Presenting: 16-year-old Mira/Mimi Bloo’s song “The Beat”. (You All Helped Make It Happen).
Hello loves.
THE PATREON HAS HELPED BIRTH A NEW ARTST, and it’s a beautiful day.
This is Mira, or newly, the artist Mimi Bloo.
And it’s HER BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!
She’s sixteen.
She’s in Belgium.
TL;DR: The patreon is finding something extraordinary today.
Lance and I discovered Mira at Graveside Variety when she came in spontaneously with her mom….Lance and I helped her finish (or start finishing?) a song, and today she’s putting out her OWN first whole collection, with help from my team, my friends, and….all of you. Her artist name is Mimi Bloo, and you can listen her song “The Beat” HERE.
……
The longer story….
Good morning loves.
First of all I love this sweater more than life itself.
Greetings from a dishevled me, freshly landed from train that carried me from NYC to Boston. The concert/conversation with Ilana Gilovich at Life in Trust last night in NYC was just incredible, just a beautiful crowd and deep dive into the important topics…much more on that coming soon. (There was a very mentally unwell heckler, which was a Thing). For those of you who were worried about her (or me), we took care of the situation (thanks, Hampton). Thank you to ALL of you who helped me pack the place to the gills. The film and the transcript and more coming soon, plus photos care of Hayley Rosenblum and Krys Fox.
…….
And now the main event of the day.
This post has been coming together for (literally) months, and it’s a joy to put in some final thoughts and release this one today, on Mira’s BIRTHDAY, no less.
Who is Mira? You may remember.
If you were following the posts about a year ago, when we were in the heyday of Graveside Variety, the little pop-up venue I started in Upstate New York (which was partly funded using patron dollars), you may remember this story.
……………….
Here’s the full story as I wrote it in a post from Graveside Variety in August 2023….
I was sitting at a chair in the foyer, sewing (more on that later), when a mom came up to me.
Okay, I didn’t know she was a mom yet. But she told me that her fourteen-year-old daughter was in the crowd and was too nervous to ask to sing a song.
The woman had an accent, and I leaned in to chat with her, and learned that she was from Belgium, was in NYC for vacation, and had only found out about Graveside Variety from a facebook post I’d put up the day before, promoting the show. She’d decided to throw caution to the wind, gather up her fourteen-year old, Mira, and get on the bus to Woodstock for the show, where I has said “there would be singing”.
“Mira loves to sing”, she said, in her very lovely Belgian accent.
I asked her to go get Mira from the crowd, and bring her to the foyer.
A minute later Mira was next to me, in a blue dress, looking mostly at the floor, asking if she could please sing “Into the Unknown” from Frozen II. I won’t get into how much I love that song here, but I love it deeply. It got me through some rough spots and long drives with Ash during Pandemic New Zealand.
OF COURSE YOU CAN SING INTO THE UNKNOWN I told her, and I texted Lance on stage to put her in the line-up. Fourteen-year-old Mira seemed happy…but then she paused and asked if she could ask me a another question. Sure.
“How do you write a song?” She said.
“It’s complicated.” I said. “What exactly do you mean?”
“I mean I have words and a melody but I don’t really know how to do chords.” She said.
I looked at her. I wish I had had balls like that at fourteen. Maybe I did? But not in the songwriting department. I was so scared all the time. I was already so proud of her for even asking me the question.
I said “I think I can explain that to you after you sing the Frozen Song. On stage. Is that okay?”
She nodded.
Lance took a song break, and someone else took stage, and I pulled him into the dressing room.
“We have a job.” I told him.
“Okay, what’s the job?” I love Lance Horne more than almost anybody. He’s just always game and always on.
“There’s a fourteen year old girl from Belgium totally out of her element who wants to sing Into the Unknown from Frozen II but she’s also a songwriter and she wants to put her songs to chords and we should just do it on stage in front of everybody and Show Her The Ways.”
“Got it” said Lance.
We brought Mira on stage, and she sang the frozen song…and KILLED IT….and got a standing ovation. We were all just blown away by her fearless voice and her stage presence. The shy little girl just exploded into a full diva before our very eyes.
And then I came to the stage, and Lance and I sat at the piano, and we asked Mira if she wanted to work on her song….
And she said yes, and took a deep breath, and sang these words, clear as a bell, into the microphone:
Keep walking on a road
I don’t know, is this the way
no one can know.
I don’t feel good….don’t feel like me
But that’s okay
I’m getting bored,
where is the fun
follow the group,
you’ll like it hun
I don’t feel good
don’t feel like me
But that’s okay
One day I’ll find my place
Someday I’ll be okay
Maybe I should just obey
to do what they want me to…….
…..And we listened to her sing.
And I looked at Lance, and Lance looked at me,
and as she kept singing, I looked across the room at John Coons,
and I couldn’t see through the tears in my eyes.
John was crying, too.
Just…y’know….weeping.
Because she was so, so good.
And because she trusted us all.
Lance and I asked her to sing it again, and everybody cheered for her, and we put chords under the song, and she kept singing, and the song literally took flight as we all sat there, watching the magic fabric of music and community lift us all into some other realm. It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, watching a whole room magic carpet a song, and a fourteen-year-old songwriter, into a whole new place.
