An Interview with Chaotic Resemblance: On the Gospel, New Music, and Tour Memories.

If you long for the days of 80s Christian hair metal, then you need to check out Chaotic Resemblance. We have rocked out to Travis, Logan, and James multiple times at The Junction Center in Manheim, PA and Uprise Festival in Shippensburg, PA. This 3-piece midwestern rock band absolutely loves Jesus and they aren’t afraid to show it. They put together a truly entertaining Spirit-filled show from beginning to end. While at Uprise, we had a chance to meet up with the guys and talk about the beginnings of the band, cool God moments and brand new music.

Chaotic Resemblance is:

Travis McConnell: vocals/bass

Logan Ellis: vocals/guitar

James Stolhammer: drums

Solid Rock Unplugged: How did Chaotic Resemblance come together as a band?

Travis: The Lord. That’s my answer, the Lord! Almost twenty years ago, next year will be twenty years. In 2007, the band started and the Lord has been growing us ever since. We’ve been trying to be as faithful as we can. 

Solid Rock Unplugged: Are you guys all original members?

Travis: This is Travis here, the singer, the lone ranger of originality. 

Logan: The lone survivor!

Travis: Yes, I’m the only one who’s made it. Just kidding! I started the band with some high school buddies. Shortly after I graduated, Logan, our guitar player, joined the band. He’s been in for almost fifteen years and James joined us about six years ago. We’ve been going strong as a three piece and loving every minute of it.

Solid Rock Unplugged: You’re very adamant about your faith from stage. What’s been the coolest God moment that you’ve experienced over the past twenty years?

Logan: There’s so many that you could think of. We believe that the Lord can supernaturally heal people. We’ve seen knees be healed, shoulders get mobility back. We’ve seen hearing nerves and ears grow back. We’ve seen miraculous healings in people. But our favorite miracle is always the human heart surrendering to Christ. Sometimes we overlook salvation in how miraculous it truly is for the human heart to surrender to an almighty God who laid his life down for us. You know, when you follow Jesus, the Bible says these signs will follow the believer. So you’ll see demons flee, you’ll see people healed, you will see people go from death to life. That is always something we should never take for granted. 

Travis: It’s really hard, like you said, to nail down one. Every time we play, we give people an opportunity to come to Christ. Even when we’re traveling at airports or gas stations or before a show. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen these guys sharing the gospel, leading people to Christ. There’s just too many to count. 

Solid Rock Unplugged: You guys delivered an altar call today and I think I saw six hands go up. That was awesome. It’s always great to see crowds hearing straight up truth and not something sugar-coated. You guys go hard into it. 

Solid Rock Unplugged: With twenty years coming up next year, what is your favorite memory from the road?

James: I remember at one point in the last five years, in my first couple years touring with the band, we were heading home down to Oklahoma. We just passed Joplin, Missouri in the Fun Mover RV. That had been Chaotic’s ride for many a year. I started to hear something funny from the back. So we pulled off at a gas station. Home’s only a few hours away, so I thought we could make it. Travis was driving, I believe. He said, “We’re going to try for it.” So we started driving back to Oklahoma and about five minutes down the interstate, it sounded like a T-Rex broke loose in the back of the RV. 

We pulled over, semi’s whipping by us. We look at the back just to find that the rear axle had gone out and welded itself together. We eventually got a tow truck to come and it was too small. So they had to get a different tow truck. They hauled us to a repair mechanic shop and they dubbed it not roadworthy for any of the foreseeable future. So that started the adventure of trying to find a ride home. The pastor came with the van and the church trailer, got us loaded up and we made it home. But it was a long day, ran out of food and water. That was fun. I think that’s why I eat a little too much and always make sure I have something to drink on the road.

Travis: Can’t be too careful!

James: Never know when your next meal will be!

Logan: That is not my favorite memory.

Travis: One of my favorites is being in Germany. I’m pretty sure it was my dad’s bunk. He tried to get in there the next day and it was full of rat poop. Y’all remember that? He was losing his marbles. At some point in between the time of him sleeping in it and then getting back in his sheets, there was just tons of mouse poop in there. It was so funny. Logan, you got one?

