Chicago – This summer is sure to be a sweet confection for Chef’Special. The Netherlands-based five-piece band – comprised of singer Joshua Nolet, guitarist Guido Joseph, bassist Jan Derks, keyboardist Wouter “Dub” Heeren, and drummer Wouter Jerry Prudon – is embarking on a North American tour this summer, in support of Twenty One Pilots. The EMØTIØNAL RØADSHØW tour will take Chef’Special on an epic arena tour, from the Midwest, to the West Coast, and across the East Coast. The Fueled By Ramen label mates will make the coast-to-coast trek, along with MUTEMATH, beginning May 31st at Cincinnati, Ohio’s U.S. Bank Arena. The summer-long tour will conclude at New York City’s Madison Square Garden.
Chef’Special made its U.S. debut last fall, with a self-titled EP, featuring the international hit single, “In Your Arms,” and a North American tour with Aer. The fivesome had been discovered by Josh and Tyler of Twenty One Pilots, when the two were performing at a festival in Europe. They spread word to their label Fueled By Ramen, who later signed Chef’Special. The dutch band creates a unique sound, melding a variety of genres from hip-hop, rock, and pop, to funk and reggae – like in the song “Peculiar” – in a similar fashion to Twenty One Pilots, but on a whole new level. Inspired by The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against The Machine, Chef’Special has developed its own style, with all five members growing a musical bond with years spent on the road performing all around the world.
Best New Bands spoke with Joshua Nolet and Jan Derks of Chef’Special. While on a break from recording in the Netherlands, the two chatted about touring European surf camps, discovering they’d be tourmates with Josh and Tyler of Twenty One Pilots, and how the loss of a loved one inspired “In Your Arms.”
You guys have been playing together for over seven years, now right?
Joshua Nolet: Yes, almost eight now.
I’m sure you’ve probably answered this question a million times, but the majority of your interviews aren’t in English, so I am going to ask it: How did the five of you meet and come to form Chef’Special?
Joshua Nolet: Well, I’ll give you the slightly short version. I met Jerry, our drummer, who was in the local music scene in Haarlem, busy in different bands, and I was looking for a new band. I was in another band that ended, and I wanted to take things a little more serious. I thought he was an awesome drummer, so I said, “Do you want to start a new band with me?” He said, “That’s cool, but I’ve had this rat pack thing going on with our keyboard player Dub – we call him “Dub” but his name is Wouter, which is hard to pronounce for Americans.
Jan Derks: They’ve been playing together since they were fourteen years old.
Damn!
Joshua Nolet: Yeah! So he was part of the deal. Luckily, he’s amazing and very talented! He’s a very creative guy. He was studying at the time, at the conservatory in Rotterdam. He was playing together with Jan.
Jan Derks: And Guido, our guitar player. We were already doing a lot of projects, the three of us, before we hooked up with Josh and Jerry [Wouter]. That’s really how we all came together.
Joshua Nolet: So they were really already tuned in, and then basically we got together one Sunday afternoon. I remember I was late, by like two hours.
Jan Derks: Yes. [laughs]
Just a little late. [laughs]
Joshua Nolet: Yes, just a little bit. [laughs] Something happened. I don’t know what.
Jan Derks: You had a story about your backpack.
Joshua Nolet: It’s unbelievable. [laughs] Yeah, so we only had like an hour left to kind of get to know each other… but we jammed and it felt great! I was like, “Let’s do this! Is everybody game?” We were like, yeah – we had such a good vibe together musically… Immediately that summer, about two months later, we bought ourselves a van, called it “The Misses,” painted Chef’Special on it, and we started touring, just on our own, on the West Coast of Europe, all the surf spots. We would just drive by and say what’s happening. They had all these surf camps over there, and they were doing parties at night. We thought it was a great way to get to know each other and just play in front of crowds that had never heard us before.
That sounds awesome!
Joshua Nolet: Yeah, it was great. We did it for six weeks. We did a lot of shows! It was the greatest time. It felt kind of like a test, you know? If we’re gonna do this and be in it for the long run – which we all thought was one of the big demands, like if we’re gonna do this, we’re going all in and conquering the world. That was basically the goal. After those six weeks, we were like, yeah, let’s do this! We were born there basically.
Well, I think you’re doing a great job at conquering, so far.
Joshua Nolet: So far so good! Especially with the latest developments.
Speaking of touring, I know when you’re constantly touring, the notion of home gets blurred, as the road becomes your home, but in terms of keeping an actual residence, are you guys still living in the Netherlands or have you moved to the States for the time being?
Joshua Nolet: Well, we haven’t officially moved. I have a house here [in Haarlem]. We all have houses here. Yeah, we’re barley there, but it still feels good to have. I mean, it’s exactly what you say: when you’re on the road, you’re on the road. It would be weird for us now to buy a house in America because we’ll be touring and the house would be empty.
Jan Derks: When you’re touring constantly, it doesn’t really matter if you’re off and take a flight back home here or whether you take a flight somewhere in the States because the flight is just as long. It’s such a big country. It’s amazing to us.
Joshua Nolet: Yeah, like from the West Coast to the East Coast, it’s almost the same to Amsterdam.
Jan Derks: But hopefully the future will bring us more and more over there [to the U.S.] and have us reconsidering all that.
