Chevelle vs. the Mullet Army

Call it post rock, call it loud rock, call it whatever the hell you want to. Chevelle pumps out some of the thickest, complex and musically tight cuts you may ever hear. Over the past year, these three brothers have toured with Filter, Powerman 5000 and Anthrax (a series of dates for which the band holds a special place in their hearts) of the band and shared the stage with everyone from Sevendust to Kittie. Their first release, Point #1, is an incredible first look at a band that has a bright future.

Chevelle live is pure, refined and something that needs to be experienced first hand. There is currently one live performance archived online at www.mozworld.com, with more to follow in the future.

I caught up with the group’s young drummer, Sam Loeffler, somewhere in Georgia while he was in a Wendy’s parking lot.

So you guys are on the road now?

Yes, we’re in Georgia right now. The last couple of days have been really hard drives.

Yeah, I was looking at the tour schedule and you guys seem to be popping all over the mid west.

We got in at 3:30 or something, so it’s a little bit rough, but not a big deal.

I noticed the tour dates end in early May are you planning on continuing throughout the summer?

We’re going to be writing for the next record.

I was watching that show that was featured on www.mozworld.com.

Yeah, that’s all screwed up. It was supposed to be live and it ended up not being live, it was up three hours after we played.

It’s nice that it’s archived though, I just watched it this morning.

Cool. They had a couple of problems with the guitar, it was spacing out — faze cancellation. But it was pretty cool, we were glad to do it. It was a tiny show in the middle of Georgia. I’m not quite sure why they picked that place.

Are you planning on doing more of that in the future?

Yeah – I don’t know what the plans are but we will definitely be doing more of those. We did one for Rollingstone.com too which should be up soon. It’s only one song.

What was that Twelve Monkeys sample during that show?

We were having problems with it that night. Normally we have two. We have a 5^th Element opening but our mp3 player was screwed up that night. The second one got screwed up because the channel went out in the middle of it. It’s that scene where Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis are in the hospital ward when Pitt was talking about the drugs and knowing your doses.

Are you big fans of those movies?

Yeah, we’ve seen the 5^th Element all the way through probably, like, 50 times. There are so many good lines in that movie.

Terry Gilliam is a genius. Twelve Monkeys is one of the greatest movies of all time.

It’s really really good. That’s Brad Pitt’s best role ever.

That and when he was the stoner in True Romance.

Yeah!

With the little honey bear for a bong.

That’s spectacular. We’ve got to take some stuff from that movie. My friend Rich worked on that movie. There are so many good lines in that movie. That’s the most violent scene in any movie I’ve ever seen when he’s beating up that girl.

Patricia Arquette?

Yes.

You know who that was? It was the guy who plays Tony Soprano.

Oh was it? I’m a huge Sopranos fan.

Are you?

Yeah, we watch it whenever we can, but this was really cool: we met Robert Patrick when we were in LA.

Really? That’s Richard Patrick’s (from Filter) brother, the guy who was the Terminator in T2 and he was Davey.

Yeah, when we met him he was like "can you sign my CD" and I was like "Robert Patrick?" He said "Yeah, just don’t ask me to do that melting thing." That’s what people ask him to do.

Did he divulge any inside Soprano’s information?

I asked him but he said that he couldn’t tell us anything.

So tell me a little bit about the tour with Filter.

The tour with Filter was great. It was basically just us and them for the whole month. Every night was a great crowd and those guys are fun to hang out with.

And the Filter crowd received your music well?

Yes, surprisingly the Powerman 5000 crowd and the Filter crowds were a lot alike. Everyone was really cool on both tours. The whole tour was very good for us. Richard Patrick is a great guy, he’s super supportive of anything he likes, he did a lot for us. He talked about us on Rockline, always talked us up, unbelievably supportive, more supportive than anyone else… ever. And everyone else has been really, really good to us, ya know? The band that we toured with, Sevendust, those guys are so good to us.

That’s a great live version you have of "Point #1" available on mp3.

That was from an Anthrax show in Santa Ana, California. We edited it all up and everything. We had audience mics and the Anthrax tour was the hardest tour we’ve ever done. The Anthrax crowd hated us.

It’s kind of different, musically speaking. They were just pissed because we weren’t metal.

You guys are heavy, though.

Yeah, but they didn’t care.

Well you guys aren’t stuck in the late ‘80s. I see your music as much more evolved.

I guess that’s probably a good word for it.

Were there a lot of mullets in the Anthrax audience?

Oh my gosh… uncountable.

Was it like a mullet army?

Yes it was a mullet army.

Would it be fair to say that people with mullets aren’t the Chevelle crowd?

Yes. For the most part that’s definitely what I would say.

Any particularly memorable mullets.

Yes, actually, a guy that was called Chops.

Chops?

Yeah, in Santa Ana.

Please tell me about Chops in Santa Ana.

Chops was a little bitch. He was pissed that we were there. He was just screaming at us outside, him and, like, 30 other people were waiting for us. Fortunately we were in a bus. We drove out and everybody was banging on the sides of the bus yelling and pissed off at us. All we did basically was play the show and somebody threw something at Pete so we kicked him out. Them the crowd was pissed.

So was it Chops the Mullet that threw something at Pete?

No, it was his friend. Chops was in our face the rest of the night.

Was Chops a big guy?

No, Chops was a little guy that lives in the basement of his mom’s house, probably 28-29, and he was everything that you don’t want to be.

Did he work in the fast food industry?

Yes. He was a fast food worker with these super thick glasses and these chops that came down all the way to his chin.

Would you say that he had the uber-mullet?

Definitely.

Was there any point and time where you were in fear for your lives?

Not so much for our lives but definitely for our careers.

I don’t think that a couple of mullets in Santa Ana can stop you from rocking.

They tried. They went on a couple of Web sites and posted stuff about how much we sucked and how we’re jerks, just because someone threw something at Pete and we threw them out.

Did you tell him how you don’t come to his job and kick his monkey in the ass while he’s working?

Actually, the first band said something like, "I don’t come to the drive-thru window at your work and hassle you."

So what are you driving these days?

We’re in a van and trailer. If we don’t have to be in a bus we’re not, because it’s so expensive. We don’t sell enough records to do that yet.

I know this was a while ago, but I read that you cut a different version of "Mia."

What we did, when we went to radio, sounded weird — the vocals weren’t loud enough and there were some other little things that wouldn’t work right for radio, so we had Ben Grills remix the first four tracks of the record and we remastered the whole thing. I think there is a major difference. It’s way better.

I read that you’re going to be on an upcoming episode of MTV’s Senseless Act of Video.

It got cancelled yesterday because of the full body burning in our "Point #1" video.

Because they can’t say fire on MTV?

I guess so.

How much new material do you have now?

We have seven [new songs] that we’re working on. Two are finished, and the other five are half to three-quarters done. They just need to be played through a bunch of times.

Learn more about Chevelle at www.chevelleinc.com and pick up their debut CD available on Squint Entertainment at finer record stores everywhere.

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