Logan: Obviously the laughs, the friendships you make, the times where everything is hilarious and it really shouldn’t be. Those are really great. 

Solid Rock Unplugged: You have new music coming out, right? You played some new songs today?

Travis: Technically we played four songs that will be on the record, if I’m not mistaken. Two of those have been out for a little while and that’s “Song of the Father” and “Chaotic Resemblance.” But they’ll be featured on the record. Then we played a song called “Move,” which will be our first single we’re planning on releasing before we drop the record. Then we played one called “Glory Globe” in the set. 

Solid Rock Unplugged: When can we expect the next single and then the rest of the album?

Travis: We wanted to release that first single sometime in the next week and it just didn’t happen. I’m hoping for October to release it, but I’m not so sure. That song is called “Move,” that we’ll be releasing. Then January 1st is our projected CD release date. 

Solid Rock Unplugged: Yeah, I think you said that from the stage!

Travis: It’s actually the first time I publicly announced that. So I don’t know, the higher ups might be mad at me, but it’s alright!

Solid Rock Unplugged: So Uprise Festival got an exclusive insight, nice! What are you hoping the fans will take away from the new record?

Travis: I hope they just take the record, you know? Please! No, it’s the same thing we always hope, man. We’re evangelists at the beginning and end of the day. We’re evangelists. We love the Gospel and we’d love to see people come to Christ. There’s a song on the record, it’s called “Happy Day.” It says “Come near oh weary one, lay down your burdens, lay down everything at the feet of Jesus. And he’s going to give you rest.” That’s what we love to see. We love to see one of our songs on the record that says “Oh sinner, draw nigh to mercy, sweet as blood washes you clean.” That’s why we do what we do, man. So sinners can come home. You got three guys right here on their way to hell. And Christ Jesus came and interrupted everything and brought dead men to life. How can we be silent? That’s what we want to see. That’s what we live for. Christ be glorified.

Solid Rock Unplugged: What’s the title of your new album?

Travis: It will be called Holy Domination. Pretty sick, yeah? We were going to play that song today. We just didn’t have enough time. 

Solid Rock Unplugged: What influences you musically? You tend to lean into an 80’s hair metal aesthetic. Is that where you’re getting some of your influence from?

Travis: No, we only listen to Marvin Gaye, so that’s really interesting! Just kidding. I think all of us probably have some of that in our influences. I know Logan grew up listening to stuff like Skynard, ACDC, and Guns N’ Roses. I loved Bon Jovi and stuff growing up. Now James, he doesn’t have a lot of that. He loves Love and Death and Disciple.

James: I was born in 2000. You can’t hold it against me!

Travis: Yeah, so he didn’t have a chance. But it’s funny that the more he listens to music, the more he enjoys those older bands like Jerusalem and White Cross.

Solid Rock Unplugged: Throwing out some old names! With the new album coming out, can we expect a tour or will it just be some shows here and there?

Travis: We’re hoping for tours. The guys were working on some details for that yesterday for us to be able to send out. We’re really hoping that we can get some solid stuff. We’re booking summer stuff now for next year. We really want to have some quality runs. A lot of times what will happen is at the last second you’re trying to fill up dates and people don’t even realize you were in their town. So we’re doing our best to try to do a lot of footwork so people know when we’re coming to their area. That’s one of the things we’re hoping for with the new record, that it can pull some people to come. For us, to be able to preach the Gospel is everything. So to be able to get people in a place where we can present the Gospel is why we do the CDs.

Solid Rock Unplugged: Could you share a little into how you all came to know Christ?

