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Tahlena Chikami shouldn’t be intimidating, and yet she is. She is beautiful and multi-talented, funny and easy to talk to. This all combines to make approaching her feel a little daunting. At least, it felt that way at first for me. As soon as we started talking, however, all feelings of that sort melted away.

In fact, she confirmed a suspicion I’ve had about her since the first time I saw her in the music video for the Bite Me Bambi song “Strippers on a Sunday.” She is basically Josie from the movie Josie and the Pussycats. I shared this observation with her, and she beamed, telling me it was one of the greatest compliments I could pay her.

This was a much better way to start.

Before Tahlena became the lead singer of the ska band Bite Me Bambi, she was a child actor. She describes this period of her life as chaotic, but acting was important to her. Her parents insisted she earn a college degree, so at 16 years old, Tahlena went to college for pre-med, then software engineering, before finally settling on screenwriting.

“The worst purchase I ever made was a college degree.” Tahlena admits. “I use it, literally, not at all and it was $80,000 for two years. I was horribly in debt for a long time.”

Even amidst the acting, music was always a part of life. “When I started performing, I was 9 years old. I did musical theater, children’s theaters, and I started doing work where I would get paid as a kid, which eventually led to TV and film. So, I was always into music.”

There were voice lessons as a child, that was how Tahlena spent most of her time. “I learned as an adult that my parents went into credit card debt to pay for my voice lessons. I did not know that. I would have advised them not to do that, but it was very kind of them. Now I say I’m paying you back by being the lead singer of a ska band.” Her tone is a bit sheepish, but I’m quick to remind her that her voice is distinctive, it makes her all the more unique for that initial work.

“It’s from singing musical theater,” she says. “and then being trained to sing jazz and blues. I got very into that in my late teens. My teacher was very into that, too, because she originally wanted me to do like classic art compositions, like singing Italian. That’s not my bag. So, I think that’s where a lot of my sound comes from, that kind of training.”

“I think because I come from a theater background even when I’m singing a song I wrote that’s about my life, there’s a performance aspect to it. I’m thinking about what I’m feeling, or if it’s a song about someone else, how are they feeling? I really think there’s a lot of acting in my vocal performance.”

Tahlena’s entrance into the music community came from an introduction by an ex-boyfriend. He was in a band, and Tahlena would come along to shows to be supportive. Eventually she realized how fun it was to be there and began wondering what it would be like to have a band of her own.

“I got all into it and the culture. The first band I ever was in was called Karate in the Garage and I learned to play guitar, started taking guitar lessons.”

A natural performer, it was the community Tahlena found that made becoming a professional musician so appealing. “[I found] all of the best friends I made as an adult through music. The community has given me so much, I wish I had found it sooner. I think a lot of my anxiety, feeling self-conscious, and self-esteem issues as a kid would have been really helped by playing an instrument and being in a band.”

Tahlena’s stage persona is entertaining and relatable, a step far away from self-consciousness. She explains her persona was built through the performances of artists she admires. “I’m influenced by all of the people I looked up to –Angelo Moore, Gwen Stefani. I remember looking up videos when I first started being the front person of a band, watching their stage performances. Pink, also, is another big one for me. And I was like, ‘I like that, I’m gonna do that.’ And that’s sort of how I created this persona.”

Tahlena admits the first songs she wrote when she started were simple. “I hear the melodies and then pick the chords that go around the melody. Then I show them to someone else [Brian Mashburn] and they make the composition of the song better.”

“I was in an all-girl punk band in my early 20s called Unicorn Injection, which was very fun. We would mostly drink too much, go to happy hour, and then play shows. We wore crazy wigs and tutus and threw glitter on people. I wrote all the songs, basically, with a little lyrical contribution from the rest of the band.”

“I think [those songs] are fun to listen to mainly because of our singer, Karen Roberts. She’s a really good lyricist. We’d write songs about why no guys wanted to have a three way with us, dumb shit like that. It was the most fun I’ve ever had being in a band.”

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