Friday, June 29, 2007 Chloe Day's Trusty Guitar Takes Back Seat to Electronica By Dan Mayfield Journal Staff Writer Sometimes it's not where you go, but how you take the trip. For musician Chloe Day, though she went to Mexico for three months to learn Spanish, she came back with a guitar and a half-filled-out songbook. "I didn't know Spanish, so I spent a lot of time in Mexico with myself," she said. An old roommate had taught her three chords on a guitar, and when she went to Mexico she bought one to keep her company. Her Spanish skills were shaky at best when she showed up, so Day said she would spend hours just strumming away. "One of my favorite things was hitching in the back of a pickup truck and playing," she said. When she went back to L.A., however, she started playing more, formed a band, and now after five years is getting her third CD ready. That alone time in Mexico, Day said, wasn't anything new to her. She'd always turned to music to soothe her soul. It was usually music she would hear on the radio, however, not songs she was writing. "I grew up in St. Louis, I grew up on the edge of the woods," she said. "There weren't a lot of kids in my neighborhood, and I spent a lot of time alone and I'd walk around and play in the creek, and I always had a song in my head. It was oldies, or something that was on pop radio. It didn't matter. I'd be singing it." It could have been Tommy James and the Shondells or Nu Shooz, but it kept her company. "I was way too shy to sing in public as a kid," she said. But once she felt comfortable with her guitar after bonding with it in pickups throughout Mexico, all of a sudden she was ready. "It's a very different experience playing and singing. You can hide a little behind it at first," she said. Though Day started her music career playing acoustic guitar sets, its her electronic music that's taking off. Her CDs focus on her goth-rock sounds, and though her love of folk singer/songwriters comes out talking with her, she plays up the electro-punk idea. "It was a strange experience to set the guitar down and play electronic music live," Day said. "In general, I've listened to more electronic music in the past few years. I'm going to go to more electronic (music) in the future." Chloe Day WHEN and WHERE: 7 tonight, Coal Street Pub, 303 W. Coal, Gallup; 8 p.m. Saturday, June 30, at Sauce/Liquid Lounge, 405 Central NW