We all agreed, there on the spot, that the song was amazing, and that she should record it with Lance. Before she flew back to Belgium, she and Lance got together in NYC and rumor has it…they made the recording and it turned out beautifully.
I got this in an email from Mira:
It went better than I could have ever expected and that was probably the best day of my life!
…and this in an email from Mira’s mom:
….In a world of uncertainty and unimaginable possibilities, it’s like you gave me a glimpse of a future where Mira might sparkle and shine. I don’t know how much of that future I’ll get to be a part of, so that really meant the world to me.
You also showed her how amazing life can be, if you’re brave enough to jump (she’s at an age where she needs to hear it from someone who’s not her mother, so thanks for backing me up there 😉
So, thank you, and Lance, for your generosity and kindness…
…..
This is why I started a venue.
This is literally why.
So that things like this could happen.
And with your blessing, and Mira’s blessing, we are sharing the recording with you….
Her face.
My heart.
Right?
So if you’re wondering why you’re on the other side of the world, funding a venue run by a weird rock-star-in-hiding….this is why.
This is why.
……
And here’s Mira’s mom in HER WORDS telling the story of how it came together…
In August 2023, we spent two weeks in Manhattan cat-sitting for my cousin. Mira had asked if she could sing karaoke in a bar in NYC while we were there. But you have to be 21 to get into these bars, so I didn’t know how to make that work. Mira was just 14.
One morning, I was scrolling through Facebook and came across one of Amanda’s posts about a “Party around the piano with Lance Horne at Graveside Variety: our dorky musical theater piano singalong/karaoke night and it always fills up, so get a ticket now if you’re coming.”
I’d introduced Mira to the music of Amanda Palmer and the Dresden Dolls a few months before and she loved the idea of going to this “party around a piano”. So, we decided to have a girls’ night out, in Woodstock. It wasn’t too far from NYC with the subway and a bus. Stefaan and Hugo, my husband and son, would walk all over NYC until we returned.
We arrived in Woodstock, checked into our B&B and walked over to the cemetery, where a deer was strolling between the graves. We listened to the band playing at Colony, and at 6.30pm we went over to Graveside Variety and picked a chair on the second row in the room with the piano. Mira wanted to make sure we were on time.
At 7pm Lance Horne started playing the piano, and then one after the other artist got up from the audience to sing songs from musicals, covers, originals … we loved it. Mira is a huge musical fan. She was so happy!
At one point they said, “if you want to sing a song just let us know – we’re here to have fun!” and the piano party continued…
I don’t like stages. I get uncomfortable asking a question at a conference. But Mira is different, she loves a stage… so, after a couple more songs pass, she’s tugging my sleeve telling me she wants to sing a song. But she’s too shy to ask, so she wants me to ask for her. I whisper, “ok Mira, hang on – let’s see if there’s someone outside we can ask” So, we get up and go into the room next door, and Amanda is sitting there in an armchair mending her shirt.
So I say, “Amanda, hi. This is my fourteen year old daughter, Mira … she’d like to ask you if she can sing a song”. Amanda says, “sure!”, and they have a short conversation while I take some photos and then we go back to our seats. I don’t know what they talked about, but Mira seems happy.
So, Mira is allowed to sing a song (Into the unknown, from Frozen 2) and the audience loves it. Then Amanda says, “Mira asked me just before, if I could give her some tips on songwriting – so if you want Mira, we can give you a songwriting lesson … if you want to sing your song? You’re among friends now”
(I had no idea what song Mira had in mind)
Accompanied by an impromptu piano arrangement by Lance and Amanda, Mira starts singing her unfinished song to a room of professional singers and songwriters…
By the looks of her, she was incredibly nervous. But she sang and… they love it and offer to record it in a studio before we leave New York.
I still can’t believe that happened.
And so Mira spent some time during the second week in NYC finishing the lyrics for her song. She sent them to Amanda. Amanda said, “your words are powerful”. Lance asked her to sing a voice memo into garage band so he can compose a piano arrangement. And on the Friday before we flew back to Belgium, Mira recorded her song in Jacob’s apartment studio, around the corner from Chelsea Hotel.
It was her first song.
When we returned to Belgium, she enrolled in after-school musical classes. We gave her a small studio set-up, with a second-hand laptop, a keyboard and a microphone. She was familiar with Garage Band, which she now started exploring to see how it could help her make music. We didn’t hear a single song for a year – although we could hear her singing from her bedroom. And at the start of summer she said, “I’m ready”.
Since July 2024 she has uploaded 32 songs, most of them originals.
It’s like the Woodstock adventure gave her permission to write songs. She decides when they’re ready. And when she feels comfortable, she uploads them to Soundcloud.
In August 2024, the NYC song was sent back to us, now fully arranged with the piano, a cellist, a double bass, and a mellotron. It’s beautiful, like the soundtrack to a fairy tale.
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Here’s a little interview Mira’s mom did with her about the song and the Woodstock experience…
How much of the song did you have in your head, before you sang it on stage at Graveside Variety?
