The guys in Mahjongg are happy to tell you all about themselves, as long as it’s OK if they make some of it up. “We like to keep certain things secret,” says Hunter Husar, who plays bass and runs a laptop for the mostly local outfit, but that doesn’t account for their tall tales about how they met at Burning Man or how they’re all Hare Krishnas. Sometimes they try to convince other bands on the bill they’re part of a religious sex cult. They’ve been known to roll into a venue claiming to be a band called Sexual Vietnam; no, they’ll tell the promoter, we’ve never heard of this “Mahjongg.”
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The real saga spans six years and a couple thousand miles. Husar, a former quantum physics researcher at the University of Missouri, now moves furniture and mixes sound at the Hideout; guitarist Jeff Carrillo, a former playwright, lives here too. But violinist Caryl Kientz, an improv musician and performance artist, lives in Portland, and drummer Josh Johannpeter does lighting at a venue in Columbia, Missouri. And bassist-keyboardist Gabe Vijles doesn’t keep an apartment anywhere–he runs a theater cafe in Columbia but stays in Chicago for weeks at a time.
Husar says he first met Vijles at a gas station at 3 AM: he was buying condoms, Vijles was the clerk. Eventually they were properly introduced, and Vijles brought his friend Kientz into the circle.
Back home, Husar decided he’d tired of his research job and announced he was moving to Chicago. Carrillo followed a few months later, and band members traveled back and forth to work on new material. Last May Kientz was in Columbia and stopped by a friend’s house to find Mahjongg in the middle of rehearsal. Her spontaneous vocals blended in well; they asked her to join the band and bring her violin.
