Chad Mills

In talking with Chad Mills after a show, you may be surprised to learn that he is an engineer by day. After all, the engineer & the musician are two completely different breeds. The engineer is a problem solver…analytical, driven by facts, with little or no concern for emotion. The musician is more spiritual….creative, fueled by feel and passion. The unfortunate reality is that the engineer is typically the one bringing home a steady income. So for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week – Chad puts on his “mask” and works for a paycheck. But on show nights, when he walks into a joint with his guitar in hand…you can just sense that this is real for him. The stage is where he belongs.Somewhere towards the latter half of his five-year stint in college, Chad committed to picking up the guitar. His training was anything but formal…or sober. Watching his buddy Inder play, he’d try to pick up what he could. He tended to pick up songs a lot quicker than engineering.In the spring of ’98, he left Rose-Hulman with a degree in engineering and a passion for playing music. A few short months later, he played his first gig at a bar in Cincinnati. After seeing the impact he could have on an audience, Chad would never be the same.The next few years saw many transitions. His commitment to music, however, never yielded. He worked endlessly on playing and singing, gigging at any place that would have him, and writing....a lot. In the last several years, Chad has written over 150 original songs…only half of which appear on the first five albums he’s self produced – the last with his band The Rivalry.“My songs have never been about my guitar playing,” Chad explains.“Nothing I play is complicated, and I’ve never pretended otherwise. The guitar is more of a backdrop…a canvas. The stories I tell are simple and from the heart…they are what I paint.”When asked what he sees for himself down the road, he smiles and offers with a patient tone, “Every musician who’s ever played….somewhere bouncing around their head…is a notion that they could make it. I’m up for whatever comes to me. I still am kinda’ taken back when someone comes up to me and tells me they enjoyed a show I played, or liked one of my songs that they heard on a CD. To have something I can call my own have an impact someone like that…that’s all I need. So long as there’s someone out there that’s willing to listen, I’ll play forever.”