Chevelle

After nearly seven months of touring the US and Australia, Chevelle is finally on the last leg of their rounds in support of their April release, Vena Sera. The tour has been trying, to say the least, but despite personal turmoil, the death of a dear friend, the arrival of a baby, and the theft of a trailer full of equipment, the band remains steadfast in bringing their “A” game night after night. Their new material, still as angst driven as ever, strays a bit from the tormented, self-reflective nature of past efforts, and instead seems to contain more focused observations of the world around them. From his room in New Orleans, singer Pete Loeffler gave Synthesis the word on the new album, Las Vegas, Lamborghinis and douchebag bus drivers.

How did your trailer get stolen?
Our bus broke down on our way to another gig in Texas, and we had a driver who was basically a piece of shit. That’s the only way I can describe him. We’re in Dallas because there’s a bus shop there and he kicks us all off the bus at 4 AM and detaches the trailer so that it’s sitting in a parking lot…in Dallas. We’re in a city where we’ve been robbed before, so we’re pleading with this guy, “Don’t drop the trailer, just take it with you,” and the guy’s like, “No, no they have to work on the bus. I’m not gonna do that.” And then the guy literally says to us, “If I detach the trailer it’s not my problem anymore.” That’s what he says to us at four in the morning. Fucking prick. So he does it, we can’t stop him. And apparently there’s some crime ring in Dallas of guys in trucks that look for trailers to steal.

Know what? Fuck Texas. Let’s talk about the new album then. Vena Sera sounds more centered, more opinionated. Was that something you focused on, or did it just come out that way?
Well as far as the songs go, it’s hard to sum up the record as a whole, but each song does have its own little story and that’s one thing where we did progress. I learned that after the first record, like, “What does this song mean to me?” Because Point # 1 was so early on and we were so young and some of the lyrics had been written over the years and were changed so that not all lines had a focused meaning. [Vena Sera] has that [focus], though, and I think it’s getting closer to what we want to achieve, you know? This record was also affected by the Palms Hotel and Casino where we lived and recorded for
five weeks.

I was blown away when I read you’d recorded there, compliments of the Maloof brothers. Talk about work and play.
You know, it was the opposite of the way we’d done it every single time before that. It was the fourth time we were really down with the writing and recording, and we said, “We don’t wanna go to the woods.” When we were done working we wanted to go out and do shit. So we did that and we met a lot of really cool people, and we met a lot of really dumb people, too.

That’s Vegas.
Yeah, and you know, we saw some of the nightlife, we opened The Playboy Club when we were there. They had their big grand opening, and since we knew the owners, the Maloof brothers, they invited us up. It was a totally different environment for us, and that’s what the song “The Fad” is about. We’d go out and I’d be with those people who literally walk right to the front of the line, not because of us, but because of them living in the environment and knowing every door guy. And then you’d have these huge, long lines of people and they’d be dressed all the same, you know? The half-open, button-up shirt, with the really expensive bling goin’ on, and the slicked hair.

You guys are all car junkies, how sweet was it having a Lamborghini to drive around Vegas courtesy of Gavin Maloof?
It was funny, I gotta tell ya. The thing was, like, bright yellow and low and wide and huge and loud and fast. And he was like, “Take it out whenever you want.” He had two, a blue one and a yellow one. I think we only drove the yellow one once, ‘cause you kinda felt like a tool driving it. We grew up with street rods. Our dad built ’32 Fords; we’ve been going to car shows ever since we were kids. I actually have a bunch of incidents where I was arrested for speed violations. The last one cost me about $1,100 I think.

Anything you’d like to see more or less of?
I want to see more rock bands out there. We need more hard rock bands. I mean, there’s a ton of bands out there, but I want to hear more bands that I like.

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