Chet Nichols began his musical performance career at an early age. He began studying cello and piano at the age of six. His father was an opera singer
and his parents met while they were members of the famous, St. Mary's Church Choir. By the age of
12, he had won numerous solo cello, solo piano, and duet piano competitions and was chosen to be the concertmaster of The Chicago Archdiocese Select
Orchestra as the first cellist. It was also the year that he registered his first musical copyright with the Library of Congress.
During a vacation trip to Mexico, at the age of 12, he negotiated his first musical instrument purchase in a bazaar in Tijuana, Mexico. He talked the owner into selling him a guitar. The original asking
price was .00. The sale price .... .35. Like a lot of other kids, this purchase changed his life. He went back to Chicago and during the summer
school session at New Trier High School, he met some other young musicians and started a band, The Chosen Few. This band stayed together for 6 years and was one of Chicago's most innovative groups, not only in their musical style, but also in the fact that they played original material penned by Chet. The band eventually became one of Chicago's most successful bands along side, The Buckinghams, The Shadows Of Night, The Del-Vetts, The Dharma Bums, The Dirty Wurds......to name a few.
College and Armed Services requirements caused the band to disperse and Chet began both a solo career and power trio band while attending Kansas
University in Lawrence, Kansas. It was on a trip to Kansas City to play at an open mike at a club called The Vanguard, that Chet was discovered by the management and concert promotion
company, Good Karma Productions. Chet became one of the most popluar artists in the Kansas City Music scene in the mid and late 1960s and 70's. Good Karma Productions went on to spawn, support and
discover, Brewer & Shipley, Danny Cox, and The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, to mention a few.
It was in Kansas City that Chet also met a radio DJ, Steve "the Night Freak" Barncard. Steve invited Chet to play "live" on his show and his solo career
took off...... for California. Shortly after this, Steve Barncard moved to San Francisco to work as an engineer at the famed Wally Heider Studios. Steve
Barncard went on to work with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, The Grateful Dead, The Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, and Van Morrison, to mention a few. Chet followed soon after and....after a very strange....psychic experience where Chet and Steve were re-united during a midnight stroll down Sunset
Blvd. in Hollywood, it eventually resulted in Chet's first album, "Time Loop", which was immediately picked-up by Neil Bogart at Buddha/Kama Sutra Records. Chet wrote all the original material for this first venture, as well as playing all the instruments on most of the tracks. On a few tracks he called in Nick Gravinities, Nicky Hopkins, Dave Garabaldi and John Cippolina to back him up. "Time Loop" was the first album in the United States to be
mastered using the Dolby Systems.
Within a year of the release of his first album, he was back in the studio to record his second album for Kama Sutra, "Waving Prairie". Again, this was an
album of original material and again Chet played most of the instruments. Still, he called in members of The Jefferson Airplane, The New Riders Of The Purple Sage, Jack Shoerer(Van Morrison), Zakir Hussain (Ali Akbar Khan's son), and Don Preston (Wings) to back him up on this album.
After years of touring, Chet took some time off from the road to work as a writer with freelance stints at Warner Brothers Records and Epic Records.
Eventually, Chet returned to Chicago to work as a staff writer at a commercial jingle company. It was in Chicago that he was drawn into the commercial/music video film business where he rose to the position of Executive Producer with several top companies. He has won Clio awards, Gold Medals at The New York International Film Festival, several Addy's, and numerous other film production awards.
Recently, Chet has returned back to concentrating on his song writing career,writing novels, working as a film, television, and stage actor and
commuting between Chicago and Los Angeles. Recently, he has had leading roles in two world premier plays. The first took place at The Attic Theater in Los Angeles, where he played The Father in "Do Not Miss The Main Attraction". Also, he appeared in the play, "Supple In Combat", at The
Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. Moreover, he has completed his first novel "The Last Riders On Route 66" which is available now in stores and on-line.
