John Gillespie and Elaine Tola first met in a Comp. Lit. class at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1987.  The history of the band (as seen through the eyes of Elaine) is as follows: 

We began playing together almost immediately, calling ourselves Gillespie and Tola - real original, I know.  As an acoustic duo, we played mostly coffeehouses in Chapel Hill and Durham at first.  Most of the songs in our set were covers in the beginning - really obscure stuff.

Lots of people have asked us about how we came up with the name Nikki Meets the Hibachi.  So in case you were wondering, here it is in a nutshell:

It is an idle threat about a small dog and a small grill.  Operative words being "idle threat".  John and I were visiting my sister in Atlanta one weekend in the spring of 1988.  She had a little dog called Nikki.  Nikki constantly harassed John - barking at him,  nipping at his heals, getting on his last nerve and well, it just came out of his mouth while we were grilling on the deck - "Nikki, if you're not careful, you're going to meet the hibachi".  And the rest, as they say, is history.  So there you have it.  You can stop asking us now.  By the way, no animals were hurt during the telling of this story. 
 
Gradually we both started writing songs and well, over time we had enough original material to record a tape.  We had the material, but we didn't have much money.  In 1989 we recorded 6 songs on a 4-track in John's apartment and saved all our tips for months to buy blank tapes so we could to dup them.  We did each one by hand.  Our friend, Dan Blanchette, drew the cover and we called the tape Roast Beast. I think we sold a couple hundred of them.


The Roast Beast tape paved the way for our very first EP - Hanna's Amorphous Hat (Hanna was my dog....notice a theme here?)  That cutie-pie to the left there is my punkin', Hanna.  She's on the album cover too.


This EP gained critical acclaim on college radio stations, and the College Music Journal (CMJ) highlighted it as a "Future's Jackpot".  We made it to #24 on CMJ's top 100 college chart.  We were very fortunate that Amy Ray, of Indigo Girls, helped us to finance this effort.  Indigo Girls were just about to be signed to Epic, but they were still playing smaller venues in Chapel Hill.  John and I got to open for them a few times.  When Amy heard we were about to go into the studio for our first time she took a leap of faith and supported us. We are forever grateful!
  The EP then paved the way for our very first full length CD.  The CD was called  The Bluest Sky and both John and I still say that it is some of  the best work we've done together.  Thanks to then local record lable Bated Breath Productions, we were able to record, press, and distribute our music on a scale that we had never dreamed was possible.
 
  For 2 and a half years we played local clubs and coffeehouses, touring only when we had long breaks from school.  We both graduated in the summer of 1990, just a few months after the release of The Bluest Sky, and we decided to play full-time to see where it would take us.  It took us to some really interesting places.  We played up and down the East coast, and traveled to Tennessee, Alabama, Wisconsin, Chicago, New York City, and Austin as well.  I wish we had made it out to the West coast, though.

Bluest Sky ended up on the college music charts, as did Hanna's Amorphous Hat before it, and earned us a spot in the College Music Journal's Music Marathon in NYC and South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.
 
We put out one more CD, Better Late Than Never, in the Fall of 1992.  It was a mix of studio, four-track and live performances.
 
Nikki Meets the Hibachi stopped traveling in January of 1993, each of us pursuing other adventures.  We couldn't stop playing together though, so we continued to play locally about once a month. 

In the Spring of 2003 we welcomed a new member to the group - Arturo Velasquez.  He is our percussionist extraordinaire.  John and I are writing a lot these days and we have just released a new CD.  This means we'll be doing some traveling too.  Check our schedule and see if we're headed your way any time soon.  If we're not and you'd like for us to, send us a note and we'll talk.