“I may have been a bottle of wine deep on a Wednesday, some of it’s obviously insane trash, but I’ll find the interesting nuggets and expand on that!”
Through a laugh, Tahlena Chikami talks about the source of her lyric and songwriting for the Southern California band Bite Me Bambi. And while she can laugh that some of the notes she’s jotted down in her phone while out might not amount to much, the ska band’s absolutely catchy mix of keys, horns, bouncy guitars, and singalong choruses speaks for itself on the band’s abilities of turning a mix of random notes into a collection of slick songs.
Based in Anaheim, California, Bite Me Bambi finished work on their “Eat This” EP, a collection of 8 songs running the gamut of sunny summertime ska and pop scheduled for release in February 2025. Think bands like Save Ferris, Suburban Legends and My Superhero – each of which Bite Me Bambi features members of – and you have the idea. The recordings each have production by Cameron Webb who has worked on albums by artists from No Knife to Danzig to Lit to Social Distortion to Kelly Clarkson. Suffice to say that “Eat This” contains just the right amount of polish in its hooks.
While Chikami admits that weeknight boozing might have made its way into the lyrical pool that would eventually form the album, what ultimately made the cut was what often struck her in her day to day life.
“Our newer songs off of Eat This had a lot to do with where I was in my life with friendships and losing people in my life. So that’s kinda where we start from, and then put the pieces together around the lyrics.”
Much like some of the tongue in cheek feistiness that makes up a lot of the songs, Chikami will laugh a little bit about playing in a ska band.
“My dad was a mod without a scooter so I grew up with ska in my house. He was always playing The Specials, English Beat, The Jam, that kinda stuff. It was always in the background. But the first band like that I got into was Reel Big Fish. I was 16 years old, my boyfriend at the time liked them, and I realized that my dad had been playing all this ska this whole time.”
Chikami soon found herself playing with bands in the Orange County area. She found herself teaming up with Brian Mashburn whose undeniably catchy songwriting had gained a pretty good amount of exposure for his past projects. Bite Me Bambi formed and in recorded several singles that would eventually be released as their “Hurry Up And Wait” album in 2021. More recently, the band has evolved to include a larger number of contributors.
“Bite Me Bambi’s always been a collective of different musicians,” Chikami explains. “If you took a picture of everyone in Bite Me Bambi, it would be like 20 people. We like it that way, we like playing with our friends. We’ve all worked on songs collaboratively at one point, I’ve been writing with Jason from Dance Hall Crashers. And the truth is as we get older it gets harder to tour and people have a lot more things going on in their personal lives.”
As much of a challenge as it may be to gather each member of a 7 piece band together in one place to record or tour, Bite Me Bambi’s sound is clearly getting more complex as time goes on and breaking the mold of a straightforward ska sound as they incorporate more depth into their songs.
Not to mention the group being in the middle of a cross country tour. Don’t miss this chance to see them in Reno!
Bite Me Bambi will perform with the Bar Stool Preachers at Sucias/Club Underground in Reno on Friday, November 22nd. Tickets Available!
