Seniors Carli Olmstead and Olivia Mann are a recently developed musical duo consisting of guitar and singing. Both girls started these hobbies separately at very young ages.

“I’ve been playing guitar for like, five or six years now. My dad has always played guitar but he kinda stopped playing, we always have guitars around our house and stuff so I decided to pick one up today and just kinda kept going with it,” Olmstead said.

 “I’ve been singing my entire life basically for as long as I can remember since I was little. My sister is a huge performer and she grew up singing so it kinda influenced my- want to be a singer as well,” Mann said.

The girls had never previously thought to combine their talents. The duo formed randomly for a talent show performance. 

“One day we were just sitting together and then she said ‘Oh I actually know how to play the guitar’ and I was like ‘That’s really funny because I can sing’ and so we started a little duo and decided to do the talent show together. Not my first time no, I sing the national anthem a lot for the school and I did the talent show last year, so I’ve been around the school a couple times,” Mann said.

With their differing individual talents blending together naturally, little effort had to go into preparation and rehearsing for their performance. The duo is already in the works of planning their next public appearance. 

“I can play probably almost any song as long as I have the chords and as long as she has the lyrics. I mean we can probably play a lot of songs,” Olmstead said.

“Not a lot of practice really goes into it, I just learn the song, sing the song, and then we do it together and just practice with the combining,” Mann said.

“We’ve only performed together the one time but we are planning on performing together more, maybe we’ll be at Rosechella, maybe we’ll see something on Instagram, I’m not sure,” Mann said.

With their debut performance at the talent show, the girls got rewarded with enthusiasm to continue their craft and face fears they previously had. 

“I think we were both more excited because we were both really proud of our work and what we did,” Mann said.

“I’ve never played the guitar for anyone other than my family so playing the guitar in front of my classmates was a little bit scary but I had Olivia with me so it was less nerve racking,” Olmstead said.

With their shared musical experiences, Mann and Olmstead’s friendship has only grown stronger.

“My favorite part is just being best friends with someone and sharing our talents together, I think it’s really fun to just blend two things that we both really enjoy doing and putting into one thing,” Mann said.

“She’s a really good singer, so it’s nice to be with her,” Olmstead said.