Mendenhall sees vinyl as way to promote new CD

By JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer | Wednesday, April 9, 2008 12:20 PM PDT ∞

Trying to figure out where to start local musician Joanie Mendenhall's story is no easy task.

Is it her solo acoustic/pop career? Her role as keyboardist in boyfriend Matt Curreri's band, the Exfriends? Her ongoing partnership with fellow singer-songwriter Angela Correa in the band the Low Standards? The fact that she teaches piano next to where Cindy Lee Berryhill is teaching guitar? Or perhaps the fact that on Wednesday, she and Correa's band Correatown are jointly issuing a real, honest-to-goodness 45 rpm 7-inch single?

Let's start with the vinyl.

Why, 25 years after the ascendance of the CD format, are Mendenhall and Correa issuing a 45?

"We're doing the 45 first, and some shows to kind of gear up for the album release," Mendenhall said from her home in Carlsbad.

She has her second solo CD finished, but is using the 45 as a bit of a teaser for the full CD.

"This is the first time I've put anything on vinyl; I've done a split single with Angela Correa, with one song from my upcoming album and one song from her on the other side.

"It's really exciting to have that piece of wax with your song on it."

But how many people still have record players on which they could even listen to a 45? A fair question, she said, revealing that her own turntable is on the fritz.

"We only did 300 to see how it goes."

Growing up in Encinitas, Mendenhall said she and her two younger sisters got their earliest musical education from their parents.

"My dad is a totally decent guitar player and has a great ear for popular and rock music and jazz stuff. So he definitely has it in his blood, but never really pursued it. My mom is a really good piano player and singer, but didn't really go anywhere with it."

Mendenhall said her parents tell her that when she was 4, they were at the Plaza Camino Real mall in Carlsbad, where she saw a salesman playing an organ at a music store ---- and demanded music lessons all the way home.

While taking piano lessons for many years in the traditional classical repertoire, she won an award one year in the statewide Bach Festival.

"What I won was an organ scholarship. I went down and took organ lessons at this gigantic pipe organ in La Jolla. From that, I ended up getting a job in a Lutheran church every week, and so that was my first musical paycheck."

But while she was pulling in money from playing in a church on Sundays, she was also involved in two different contemporary bands in high school.

"One was an acoustic, like progressive folk, and then the other band ---- the all-girl band ---- we thought we were a punk band, but it was probably a screwed-up pop band. Which is basically what I am now ---- a screwed-up pop band."

The new CD coming out this summer ("We don't have a release date set yet") will be under her own name, Mendenhall said, even though she's spent the past few years fronting a band called, first, the JoanieMen and then Joanie and the Secretaries.

She said nobody got the wordplay with the first band name, and that the finished CD is more personal than a band statement.

"Now that I listen to it, it's more about me."

With her main income coming from teaching piano, Mendenhall said she has the schedule flexibility to try to put together some tours in support of the new CD.

"We're trying to set some plans in motion for this summer. We have a new Exfriends album coming out this summer as well, so we're trying to figure out a way to tour."

But she said she doesn't want to be gone too long.

"The part of teaching music that's really fun is when your students are advancing and doing well, and you have to be here on a regular basis for that."

Joanie Mendenhall and Andrea Correa, with Michael Tiernan

When: 8 p.m. April 16

Where: Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach

Admission: $8

Info: (858) 481-8140 or bellyup.com

Web: joaniemendenhall.com

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