Chevelle, the trio rock group out of Chicago, will be performing live Saturday at Rock on the Range. They will be playing at 5 p.m. on the Main Stage, just before Korn and Alice in Chains.
Drummer Sam Loeffler said the band, which consists of himself, his brother Peter Loeffler on vocals and guitar, and Dean Bernardini on bass, was excited to start the summer with festivals such as Rock on the Range.
He said a number of the band’s musical heroes are going to be at Columbus Crew Stadium for the two-day festival.
“Alice in Chains is actually a really big influence, especially for my brother Peter, as far as his singing style and the general style of the music,” Loeffler said. “It was just a big band for us back even when we first started. It’s cool to be playing with that band even if it’s not exactly the way it was before.”
Loeffler said he thinks Korn influenced most of today’s rock bands, including Chevelle.
“They’ve written some really genius songs and I think they paved the way with some really interesting stuff,” he said.
Although they are excited to play at the festival, Chevelle’s big summer project is going to be the “Stimulate This!” tour, with Staind, Shinedown and Halestorm.
The tour has more than 25 stops throughout the country and is visiting some of the regions that have been hit hardest by the economy. “Stimulate This!” will come to the Toledo Zoo Amphitheater on Aug. 28. Tickets will be less than $40 for four headlining bands.
“Anyone that has lost their job is going to get in free,” Loeffler said. “That really sucks if you’ve lost your job and it’s not like this makes up for it. But at least you have something fun to do for a night, and it’s free.”
As Chevelle culminates their tour with Staind and Shinedown, they will be releasing their fifth album, yet to be named, in August.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever done a three-part harmony, which is different for us,” Loeffler said. “But it’s still hard rock melodic songs, which is definitely the genre we’ve created for ourselves.”
Loeffler couldn’t nail down a theme for the new album, but he did say there was a lot of creative song writing.
“There is a song on it called ‘Roswell,’ which deals with people who have had alien encounters. It’s kind of a funny subject because as we talked to people, we didn’t believe them right away,” Loeffler said. “But we had to listen to them, and some people’s stories are just crazy and unbelievable, but they believe it.”
Loeffler said that as they listened to people’s stories, they realized that everyone has a different and unique reality, and that’s what they wanted to portray with their music.
He also said that while the members of Chevelle have had a lot of weird encounters throughout the years, they haven’t mingled with anything they would call extraterrestrial, just “run-ins with crazy drunk people.”
Molly Gray can be reached at [email protected].
