Front Row Center: Walk The Plank Tour



// View the photos from The Walk The Plank Tour here

AP caught up with the Atticus Walk The Plank Tour when it rolled through Cleveland a few weeks back and loaded up on exclusive pics and video. We also snagged headliners the Classic Crime to talk. Frontman Matt MacDonald said the weather was particularly daunting that snowy night, but (spoiler alert!) they finished up the tour without incident.

Is this your first headlining tour?
We did one for a month last year, but this is our first real-ish one.

Does it feel any different at the top of the bill?
Nah. All the bands are in the same boat; just because we're headlining doesn't make us any bigger than the other bands. We may draw 50 more kids, but it doesn't mean anything really. We're just the last band to play every night.

You guys have passed some of the long road-hours prank calling fans. Whose idea was that?
Our tour manager Sean [Porter]. He kinda brought prank calling back. We used to do it and got over it, but he had some fresh voices-like this drunk girl voice that's awesome. We set it up where we asked our fans for some phone numbers and we ended up with like seven or ten pages full of numbers on our MySpace. We would get all this great information to make the calls seem legit. They'd say like, "Prank this guy, he's my friend. His name's Billy, he works at this place and he does this and here's a secret about him that only I know." [Laughs.]

You've really been keeping fans in the loop with this tour via video updates, huh?
We try to. We just got this little camera thing that makes it really easy; we just plug into the USB in our computer. We wanted to do something like that for a while. For our first record [2006's Albatross], we had like a whole hour-long DVD full of footage of us recording. It took forever to edit, though. With our new stuff, it's just like point [the camera] and you have it. We're not trying to be Steven Spielberg or anything here. [Laughs.]

One of the videos is taken from inside a single-engine plane with you at the controls. How long have you been flying?
That was my first time. [Laughs.] The actual pilot was next to me, but I had the controls. I'd never been in a small airplane in my life before. As soon as we took off, the pilot was like, "When I say, 'Go!', you just pull back slowly." And I was just like, "Wooop!" It was the most awesome thing ever. I was scaring the guys riding in the back on purpose. It's weird, though. When the pilot would do the dive-bomb things and we'd just drop, it feels like a roller coaster and if you had something in your hand, it would just start floating. But when you're the one doing the dive-bomb, you feel like you're in control. It's this weird psychological thing.

How did you guys end up on this tour?
Atticus approached us at Warped Tour and said that they wanted to get involved back in the U.S. because they operate out of London right now. They said, "We want your band to be a part of this." And we said, "Are you sure? Cause it's not gonna be that big of a tour. [Laughs.] We should probably get someone else to headline." But they were like, "No, man. You guys are the guys." There was talk about 3OH!3 doing the tour, but they kinda took off after Warped Tour. It's been great, though. We get to play every night with our friends in Tyler Read-who are amazing.

Seems like a pretty stress-free tour…
Well, we did spin out in the snow and do a 180 on the freeway. We bashed up our brand new trailer. It's snowing pretty bad tonight, so we'll probably do a 360. This could actually be the last interview we ever do. This could be gold. alt

Artist vs Poet – Runaway

The Classic Crime – Grave Diggin

Lower Definition – Versus Versace

A Change Of Pace – Weekend Warriors

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