Chevelle has released their seventh overall album, La Gargola, and continue to venture into new territories while reaching new fans with their music. While the band has found success in North America, one of their goals is to expand upon performing for their fans internationally, including their upcoming UK and Western European run with Black Map.
Drummer Sam Loeffler talked about their upcoming tour. “At the end of October, we have nine shows. We’re doing three in the UK, Belgium and four in Germany, and Paris (France).”
“It’s been like ten years. Last year, we went through London on our way to South Africa. We played a one time headliner show – 800 seater and that went well. [It was] sold out and we played this 800 seater and it was fantastic. It was so fun. We went out to South Africa and played those shows. Those were great as well – packed and sold out 6000 to 9000 seaters. It was great to be received that way. So when we went through London, we did it to test the waters and see if people would come out and they did. So now we’re really focusing.”
He spoke about Chevelle’s recent appearances at this past summer’s Download Festival in Castle Donnington, UK and Rock Am Ring and Rock Am Park in Germany. Getting to play a major UK and German festival placed them in front of larger crowds they hadn’t played for in a while, plus getting them reacquainted with them for their own headlining tour that was coming up in October and November.
“We got to play in front of some people, and more importantly than that, we got the word out that we’re coming back. There were a lot of people that said ‘look we’re not going to Download’ or ‘we’re not going to Rock Am Ring or Rock Am Park’ because it’s too expensive. But when we announced it, we also announced that we were coming there to headline in certain markets in Germany and the UK. That way they could spend the $20 instead of spending $150 to see us do a 30 minute set.”
“It’s different than some festivals, in that they are really so big. But they have three or four stages too, so you really aren’t playing in front of 100,000 people. You’re playing in front of 1500 to 2500 people. It’s a little misleading in that unless you’re one of the headliners at the end of the night. I saw at Rock Am Park, we saw Quicksand play and a couple other bands we really liked. They were later in the day and competing with the main stage bands, and there were 300 people there, watching these bands. Are you guys crazy? But the thing is, the Offspring was playing on the main stage. We get to see the Offspring in the US, but they’re not there as often. There was some real competition for what to go see, but a lot of great bands.”
Loeffler spoke about the band’s desire to venture more overseas on tour, but financial constraints have kept the band from doing so.
“The frustrating thing is not getting to Europe and places like that, because they are so far away and more so it’s so expensive for us to go there. Sometimes it’s just doesn’t make sense. You don’t have the money. Sometimes you end up paying to go there in order to open up new markets, like in the case of playing Rock Am Ring (Germany), Rock Am Park (Germany) and Download Festival in Donnington (England). That cost us a huge amount of money, and we had to tour in the US to build up that money, in order to go there to do those shows. The idea to do those shows is that we get the press for our upcoming tour. That also will cost us money. If we keep going back, it will build and will eventually have new markets open. We have to work to make the money to pay for us to go there. Just those three shows cost us $40,000. We were only there for ten days. $4,000 a day is a ridiculous amount of money. But it’s typical to get six people around – three crew and three band members. You’ve got to be safe. Permits are expensive. Just Canada alone costs $4,000, just to have a permit just to go. That’s a crazy amount of money, but we have to do it. It’s the law. If we don’t do it, we get stuck at the border.”
Aside from the European continent, Chevelle has done some international touring in other territories, such as Australia and South Africa.
“We’ve been to Australia before,” said Loeffler. “We try to hit Hawaii and Alaska every other year. So we do have some stuff we have to do in Alaska and Hawaii. The US, Canada and then we’ll be hitting the UK, Germany, Belgium and Paris (France). Next summer we’ll try to hit a couple more markets. We do have offers from places like Russia, where we’ve never been to. We’ll go back to South Africa eventually, which was really great. We have a real connection there. We have to find the time to write, work and a little time for a family life.”
As for a return trip to Australia and hitting other areas such as Japan has resulted in it becoming a bit challenging. But with a little luck and persistence, Chevelle is hoping to get themselves into those areas in 2015.
“We have a couple of reasons for that. So Australia is a very difficult tour. We did go there once. We did 14 shows in 17 days. We did the mini-van tour and played all the major cities – Sydney, Perth, and some of the outlining markets. In order to do that, you really need to have support of a label. When we were there, we didn’t have much support. The label was really small there. It wasn’t a Sony label, so it ended up costing us a lot of money. To go back, it makes sense to go back and build up that market. You really gotta have that support so you can go in there and actually planning some shows so you have 200, 300, 400 people come out. It’ll cost you $65,000 to play five shows in five major cities. That’s a huge chuck of money to be able to go. So you have to wait and push for a festival tour, which we’ve been doing for seven years, trying to get onto a festival in Australia. We cannot get onto a festival.”
“Japan is a similar thing where you have to go and have a purpose. So we’ve had three major offers to play three shows in Japan. We confirmed all of them, and all of the promoters have pulled out before they were able to do it. It’s not because they don’t believe in us, but what happens is in order to go, it’s so expensive we have to have them pay 50% up front and sometimes they can’t get the money together. If we’re going to book $25,000 worth of flights and another $10,000 worth of whatever…we’re willing to take some of it on, but what if you cancel? So we’ve had three different full things in Japan we were supposed to do that had been canceled. It’s been a frustrating thing.”
“We turned a little bit to the military, who wanted to bring us in to play regular shows, but sponsored by the military. The military has a turnover rate of every six months they turn over their people and bring in. So we’ll book a tour, new people will come in and cancel it. That’s happened to us at least three times. We’d love to see Japan. But we will keep trying.”
Chevelle UK/Euro Tour Dates:
Oct 26: Manchester Academy 3 – Manchester, UK
Oct 27: O2 Academy Birmingham – Birmingham, UK
Oct 28: Electric Ballroom – London, UK
Oct 30: Muziekcentrum Trix – Antwerp, Belgium
Oct 31: La Maroquinerie – Paris, France
Nov 03: Backstage – Munich, Germany
Nov 04: C-Club – Berlin, Germany
Nov 05: Sollwerk – Cologne, Germany
Nov 06: Knust – Hamburg, Germany
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REI NISHIMOTO