Joshua Nolet: Yeah, it’s up the States now! [laughs]
I met you on your first U.S. tour, when you played Riot Fest in Chicago. I remember talking to you about being discovered by Twenty One Pilots and signing with Fueled By Ramen, and I half-joked that you’d probably end up on tour with Josh and Tyler. Now here you are, ready to set off on an arena tour with the guys. What went through your mind when you found out you’d be touring with them on their biggest tour to date?
Joshua Nolet: Oh, dude, you should have seen us! We were in the studio, and our friend, our A&R manager from Atlantic, called me and said, “Yeah, we’re bing offered the tour.” We knew the tour was coming, for a couple of months already. We were hoping to get on it, but I mean, us and probably a thousand other bands, from the States were hoping to get on that tour. So by that time, we had already let go of the idea.
Jan Derks: Yeah, we thought it wasn’t going to be us anymore because it had been a long time since we heard anything, but you [Joshua] had misunderstood the call.
Joshua Nolet: Yeah, I thought he said we were off the tour. We’re not “on the tour,” but we’re “off the tour.” I was like, “Yeah, I already figured that,” and he was like, “No, no, we’re being offered the tour!” I was like, an arena tour! Everyone kind of went crazy. Seriously, I think there’s not a better thing that could have happened to us this summer, regarding the whole “America Mission” for Chef’Special because we’re a live band. That’s how we broke here, in Holland, by just playing live and getting people to come back. We were selling out venues here before we had any radio in Holland. I think that’s what is really cool about Twenty One Pilots: they already had a huge fan base, before it really took off this year with “Stressed Out” and went through the roof sales-wise and radio-wise. I think in that, we’re kind of the same.
Jan Derks: Yeah, it’s very much the same – how do you say it, grass roots, building up.
Like Underground?
Joshua Nolet: A slow build, you just keep on grinding, until you come to a point where the industry can’t ignore you anymore because you just have so many fans that want to see you, listen to your music. Yeah, a lot respect for those guys and how far they’ve come! We’re very blessed to be on the tour because we’re going to be able to play for so many people! They’re going to see what we’re about, and that has so much more impact than radio, I think. It has a louder impact.
I agree, and I feel like younger kids don’t really listen to radio anymore anyway. They’re all about the internet and Spotify. I saw you guys perform live. You have one of the most energetic shows I’ve seen, and Joshua, you especially have a fantastic stage presence. Are there any particular artists who inspire your live performance? Is there a particular show that stands out in your mind as one of the best you put on?
Joshua Nolet: The first live show I ever saw, I was ten or eleven, and I was in Versailles, France. There was this festival, and Muse was playing. This was my first encounter with guys on a stage making music. Muse is three guys, and they were killing it – they were making so much beautiful noise on that stage! And the singer, Matt Bellamy, I mean, he was jumping up and down and people were going crazy! It felt to me – when I step on a stage, that’s naturally what happens to me. Maybe it starts with me being really nervous, and I don’t know what else to do but give it all I have, just jumping up and down… you want people to be dancing, so you need to be dancing. [laughs]
Jan Derks: For the other guys, our first band, we come from a background where it was very much a normal thing to get on stage and do stage diving. It was very sweaty, and I guess that never leaves you, so you just feel when you’re going on stage, that you get that explosive energy out at some point.
I want to ask about the song “In Your Arms.” In listening to the lyrics, it partially sounded like a love song, but the more I listened, I realized it’s about losing someone you loved. Who or what inspired this song?
Joshua Nolet: To me, well it’s also sort of a love song, I think, but I wrote it for my dad, who passed away. He passed away in 2012. I wanted to write a song about that immediately because I thought that was the only thing I could do. I had to write a song about it. So I wrote a lot of stupid songs because I wanted it too bad, and it didn’t feel right or real. At a certain point, it was really frustrating. I was like, okay, whatever, I’m not going to try to write this. If comes, it will come. and if not, whatever. We were writing Passing Through – that’s an album we released here [in the Netherlands] with some of the songs we released on the EP in the Sates – and we already had all the songs. We were already recording, and the next day, we were going to start tracking, for real. That song wasn’t there yet, but then that day Guido, our guitar player, played this guitar thing and the chorus stuck in my head, for the day. That night, I woke up, and “In Your Arms” was born. I showed it to the guys the next day, and everyone was like, “This is beautiful. This should be a song on the record!” It was a big relief for me to write it, but it was also weird to see that in Holland it became a really big hit and now a single in the U.S. I think what I like about the song is that it can be interpreted many different ways, but for me, it’s very personal.
You’ve been touring in support of your self-titled EP, but I know you’ve been recording in L.A. and will soon be releasing a full-length. Do you have a set release date? Can fans expect to hear some new music form you, while you’re on the EMØTIØNAL RØADSHØW tour?
We’re hoping to release it at the end of summer, at the end of the tour, but that’s still vague, that part. But it’s coming! We want to get it out as soon as possible, and we’re definitely going to play new tracks during the show!
Chef’Special will be performing with Twenty One Pilots all summer, on the EMØTIØNAL RØADSHØW tour. Follow Chef’Special on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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Sarah Hess
After attending The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Sarah went on to study education at Dominican University, earning a degree in history. When not teaching, writing, or taking in a show, she is most likely to be found with a camera to her eye or hanging out in a darkroom.
You can follow Sarah Hess on twitter at @Sarahhasanh and view her music photography on her website: smhimaging.com.
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