Travis: I was raised in a Christian home, so I don’t really ever remember a point when I didn’t know the Gospel in some sense. My parents were ministers. But as I’ve grown in the Lord, I’ve had those moments in my life where I encountered the Lord in one way or the other. Big moments when I was seven years old, big moments when I was twelve years old, big moments when I was twenty years old and the Lord delivered me from junk I was going through. Big moment when I was twenty-five years old, when the Lord opened my eyes to loving people, evangelizing people. Big moments, even recently to go deeper into the Word of God. It’s really cool, that’s what’s so special. One of the many things about being a follower of Christ is that it’s a growing every day. The Bible says glory to glory that we grow. I can attest to that just myself. There’s just been so many moments, for me personally.

James: I was born and raised in a Christian home. My grandpa was a pastor. I had a lot of Godly influence since my childhood. I remember when I was five years old, I was laying in bed with my dad. He was telling me stories before I went to bed. I opened up to my dad and I told him how afraid I was that I was going to be crucified and nailed to a cross like Jesus was. He explained to me that Jesus took that so that I wouldn’t have to. So it finally clicked in my head as a kid. I remember that was my first experience with the Holy Spirit. I was just filled with so much joy, so much so that I jumped out of bed and ran out of my room, called my grandparents and told them all about how Jesus had saved me. I understood that I wouldn’t have to be separated from God, that he took my sin and it was nailed to the cross.

I went through a lot, throughout my childhood and teen years. I went through a lot of tough stuff, even within our family. It came to a point in 2017 when I was thinking about suicide because of those things that I had carried on my shoulders for a long tim. The Lord miraculously saved me out of that. Even from the moment the thought entered my head, the Lord intervened in a pretty amazing way. I saw the Lord Jesus and He spoke to me and He changed my life. He said “Son, I love you so much, your life means so much to me.” I won’t go into too many details about that, just for time’s sake, but that was a pivotal point in my life, it really started a fire in my life for evangelism at that point. I like to say the Lord saved my soul when I was five and he saved my life when I was seventeen.

Logan: I was also raised in a Christian home. My grandfather was a song leader and an elder at my church that I grew up in. I believe I even asked the Lord into my heart as a young child. But I more so was raised in the church, not so much raised in Christ. So crisis hit. I lost my grandfather when I was twelve. I foolishly blamed God for something that wasn’t his fault and ran for many, many years. Went as dark as I could, went as far away as I could, got into this horrible darkness. I was so lost, desperately, desperately lost. But thank God, Mom kept dragging me to church and never gave up on me, kept praying for me. My pastor kept loving me and praying for me. Preaching altar call after altar call for the only kid in the church every weekend. God kept showing up in my life in many various ways. I just could not run anymore. I surrendered to Jesus, said “I’m not running from you anymore” and surrendered to Him. I’ve been walking with Him ever since.

Solid Rock Unplugged: It’s good to hear these stories, so your fans can hear the heart behind your music. If anybody sees you on stage, they definitely know the compassion, passion, and conviction you guys play with. You have a new single coming out, potentially in October, and a new album on January 1st. Anything else you want to share?

Travis: Hopefully there’s a lot that comes with that. We were talking about tours and Lord willing we could do some kind of videos. But we’ll see what the Lord opens up for it. It’s not easy. It’s not cheap. We do the best we can. Now, man, same as always for us, where we just want to be faithful to the calling of God. Just be praying for us if you like Chaotic, that we would be able to make a difference. People need to hear the gospel of Jesus. If you listen to all of this and you don’t know the Lord, maybe you’re not familiar with the Gospel. The Bible says, “For God so loved the world that He gave his only song, whoever believes in Him wouldn’t perish, but have everlasting life.” 

So I just want to tell you to put your trust in Jesus. This world will fail you miserably. On your own merit, you can’t go nowhere. The Lord Jesus died for you. As James was saying, even a child can get it, that Christ took everything so you wouldn’t have to. All of the junk, all of the sin was put upon Jesus and imputed to him, even though he had none of it inherited himself, so that all of his righteousness that none of us have inherited in ourselves be imputed to us. It’s a wonderful thing. Glorious gospel!

Check out Chaotic Resemblance on Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify. Keep an eye out for their new single dropping this fall, and new album at the beginning of the year!