I had two sentences that had been on my mind for a while “Keep walking on, a road I don’t know. Is this the way? No one will know” and the start of a melody.
But what you sang on stage was longer than that? How did that happen?
Well, I had to improvise the rest of the song on stage.
I’d asked Amanda about songwriting because I love her music, and I was curious to hear how you can become a songwriter. I told her I had a song I was working on, but really it was just two sentences.
After I sang the Frozen song, Amanda asked if I wanted to sing the song I had talked to her about – on stage in front of everybody! To be honest, at that point I just wanted to get off stage really badly. I felt like I was going to throw up because I was so nervous!
I regretted asking Amanda for help with songwriting. But I also felt like I had gotten myself into this situation, so now I had to go through with it. Luckily the audience and the artists in the room were very kind and supportive. So, I jumped!
It was amazing, because when Lance started playing the piano, it was like we’d practiced the song a million times, even though it was the first time, and I didn’t even know all of the lyrics when I started to sing.
When Amanda said I could record the song in a studio in New York, I thought it was just something she was saying to the crowd as part of the show. It didn’t feel real. I kept thinking, if this is real than maybe I’m Santa Claus. But there was also a crazy little voice in my head saying “Yes! I finally convinced somebody! Stay humble!”
After the show ended, people came up to me and gave me a hug. I felt like I belonged.
Finishing the rest of the lyrics, when we returned to NYC, wasn’t too difficult. I had a lot of thoughts in my head. I was thinking about school and how I never felt like I really belonged, but I was also thinking about everything that happened in Woodstock and where this road might take me if I kept walking along it. So, the words for the rest of the song came easily.
How was the past year, writing your songs from home?
At first my confidence was very low. I had to figure out how to use the equipment and then the sound wasn’t how I thought it would be. I thought the songs should be polished like a pop song. But slowly, I started appreciating how the songs sounded homemade.
I write a lot of my songs on a notebook that I take to school with me. When I get home, I try to find samples that resemble the tune I have in my head, samples to fit my lyrics. I write most of my songs at school or during the weekend.
How do you see the future?
I would love to perform my music on stage. I would love the audience to connect with my songs and for my songs to mean something to them.
What do you think of “The Beat”, the song you made in NYC?
It reminds me a lot of growing up and coming of age stories. I think it’s really beautiful. It’s like the introduction to my own story, but it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. And that’s what I want my music to do.
….
I keep thinking about that moment that Mira took stage.
I don’t know if you’re ever tried to do that: but it takes an incredible degree of stage-bravery. I was just stunned at this 14-year-old’s boldness. I loved her. And the song was not just good, it was great.
I would love all of you to celebrate this new artist, Mira, this moment, and the fact that without the patreon, none of this would have happened. The patreon gave birth to the venue, and the venue gave birth to Lance and Party Around a Piano Woodstock Edition, and that night gave birth to Mira meeting Lance, and now….she’s off and running.
This is what it’s all about. I love the patreon for the way it funds my work, but I also love it for how it strengthens the entire community. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, and I don’t expect to do it often. This patreon isn’t a record label.
But sometimes….you gotta break with convention, and I didn’t think any of you would mind. We got to make something really, really special here, and give work to a whole handful of artists. I don’t have ANY ownership over Mira’s work or this song: we gave it to her. If it blows up on Spotify, we just applaud. She’s off to be her own boss, have her own destiny.
So many hands needed to bring this project – this MOMENT – to life. Mira, her mom, that facebook post, Lance, the people working at the venue that night, me, the engineers….and ALL OF YOU.
It’s also – TA DA – Mira’s BIRTHDAY TODAY!!! The song has been done for a few months.
Some of the money from this post will also go straight into Mira’s pocket, to give her a little fund age to promote her record, or buy a new instrument, or do whatever she’s like.
To all of you: thank you for your patronage. Look what we did.
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The song – featuring Lance Horne, and mixed by Jherek Bischoff – is out TODAY DECEMBER 4TH, which is Mira’s 16th birthday.
So what I’m asking you to do is FOLLOW MIRA/MIMI BLOO to build up some support, and LISTEN TO THE SONG HERE!
……
Here are the credits for the song:
Mira – Vocals
Lance Horne – Pianist, Arranger, Producer
Jacob Tourjeman – Engineer
Jherek Bischoff – Mixing Engineer, Mastering Engineer
Mairi Dorman-Phaneuf – Cellist
……
A special thanks, my friends, to LANCE. Can we get a hand for this man?
Lance said yes.
Lance is game.
Lance is a musical genius, but he’s also a great friend, and a great connector of the universe.
I just love him so much.
(He’s also DEEP in candle season at his side-hustle candle company, WELIGHT in NYC if you wanna order some holiday candle presents and support him! I just ordered 7.)
Here’s Lance with his Husband Kurt, in candle-land.
GO BUY SOME CANDLES.
XXX
That’s it.
WE DID IT.
I LOVE YOU ALL!!!
AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIRA!!!!
YOU’RE A STAR.
xxx
AFP