MNN Extended Interview: Corey Medina

Transcript

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Marie Rock: You’re listening to Minnesota Native News. I’m Marie Rock. This week, we revisit Producer Travis Zimmerman’s conversation with Corey Medina, about his Navajo family’s influence on his musical journey over the last decade in northern Minnesota.

Corey Medina: I'm Corey Medina, I'm born for the Salt Rock clan. My grandpa's part of the Towering House clan and I'm from Shiprock, New Mexico on the Navajo Dine Nation. I started playing guitar when I was about 12 years old. And I just just with the intent to just play blues, you know, I want to play blues, I want to play really cool guitar solos, and I just I never really wanted to be a shredder, but I just was like, man, I just, I want to make people feel the way I feel when I listen to blues, you know, when I listen to B.B. King or even like Aretha Franklin. Then you hear some of those guitars that can really make the guitars sing and just, you just feel the emotion of it.

And right away, I was just, you know, no siblings, no cousins, just me and all the adults in my family. So naturally, I was listening to what everyone around me was listening to, and that was a lot of blues, a lot of old country. And being from the South and the Navajo reservation, we're very blue collar, we're very, you know, all my uncles and my family were all welders. My grandpa who raised me, who's like my father figure, was a motor grader operator building roads on our res dirt roads. So, I was always surrounded by music. And I come from a family like many where art wasn't really anything that was really a priority to pursue. If it didn't bring, if it didn't, if it didn't bring money in or if it didn't get you really get your family anywhere, you know, with, with, with money and monetary stuff, you know, we come from a lot of communities where we can't really pursue art like that.

My mom just let me know and just really encouraged me from the from the beginning that like she just let me know that cause no matter where I go, she's like, you're here to bring light and she said, that's your native name. That's the name your grandma gave you.

Travis Zimmerman: So, did you ever expect to achieve this amount of success, all these fans and creating albums?

Corey Medina: Not everybody can make albums, not everybody can do those things, and I'm really grateful. So I released my first album, solo album in 2015 it was called Old Dog Crying and that was produced by Garlic Brown up here and all those songs I wrote in Shiprock with my old band called Old Medicine. I just created my first blues rock band down there. The drummer was my worship leader for church and the bassist was the church bass player. I said hey, let's go play some of this sinner music. It was cool, I wrote all those songs with them. Then I moved up here and I tried recording those songs at a studio with a different drummer. Nothing on the drummer, but it wasn't working. I flew up my two Navajo dudes, I flew them up here. We recorded at Supple Studios. Garlic Brown from Red Lake, he mixed and mastered it, and that was my first album.
Gary and Eric, they were my first choices when I first moved to town. If I were to make a dream band, it was Gary Brostein, Eric Sundin, and now I got them and I'm so glad that manifested. Since 2016, Gary and Eric have been playing with me full-time, and that's when Corey Medina and Brothers started, where it was a band outfit and now we're going on 2026 it's gonna be 10 years that the band's been playing together um and it's been it's been quite the ride coming from Shiprock New Mexico and uh laying down a new music foundation in northern Minnesota Bemidji so um but yeah so as far as albums go we released um one EP, um that was the first, it's called the Corey Medina or CMBEP, and then our second album was called-- was a bootleg, and it was called The Coffee Sessions Bootleg and those, we actually printed out the CD covers and burned-- Eric burned all the CDs and so there's a good maybe 300 of those floating around somewhere because we sold those only at shows. It was a live bootleg, and then we released our first studio album, Better Days, in I think 2018, 2019 was our first studio album. And then we released our second studio album, Soak in 2021, coming out of the pandemic. And our last album that we released was really special because we were the last band to record the tape at Winterland Studios over in Minneapolis.

Marie Rock: That’s all for this week’s episode. Join us next time for more voices and stories that inform, uplift and shape our communities, right here on Minnesota Native News.

Listen to Minnesota Native News online anytime at Minnesota-native-news-dot-org. You can also listen to us on demand on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, PRX, and Podchaser.

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Marie Rock: Minnesota Native News is produced by AMPERS: Diverse Radio for Minnesota's Communities. Made possible by funding from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.