I gave a CD to my yoga instructor. It turned out to be Mac's wife.

Plastic MagHow did you get together as a band?

Rich Adlin

I jammed with Mac and his band at the time 20+ years ago after another project of mine (Adlin & Appleford) ended. Nothing really came of it, though I remember thinking that the music was really good. But I moved on and recorded another album with Adlin & Appleford and lost touch with Mac.

Mac Bartine

We met through a personals ad I posted in The Daily Beacon, the University of Tennessee's student newspaper, essentially saying I was looking for people to start a band with. By the time we were playing together, I'd already started a band with someone else I met through the ad. He was a pretty creative lead player, and that stuck in my head.

Rich Adlin

Fast forward to 2019. I gave one of my CDs to my yoga instructor, who had great taste in music, thinking it was up her alley. The next yoga class, she told me that she listened to my CD and said, “Funny thing, I played it for my husband and he said, ‘I know that guy!'” It turns out that my yoga instructor of several years was Mac's wife Jill. We started jamming again and discussed our love of songwriting. I eventually had him introduce his songs to other friends I had been jamming with for several years. That's how ChameleouS was hatched.

Mac Bartine

All the stuff Rich said + we started jamming again in the middle of Covid — November of 2021 is when we first played together with other people.

Plastic MagWhat would you say is the perfect setting for listeners to enjoy your sound?

Rich Adlin

Anywhere you can turn it up loud. It's very dynamic music. But with headphones on and your eyes closed, it's an adventure.

Mac Bartine

We put a lot of detail and texture into the record, and purposely left it there to discover. We didn't polish the shit out of all the album's rough corners so it would sound the same in earbuds as on a good set of speakers. We wanted people to feel like they hear new things across listens. So yeah — headphones or good speakers. Loud is always fun when you're into what you're hearing.

Plastic MagHow did you find making your album Wicked Din?

Mac Bartine

A year and a half is a long time to spend on a debut album for a band that no one has heard of. So it was a marathon, and there were some moments of frustration and just being exhausted by it, but we'd hear a new mix of a song from Seva and it would fire us back up again. Lots of time, love and care.

Rich Adlin

It was an emotional roller coaster, for sure. But it started and ended with excitement. We all added some gray hair. But our producer, engineer, and friend Seva, a jack of all trades and also master of all, saw something special in our music and was the enthusiastic midwife and sherpa of Wicked Din.

Plastic MagWhat message did you want to get across with this release?

Mac Bartine

I've always wanted to record a great album from front to back with no scrub songs as fillers. When we started recording Wicked Din, that's what I was thinking about. And the message I wanted the album to convey is: “This is an indication of our future. We think putting in the time, love and effort needed to make something exceptional is one of the most worthwhile things we can do with our lives, and this is truly a debut: just the beginning.”

Rich Adlin

No particular message. Maybe others, like Mac, who is our chief wordsmith, can say more about that. Maybe more of a message to myself: I'm doing this in spite of everything that seeks to pull me away from it — responsibilities, obligations, all the obstacles, and even the frustrations involved in it. Why? Because this is part of the essence of who I am.