Reaching seven albums in 15 years is quite the success story for Chicago hard rockers Chevelle, as they continue to put out strong records and winning over new fans everywhere they perform.
During their recent stop at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, CA, the band was on a West Coast tour behind their latest release, La Gargola (Spanish for ‘The Gargoyle’), in front of a packed house.
“It’s been selling out a lot,” said drummer Sam Loeffler, talking about their US tours. “The US is so big. We’re still opening up markets, especially if you haven’t been somewhere for four, five or six years. So in that case, we played a couple markets that we haven’t played before. We’re trying to go to Canada as we can. There are a lot of markets we’ve never been to or been to in a long time. North America is very big.”
They have been playing various songs off of La Gargola (Sony), which has been met with anticipation from their fans. While the public has grown familiar with their melodic hard rock sound, the band was up for the challenges of creating newer songs that kept their sound growing without being repetitive.
“This is album number seven. I don’t know if there’s necessarily a different mindset,” he said, talking about the making of La Gargola. “It’s just at this point we’ve published over 90 songs, so you’re only interested in writing songs that don’t sound like your other songs. So I think the songwriting process might be a little bit longer because you want to do something different. We’re a hard rock melodic band and still write songs like that because that’s what’s appealing to us.”
They worked with veteran producer Joe Baressi (Bad Religion, Tool, Coheed and Cambria) once again on La Gargola. Being familiar with his working style, the members of Chevelle got to experiment a bit more on this one and throw around different ideas this time around.
“We did Hats Off To The Bull with Joe as well. This was our second record with him. Joe is really an experimental producer. It makes things go fast because he knows what all of his gear sounds like. He’s got like 30 to 40 amplifiers, a bunch of weird instruments in his studio. The place is packed with instruments. So being with him, I don’t know how we would do it with somebody else at this point. The more we used Joe, the more experiments we have. It’s a perfect set up because that’s how we are. As a band, we don’t want everything to sound the same.”
“With Hats Off To The Bull, when we got sounds, for the most part we would mix up the sounds. It’s real consistent in tone – the guitars, bass and drums. Whereas this one, we really changed the tone on every single song. That was a lot more work. But we wanted to make each song sound completely different from the last one. I think they do.”
With Chevelle entering album number seven, they encountered the challenge of keeping ideas fresh and not repeating ideas from past material. Many bands who reach this point in their careers often face similar dilemmas, but Loeffler and the band were up to the challenge of dodging this obstacle.
“I think it definitely is a challenge. Pete [Loeffler, singer/guitarist] is our principle songwriter. He writes all the lyrics. I think a big part of it is he gets influences from all different kinds of places, just from what’s going on in the world. That helps makes a different thing for each song. He’s not just writing about high school relationships or relationships at all, for that matter. He writes about zombies and something he saw on television that is an accounting error. It’s all different topics that encompass anyone’s life rather than one simple thing. That adds to where the song’s going. “
La Gargola also marks the fourth album with bassist Dean Bernardini, who replaced their biological brother and former bassist Joe Loeffler, in 2005. With each record, Bernardini has grown with the band and continues to evolve within their sound.
“He’s always been important to us and am important person in our lives. When he joined the band, we were able to grow the way we needed to grow. Sometimes things don’t work between people, but in our case, we really work well together.”
“In that case, it improved the chemistry. I think most bands have leaving members – people coming and going. That’s just the reality of a business, not to mention a family. It went the way it was supposed to go.”
“Dean’s our brother in law. He does have a different last name but we are definitely like family. We are family in marriage. We’ve known each other for 22 years. We were friends and played in bands way before he played in this band,” said Loeffler.
Loeffler briefly looked back at the band’s career until today. “We played our first show as Chevelle, probably in 1993 or 1994. But our first record came out in 1999. So 15 years of recording and touring ‘professionally.’ “
“Seven records in 15 years is an amazing career for anybody in this day and age in rock music. I tell people all the time – your chances of having a successful rock band…you’re more likely to win $10 million in the lottery. People win that every week across the US, but two or three rock bands a year have some success. That’s a very defeating fact, but we need rock music. We need to good rock bands. Not to say there aren’t some now…there are, but we always need new ones. We’re interested to see who the next crop is.”
As for future touring, Chevelle will continue to move forward with writing new material and more touring in the near future. But in between this time, family life has been squeezed into their schedules, keeping their lives exciting in another way.
“Pete is about to have his first. My wife and I had our first ten weeks ago. Dean has a two year old and a six year old. Like anyone else, we’re at that age where you want to have a family.
You have to balance it all but this is our passion. We’re here because we’ve always been in love with music.”
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REI NISHIMOTO
