It’s been about five years since Detroit’s The Old Adage started making music under the name Mimi and Nino.
The brother-sister duo was an acoustic project started in high school that consisted of only a guitar and a tambourine. Mimi Chavez said that at that point, she and Nino Chavez didn’t really know what they were doing.
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The pair eventually added a drummer and changed the group's name to The Old Adage.
Performing under a genre that the group calls “DIY-pop,” Mimi said the group has a hard time fitting their music into a specific genre. She said the goal is to be pop, though a fan coined the DIY-pop description.
“I like the ring of it because it is pop, but I like to think we are somewhat original and have our own way of doing things,” Mimi said. She added that her and her brother do everything themselves.
Featuring a unique and layered sound, the music is complex and varied. Every song has its own vibe, and even songs on the same album are more different than similar. It makes for fresh, strong tracks.
Nino said the music is influenced by everything, even things that aren’t music. Some of his largest musical influences come from top-40 radio, Twenty One Pilots and contemporary hip-hop.
“We just kind of follow wherever the song takes us,” he said.
They are currently working on new music that should be out by summer, though they aren’t certain what they will be releasing. Nino said they haven’t decided on singles, an EP or a combination.
The group’s songwriting and music-making process changes from project to project, Mimi said.
Their first release, “Matches,” was made by working ideas live over instruments, while their full-length album “Cycles” was written first. Mimi said she would write lyrics and bring them to Nino, and the two would then usually write together.
For the most part, they write in the studio now.
Nino is responsible for a majority of the music and production, while Mimi focuses more on ideas, certain parts of the music and vocal production.
Nino said that when making a song, they have a specific sound in mind, though it never works out perfectly.
“We never seem to hit it, but it still comes out OK in our opinion,” he said.
Mimi said that when something doesn’t turn out the way they envisioned it, it gives the song a different edge without changing the meaning.
“It's like life,” she said. “You have an idea of where it’s going, but yet it usually ends up becoming something completely different than you ever imagined, and there’s a lot of mystery and beauty to that.”
The two are focusing more on making new music rather than performing live, though they are playing a benefit show March 25 at Covenant Baptist Church in West Bloomfield.