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Doug Van Pelt on Chevelle

It was fun scheduling an interview with Epic artist Chevelle. Some of our team here thought we might have a tough time getting an interview, perhaps facing some resistance concerning the "Christian press" for a band that's never really flown their ship in the CBA waters (even though Squint distributed their product through Word back when "Point #1" came out). But, like many a band, there was no pre-conceived notions going in and it was business as usual. Read on to see the interview as it happened via telephone a month or so ago...

Doug- Hey I saw you guys at South By Southwest and I've heard the new album and I really like the new songs.

Pete- Cool, thank you.

D- Sure, I think you guys are able to accomplish the task of writing songs with great melodies as just opposed to some awesome riffs.

P- Thank you. That was the plan. To write some actual songs, as well as being heavy songs.

D- So how do you feel about the new album?

P- I love it. I think it came out great. We wanted to do something totally different than the first record, which was kind-of the indie feel. And we wanted to take it up a notch. And go with GGGarth, who did the Mudvayne record, and I got a hold of that and we were trying to figure out the producer for this record. And I was like, ‘‘man I wonder if it's possible to use this guy. We actually brought it up and he's actually who we ended up going with. We were actually choosing between Ben Gross, who did the Filter record and Garth, who did a lot of things. But I love it, I think it's definitely…… I think it's closer to what we want as far as, what we wanted to end up with, you know, that first time around.

D- What are your standout favorites from this new album?

P- I would say, "Wonder What's Next" is probably one of my favorites, or songs to play live. Specifically because it's kind of like a heavy rockin, like, nod your head to it. It's fun for me, because when I got off the tour, you know the first record was written in standard D, like I could play regular chords and everything but just down the note, and playing with all these bands like Static X, they all play drop tuning. I get off tour and I'm like, ‘‘I've gotta learn how to do this.' But the trick was learning how to play and then actually write good music with that technique. "Wonder What's Next" is kind of a song that I can rock out to and it's like a one finger song, you know to get through it and you can jump around and move around a lot. That's one of my favorites. Another song that I like off the record is "An Evening With El Diablo" which is actually a song we haven't played out live yet. We used to, actually we didn't, we got the record done and w e never worked it into the set. The lyrics really came together towards the end. I started singing the song through and talking with Garth and just feeling that it needed a few more lyrics so I took time to write those. Another one is "Closure." I wrote a lot of lyrics in the studio. I'd have a song, I thought it was done and it was in a sense, and then, just talking with Garth, he'd really motivate me to pursue telling a story in the song as well as keeping the feel that it had, which is not repeating lyrics. Those three songs really stand out to me as far as the record goes.

D- Cool. I thought "Wonder What's Next" is really fun too. You guys added a bunch of different sounds to this.

P- Yeah, you know that was another part of doing the record a little differently. Ben Kapplin, the Pro Tools editor, had a lot of fun just throwing on crazy 808's and like, weird-like textures underneath everything. You know it was weird, because I didn't really, really love it when he was doing it, but I just kind of let it sit and, like, warm up to it a little bit, because every time you change something like that it's like a shock. It's like, ‘‘I wrote this song like this!' It was a huge thing for us working with Garth. I think it was good though, I mean, I love it now. I love the new feeling that this record has.

D- That's cool. What inspired the somewhat vulnerable and bare sounding, "One Lonely Visitor" and how has this gone over in concert?

P- You know, that's another song that we've never played out live. That was actually done in our home studio. That was a song I did like, two years ago. We were going through contract problems and all that, and it just kind of came out one day and I threw it up and worked it out and never really expected to do anything with it. And Bill McAffey, my manager heard it and he liked it and he thought I should put it on the record. We actually did the song twice. We did it in the studio in Vancouver with Garth and I really didn't like the sound of it coming out of there. I thought it lost a lot of feel and focused too much on, like, getting it perfectly polished. And so I actually talked to the label and they let me get my way. That's actually the demo, which turned out to be the better sounding of the two, so I threw it on there as a…… I thought it had a lot more feeling. The topic of that song is pretty much…… it's actually about my ex-girlfriend I dated for quite a long time. Way back when, when I was living with my parents, she had come over without me knowing it and just kind of hung out in my room, missing me, thinking about old times, and she just kind of hung out in my room and checked it out and a couple years later my sister told me about it and I thought, ‘‘wow, that's kind of a good topic for a song.'

D- That must have felt kind of weird.

P- Yeah it was, because years and years later, even though it was her, it was a bad image in my head.

D- That's cool that the label let you do the demo version, ‘‘cause it sounds great. I think you might give Dashboard a run for their money.

P- Oh yeah? Do they do that kind of thing?

D- Yeah. Just a real stripped down, acoustic guitar and the vocals are very up front, story telling, and a lot of anguish and stuff. They're definitely pretty popular right now. So you recorded this in British Columbia, how was that experience?

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