RC: Yes indeed Rock Circus has come down to Nick's Fat
City to check out these guys, Chevelle. A good band
we've been playing their video for months now,
probably one of the best bands to emerge in 2002, I
must say. Every song on here is solid,
congragulations on your success.
Sam: Thank you.
RC: This is Sam and this is Pete, lead singer.
Pete: How you doing?
RC: And Joe, are you the little brother?
Joe: I am.
RC: You look a little younger than the other guys.
Joe: Last time they said Sam looked younger.
Pete: I look road weary.
RC: Yeah, you got that rugged look. That's the kind of
picture you get in Rolling Stone.
Pete: Dark circles, not sleeping, staying up to late...
RC: Do you know what I mean, standing up on stage like
Chevelle was out too late last night with so and
so.
Sam: We were out last night.
RC: Where were you at last night?
Sam: Where were we at last night, some crappy bar.
Pete: Cleveland, a place called the Dive Bar, hanging
out with the Trust Co. guys. Very Cool!
RC: The name of the CD is Wonder What's Next, I dig
the track too, if I might throw a dig in with you,
like consider it for the next video maybe?
Sam: I wish , actually the next is going to be "Send the
Pain Below."
RC: That's what I'ld figure, that's what the critics
would pick, it's a goody catchy one but I'm just a
hard rocker.
Pete: Funny thing about singles, you can't really pick
em'. You know you kind of have to let the radio
personal take care of that. They know what's gonna
react.
RC: Yeah, it's the chemistry, sometimes I kind of
disagree with that cause I'm underground.
Sam: Yeah, me too, we'ld like to put out a really heavy
single and maybe it will happen on the one after
this, maybe the third one.
RC: Now this is your first label debut, your first
original one was Point One?
Sam: Yeah, Point Number One.
Pete: On the indie label.
RC: I guess you had some problems with the indie label
or something.
Pete: Yeah, nobody could find the record. We toured for
15 months on it. It did well, it did amazingly well
for an indie band. We just weren't where we
necessarily where we wanted to be. Just felt like
we needed to move on.
Sam: Yeah, and that label closed down anyway so we had
to move on.
RC: Bellied up.
Sam: They couldn't put out any more records.
RC: That happens these days, they go down like tankers.
But you had Steve Albini come in on that and mix it.
How did you persuade him to come in on an indie
type project?
Joe: He actually does indie label stuff, that's what he
likes to do.
RC: He did some Page/Plant stuff too.
Pete: Yeah that's right, he did some bigger bands too.
You know it's funny because a lot of bands don't
know it but if you just contact him and if he has
the time he'll actually record anyone.
Sam: Anyone, no matter if you're signed or not,
whatever, he's got a recording studio and he's got
to keep it busy .
RC: That's great, you hear that all you local bands out
there.
Sam: He's gonna call us and be like why are you sending
me all this terrible work.
RC: Now you got a demo together and is that what Epic
got a hold of or several record labels? Is that
true Joe?
Pete: We did some showcases...
Joe: That's true (chuckles at Pete).
RC: Okay cool, go on (Pete).
Pete: We did some showcases for a bunch of major labels
and Epic had the best plan so we had to go with
them, hands down the best plan.
RC: They have some of the best harder rocking bands
besides Interscope.
Pete: I think so.
Sam: Epic's been great and it's paid off. They've done a
great job.
RC: Now you guys stared together, I guess, just jamming.
Was it just you two (Sam and Pete) and then your
brother (Joe) was a better bass player than your
bass player at the time?
Sam: The three of us have always been Chevelle, before
Joe came in we weren't really a band. We were just
playing, learning how to play and then Joe came in
it...
RC: A little freestyle o would you learn actual cover
songs?
Sam: No, we always wrote our own music. But we really
didn't start doing anything until Joe came in the
band. Then we really started trying to get our
music out there.
Pete: You really can't do anything with covers.
RC: Yeah, try to tell a cover band that (laughter)
unless you're the band that wrote the cover. So
after that Joe's in it. I heard the bass player
that he had just didn't really gel', so he picked
up the bass.
Sam: We played with a whole bunch of guitar/bass
players. I played with 12 or 15 other people.
Pete: Nothing really clicked but the three of us.
RC: Is this all there is in the family?
Sam: No, there's a couple of other siblings in the
family.
Pete: Everyone in the family is doing their own thing.
RC: Now your parents, were they in to music, is that
what got you in to it?
Pete: No, not really, cars mostly-street rods.
RC: The Chicago car scene was happening.
(chuckles)
Pete: Yeah you know, the Midwest car shows.
RC: A lot of vintage still running around. Is that where
you got the name Chevelle, a Chevelle '68?
Pete: You know, it's been Chevelle for 8 years. We were
in our teens when we named it, so we didn't know
it was gonna go as far as it has, and just threw
it on their and it stuck with us.
RC: You haven't had GM contact you yet have you?
Pete: NO!
Joe: They did say not to use the name.
Sam: Yeah, we don't want to talk about that.
Joe: They said not to bring it up.
RC: Well this is underground, GM's way out there in
corperate America. Now when you were writing "The
Red" there's a lot of frustration with the artist
and trying to present something that the industry
wants to hear? Was this a forced thing with you,
you felt like the pressure was on?
Pete: No not at all, honestly we had 15 months to write
this record. There were no pressures what-so-ever.
We have great management, they supported us through
that hard time. We had plenty of time to write and
no stress at all. We didn't feel like we needed to
fit any mold or anything like that with the record.
What came out was what we felt like we wanted to
do.
RC: The video's awesome, I like the whole anger
management thing.
Pete: It came out well. We just did another video for
"Send the Pain Below" and we haven't actually seen
it yet. We're hoping to see it by next week.
RC: Is that like a month away?
Pete: Middle of January.
RC: I read the credits on your album, you have a credit
to General Mills. What was the cereal of the house
growing up?
Pete: I'm just a big cereal fan and I eat a ton of it.
Sam: Seriously there's like 15 boxes of cereal on the
bus right now.
Pete: It's a good easy dinner, you know, just throw it
on there.
RC: I like "One Lonely Visitor."
Pete: That's actually the demo version that made it on
the record. We redid it in the studio. Our buddy
Richy was gonna sing on it. That fell through and
we ended up kind of pushing... I think the demo had
a lot more feeling to it than the studio. So we
ended up going with that.
RC: Why not, if it works use it. I'ld like to wish you
guys continued success.
Pete: Thank you!
RC: It's been a great pleasure to have you guys on the
show cause like I said, this is the sh**! This is
one of the new bands that you'll always hear in
the Giger CD player, riding down the streets
blasting it out. This is also a key to their
website www.chevelleinc.com. So you might want to
go there and find out more about this great,
awesome, nyalistic type band. One more question,
do you mind the comparisons to Maynard?
Pete: You know I don't hear it but I don't mind it. If
people go to a Tool show and they got to a
Chevelle show they're gonna' see that it's nothing
alike. It's very different.
RC: Right now we'll roll in to the video, here on Rock
Circus!
For More Info Go To www.chevelleinc.com
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