all the way through, so that’s definitely what we were going for.
Let’s talk about the music videos for a minute. I think they’re filled with this dark whimsy; from where do you draw inspiration for them?
They’re totally all over the place. Sam, before we started, was doing a lot of video work. So we started thinking of doing video for the song “Night of the Crickets,” so Sam just kept listening to the song and came up with this concept behind it with a lot of symbolism and a lot of surrealism; we’re both huge fans of surreal art. He’s always trying to paint a picture with what he makes through the videos. So I think ever since then that’s been what we’ve been going with, not trying to make it this super literal thing. Also, we don’t like a whole lot of attention in the video, that’s not really our thing, we kind of like to hide more, so it’s cool to write a whole weird surreal dream-like story behind it and have that be more of an art piece behind the song.
I’ve got to ask you, what’s up with this rabbit that keeps appearing in your videos and cover art?
Well, I don’t know how the rabbit became such a huge part of our work. I wrote lyrics to a song, it kind of just popped up in my head, kind of like the rabbit being part of your subconscious, almost like your alter-ego, and then when we were shooting “Night of the Crickets,” we went to a costume shop, and there was this creepy rabbit costume just sitting in the corner staring at us. We spent way too much money on it, and we realized we were going to have to put it in absolutely everything in order to have it pay itself back.
How did it feel to find out you were a Rolling Stone Band to Watch?
It was super cool. I try not to get caught up in press too much, press is totally cool, and it means a lot to know that people like what you’re doing, but it’s more about playing shows and connecting with audiences, you know?
Which other Cleveland bands do you think people should have on their radar?
We’ve been friends with this band, If These Trees Could Talk, for a while. They’re out of Akron, and they’re instrumental, and they’re kind of all over the place. I just think they’re amazing. HotChaCha, too. There’s a lot of great music in Cleveland. I think the climate has to do with the artistic approach people take to music, you know, in the winter time you can kind of go crazy and get really depressed, or you can just pour it all into whatever art—if you’re an artist—that you’re working on.
This holiday season, get your hands on a vinyl copy of mr. Gnome’s Madness in Miniature, courtesy of the band! Just leave us a comment and let us know who/what your alter-ego would be. Most creative response scores this album; winner must have a mailing address in North America. You’ve got through the end of the year to enter—we’ll notify the winner on January 2nd!
