MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Mattie Nunn winces, as if someone just stepped on her toe.
She yanks her hands off the two keyboards, and all activity in the studio immediately halts.
“I’m going to say no,” said Mattie, into the microphone. She heard something wrong in the fifth attempt to play the song “Don’t Start Now.”
The band tries it again - and this time finally nails it.
With that, the Woodbury-based family band called NunnAbove took another step toward their shared goal - perfecting their distinctive music.
“It’s the next generation of the Minneapolis sound,” beamed Karl Demer, band producer and owner of Atomic K Records & Productions.
GIGS THIS SUMMER
The band is flirting with big-time success. It landed a spot on “America’s Got Talent,” recorded its first album in November and distributes songs on Spotify, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported.
Despite the threat of the coronavirus, they are optimistic about a busy summer, with planned gigs in outdoor and indoor venues. Every one of them - Candace, 19; Mattie, 18; Bennett, 16; and Wisdom, 14 - woke at 5 a.m. recently for a day-long video-shooting session, at Atomic K studios in Minneapolis.
During the session, Ed Nunn hovered in back, jumping up to adjust a mic or fetch a drink for one of his children.
During a break, he was asked: How did they achieve this?
“Let’s say it didn’t just” - he rolled his eyes - “happen.”
MUSIC NOT OPTIONAL
Music was not optional at the Nunn home.
“We said the kids had to play an instrument. It didn’t matter which one,” Ed Nunn said.
The two girls began music lessons when they were 3 and 4 years old.
Years passed, the boys began lessons, and Nunn added voice lessons to the mix.
Finally, one day in 2013, he looked over a stack of bills.
One was for a $6,000 drum set. Another was for a $1,000 microphone, and then a $5,000 guitar. He paid four bills for tutoring for instruments, and more bills for voice lessons. “It’s a lot of money. I am not a rich guy,” Nunn said.
He called a family conference. “I told them, ‘If you want to do this, do it as a band. You have to take it seriously.’ ”
That was the birth of NunnAbove.
FORMING A BOND
The children played together for the first time at a Christmas recital. “They weren’t very good,” Nunn said.
But they had formed a bond.
No longer did they need their dad to tell them to work hard. They developed their own drive to succeed.
They practiced every day, individually and then together. They coached each other.
Today their routine includes three hours of practice, six days a week - and on Sunday playing at Light the Way Church in Cottage Grove.
“We love to practice,” explained Bennett. “If you want to do music, you practice. Otherwise, you won’t be the best you can be.”
Does it take too much time? “It’s time you would just be using on something else,” shrugged Mattie. “It’s worth it.”
AMERICA’S GOT TALENT
The group seized opportunities.
When a producer saw a NunnAbove video, he told Cadence to start playing bass. She did, and in 2018 the producer approved an appearance on “America’s Got Talent.”
They plunged into the business of music. They founded their own company, Timbre Inc., and today they are all shareholders.
They still quarrel, as siblings normally do - but there is a difference. “We fight and argue, but we try to keep it in a loving way,” said Cadence.
They have a hierarchy. Mattie, the proficient songwriter, leads the group, and keeps them together.
“Unity - that is Mattie’s job,” said Cadence.
Now they are singularly focused.
“Everything is calculated,” said Bennett. No one acts alone.
“I say, ‘This is what I am posting, and this is why,’ and then I send it to my manager and producer to check and re-check.”
‘I LOVE THE ENERGY IN THAT’
At the video recording session, spirits were high.
The four teenagers set up their instruments in the black-walled studio, with snarls of wires on the floor and Atomic K’s four Emmy Awards around them.
They worked through songs, most of them written by Mattie.
During “Summer Crush,” swivel-headed Cadence belted out a note so strong that everyone in the studio took a step backward.
Cadence coaches, breaking into the middle of songs. “Right there. I need a more prominent slide,” she said, pointing to Bennett and his guitar.
They took a break, and then Mattie called them back to work. “Focus up,” she said.
Just before lunchtime, NunnAbove played the last chord.
Silence hung in the air. Everyone was hungry. Was the recording good enough?
“I love the energy in that,” said Demer, speaking from behind the mixing board.
Cadence boomed into the mic: “Feed me!”
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