Chevelle Are QFest Headliners

By Jeannette Madden
Staff Writer

What does Chevelle play? “Hard rock melodic music is what we call ourselves,” explained drummer Sam Loeffler.

Aren’t they very similar to Tool?

“It’s certainly never a bad thing to be compared to good bands and they’re a great band. I think that we are very different in that they are more of a Pink Floydesque-writing seven-minute evolutional songs…we write more direct, melodic radio-type songs. In that way we’re very different.”

Chevelle is currently on tour in support of their fifth album, “Sci-Fi Crimes.” The cover of the album is reminiscent of a M. Night Shyamalan movie, perhaps “The Village” meets “Signs.” Loeffler seemed extremely happy with the album and explained the artwork.

“‘Sci-Fi Crimes’ is tongue-in-cheek, it’s about a couple of things that were just sort of coincidental on the record and had to do with jokes about aliens and apparitions and stuff like that. The painting on the front was done by our bass player. Just coincidentally it all came together and we love the artwork, we thought it worked out really well.”

I asked Sam about the following quote from Billboard Magazine: “We wanted to do a record that was more true to what our live sound is like. We wanted to go in the studio and play the tracks and just record them and not make a perfect record the way I think a lot of our records in the past have been made…I’m curious to see if people notice a difference.” (Billboard, July 17, 2009)

Have people noticed a difference? “Oh, yeah. There’ve been pros and cons to it but this is what we really sound like,” he said, and explained it this way: “I think there’s simplicity to live music that comes over really well when it’s rock. The more things you add to it, like, here’s an example – Did you watch the Grammys? [Yes, I did] Did you see the Dave Matthews? [Yes – loved it] And that’s fair but there were like sixty instruments on stage. How many of those instruments could you actually hear? [Oh, not very many…I actually really liked the background vocals] Certainly, and of course a choir being different because the choir works as one. But all of those other instruments, you really couldn’t hear. There’s simplicity and sometimes all that other stuff doesn’t come across. Arguably, they could have gotten rid of most of that stuff and the sound would be exactly the same because it’s live…”

For those that don’t know, Chevelle also started out as a true band of brothers: Pete Loeffler, lead vocals and guitar; Sam Loeffler, drums; Joe Loeffler, bass.

I asked Sam for a quick history of the band. “We’re a rock band from Chicago and we’ve been around for 11 years. This is our tenth anniversary. We’ve put out five records and sold a little over three million records. We’ve had ten top ten songs, two number ones. I guess that’s the technical part of it.”

Brother Joe left the band in 2005 and was replaced by brother-in-law Dean Bernadini. There was plenty of publicity that Joe’s split was not the friendliest.  “Joe left the band but you kept it all in the family? Everything cool now?” I asked Sam.

“Sure. It’s been almost five years and we’ve kind of gotten over it. That part of it is work and when you have a family band the dynamic is always going to change from just being a work or a professional one.”

“And what is Joe doing now? Is he playing?” I asked.

“Yeah, he plays in another band. One of the guys is Marcus Curiel from a band called P.O.D.”

Sam shared some musical influences of the band. “Pete, being our singer, his primary influences include basically anybody who is a really strong singer. When we were growing up he was a big Alice in Chains fan, Depeche Mode, The Cure, certainly Helmet. These are strong, sort of easy to really tell who the band is right away.”

“I grew up listening more to some crappy punk rock music but, because of what I’ve developed into, one of my favorite drummers is Matt Cameron from a band called Soundgarden (I think we all know who Soundgarden is – no worries there, Sam!) Soundgarden was a really big influence.”

We wrapped up our conversation by talking about the amount of time Chevelle spends touring. They are known as a touring band, but in today’s market, bands have to tour. “Do you want to get away from touring?” I asked Sam. “Do you have to keep doing it since that’s how bands are making it now?”

“We tour quite a bit. We’ve probably played upwards of fifteen hundred shows,” he said. “We’ve been touring pretty much since 1999, which was when our first record ‘Point #1’ came out. We’ve actually scaled down our touring now. We only do about four weeks on and two weeks off. That’s a lot less than we used to do. We used to do like nine or ten weeks on and three weeks off so we’re trying to have a little more home time and I guess, you know, you have to work when there’s work.’

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If You Go

What: QFest
Where: Fargo Civic Center
When: Wed, Feb 24, 6:30 pm
How Much: $27.50