Chevelle, courtesy.

As 2022 drew to the end, Chevelle drummer Sam Loeffler realized the rock band had only played 30 shows; a minuscule amount for a band often on the road.

“I wish it had been more, but you really want to take the good stuff and build from there,” Loeffler said.

Going on three decades, Chevelle has become one of the most reliable tour acts in hard rock. The trio released nine albums, spurring countless hits. Formed in Illinois, the band now includes Loeffler, along with his brother Pete on guitar and vocals and, since 2021, touring bassist Kemble Walters. The pandemic disrupted the promotion for its most recent album, NIRATIAS (an acronym for “nothing is real and this is a simulation.”

“It was definitely hard to get the word out there because everyone was constantly looking up, ‘Do I have Covid?’ That was the number one search,” Loeffler said. “The upside is that we’re still writing music that we want to play every day.”

The band wrapped up recording the album a couple days earlier than planned to make sure the members could fly home before LAX closed. Then they sat on the record for a year, releasing it in March 2021. Even then, Loeffler said the album didn’t get the shot it needed to find an audience, and he’s still not ready to give up on it.

“I don’t want it to just go away,” he said. “It’s a great album for us that we love to play, and we haven’t been able to play that many songs off of it yet.”

Loeffler’s head is full of ideas to give the record a new life. He wants Chevelle to make a video for “So Long, Mother Earth,” for example. But the band is also looking ahead to a next album, tentatively planned for this year. Seven songs are written, and there are 45 more ideas.

Despite selling 6 million albums, the band found it increasingly difficult to make an income from its art on a major label. A 20-year relationship with Epic Records is ending. While Loeffler said the band felt supported by the label, it operated in a difficult ecosystem that isn’t designed for artists to make money. At one point, the trio considered releasing music on its own, but Loeffler said that’s an incredibly difficult proposition and one that would ultimately prove to be underserving for the band’s work.

“If you’re releasing music yourself, it’s still not just you doing it—it will still be a licensing deal or something,” Loeffler said. “What are you going to do—are you just going to put it on your website? Are you going to put it out at streaming services? Is Apple going to play it? Can you get it on there on your own? Are you going to hire a marketing person to do that? There is almost no true DIY unless you sell it out of the trunk of your car.”

What has served Chevelle well over its nearly 30 years is the independent spirit and creative freedom the band has been afforded. From Point #1 to NIRATIAS, Loeffler said the band still operates as it always has.

“Nobody’s ever told us we have to write a song. We’ve never had to write a song for a certain thing; this is just what we do,” Loeffler said. “No one’s ever really told us what to do, and they still don’t. At the end of the day, we’re writing songs that we want to play live—we can do literally what we want and that’s the best part of the job.”

Follow writer Mike DeWald at Twitter.com/mike_dewald.