Out Of Their Way | South Africa’s Seether are still kicking around, even though they’ve had numerous line-up changes in the past decade.
SEETHER
Tue, Aug 19 (8pm). Edmonton Event Centre (West Edmonton Mall). Tickets available through Ticketmaster (451-8000/ticketmaster.ca).
Does being the “new guy” in an established band mean having to do all the interviews while the other members get a break from answering the same questions over and over? According to Troy McLawhorn, Seether’s new guitarist as of February of this year, yes. But not really.
“Since I joined the band I’ve done every single interview the band has done by myself,” he jokes. “Nah, we all split the duties as evenly as we can. I just started doing more interviews recently, but everyone is very involved with doing them. This way, no one gets sick of doing them.”
Not that McLawhorn considers himself the stereotypical “new guy,” anyway. The former guitarist of Dark New Day, McLawhorn met the post-grunge outfit when an old band of his toured with them in 2002, and he’s considered them friends ever since. Actually joining the band, he explains, was mere serendipity.
“After that tour,” he begins, “we exchanged numbers and actually stayed in touch. That doesn’t always happen with musicians—we mean well, but we’re a busy breed of people, you know? About a year and a half later, I toured with them again, this time with Dark New Day, and by then we had become even closer. Seether’s guitar player, Pat Callahan, had left the band around that time, and they played as a three-piece for a while, but they never intended to stay a three-piece group.
“Then I ran into them when I was in California last year. Dale [Stewart] and Shaun [Morgan] talked to me about coming out on the road with them, and it seemed like a perfect fit for me. There wasn’t any weird, get-to-know-each-other phase for us—it was completely natural.”
After touring with Seether last fall, the group asked McLawhorn if he’d be interested in becoming a permanent fixture in the band, which has gone through over half a dozen guitar players since its inception in 1999. It was a no-brainer for McLawhorn, who has spent most of this year on the road with his new (and now official) bandmates.
And McLawhorn says Seether fans have been nothing but welcoming to him. As far as he knows. “I haven’t gotten any negative feedback yet, knock on wood,” he says. “But I don’t really go out and search for that kind of stuff. I’m sure there are fans who hate my guts, but I’m not as thick-skinned as some people are. I hate reading bad reviews—they really bother me. If someone doesn’t like what I do, that’s fine. But some people are really malicious—they try to say mean things to hurt you. We’re all out here having fun and doing the best that we can. If they’re a true fan, they’ll understand.”
