When I was in high school, my best friend, Raymond Wallace introduced me to Nirvana. They are another of my favorite bands. Anyway, Ray played the guitar and we sang together mostly Nirvana covers as a duo. We called ourselves the Death Poets. In 1994 I graduated and moved to Tucson. That is where I started making my own music for the first time.
My parents had gotten me an electric guitar as a graduation gift. I sat in my little studio apartment and used a dual deck cassette recorder to make little songs under the name Rachel's Morbidity. I made three tapes with six songs each. I went to a local recording studio to have bulk copies of my tapes produced and had them on consignment at a record store. The first album, called Deathbed Alarmclock, sold six copies. The second album, called Mordant Nocturne, only sold one. I never had enough money to pay for studio time to produce the third album, called Soma Tack.
For a little while, when I was in the church, I played rhythm guitar for a country band, called Saddle Creek. The singer was named Karl and the bassist was my best friend at the time, Randy. The only thing we ever worked on was a cover of the Wolves by Garth Brooks. I think we were only together for a month before we disbanded. I wish we had recorded our practice sessions of that song. We did it quite well.
Years went by and I became an avid karaoke singer. One night, a guy named Jamie approached me. He told me that he admired my singing. He had put together a band for the purpose of having me sing for it. He played lead guitar, a guy named Justin played bass and a guy named Matt played rhythm guitar. We used a drum machine to make our beats. I named the band, Shadow Puppets after a book title from one of my favorite authors, Orson Scott Card. We made maybe four songs, but Jamie accidentally erased most of them from his computer. The only surviving song is called Scar Chasm. I'm going to put together a music video for it and put it on YouTube and our MySpace page.
When I met Kayla, I found out she's a drummer. I wanted her to play drums for Shadow Puppets, but Jamie didn't want her to. I told him that I was leaving the band to form a new band with Kayla. Thus was born Chief Loh. The name comes from my pizza delivery days. At the pizza shop, the drivers would drop off their money in a cash box to be counted later at the end of shift. We each had a slot to insert our bills and checks. Kayla has always told me that when I sing, she can see my chi flow. I labeled my money slot with the name Chief Loh as a play on words. When Kayla and I started making music together, it only seemed natural to use that as our name. It's kinda cool that on my MP3 player I have music from Rachel's Morbidity, Shadow Puppets and Chief Loh.
