Youth, young manhood, and talent. Factor in Travis Hawley (vox), Matt Depauw (guitar), Nick Fotinakes (guitar), Mikel Van Kranenburg (bass), Rico Rodriguez (drums) and their penchant for making a hybrid Killers/Cure rock noise so good that it compeled Rolling Stone Magazine to dub them “One of the top unsigned bands in the country.”and there you have PK. Approximately halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco sits the city of San Luis Obispo and that’s where these gentlemen call home. And I like them.
They’ve just released the 5-song EP “The Lost Boys Sessions”: a damned good and healthy sampling of what they have to offer, as well as a sonic picture of why they’ve opened for the likes of Aerosmith, Twin Atlantic, Shiny Toy Guns, and why their fanbase keeps growing beyond Southern California. I just caught their show at the Roxy Theater in West Hollywood; a review of that show is on the way but- in the meantime- let’s go to the EP: track by track.
Travis was kind enough to share some of his thoughts on The Lost Boys Sessions; the who, the what, the where, the when, and the why: “The Lost Boys Sessions is a name that just sort of came out of nowhere. We had been so focused on writing, recording, touring and making new fans that when it actually came down to naming the EP we wanted something that was close to home. I guess it’s a little bit laughable but we always joke how being in a band is like being part of The Lost Boys from Peter Pan, we’re constantly in pack mentality, causing ruckuses and sleeping in our van together every night. I think it’s fair to say that you have to have a pretty big Peter Pan Complex to do what we do.”
Berelain came together with the arpeggio that starts the song, the rest of it fell into place immediately after. I had been watching tons of 80’s movies while I was writing the lyrics and the idea of night time, steam rising and wet streets heavily impacted the story. When it came time to film the music video the whole band thought I was crazy because I was obsessed with using fog machines and wetting down all the streets before we filmed. Our hometown city of Paso Robles was extremely generous to us while we were filming and allowed us ‘The Keys to The City’, so we got a couple horses, dressed up like it was Halloween and ran rampant around the town.
This version of London was recorded at Redbull Studios in LA and produced and mixed by Chris Sorenson and Beau Burchell of Saosin. The song was written shortly after I had returned from studying abroad in Italy and is actually based on overnight trains I used to take from Torino to Rome. I’m not really sure how or when it became “London”…
I remember writing this song really late at night in our practice space with Matt… I was playing drums and had a microphone propped up in front of me and I was just playing some simple driving kick snare beat and “We woke in rain by an old stone wall” came out. It was one of our first mid tempo songs so we were very curious how our fans would react.
I think this is probably the band’s favorite track off of ‘The Lost Boys Sessions’… there’s something timeless and simple about it, it’s very straight forward and feels great to play live.
Let people interpret the song as they will, I guess it deals with co dependency and wanting to fix someone that’s on a shadowed path. Musically I’d say it’s very reminiscent of music we wrote together when we were kids… more punk, more aggressive.
Matt wrote the chorus to this song on a tiny Casio keyboard and sent it to me. The recording was scratchy and small but it had this really cool vibe and such a good hook we knew we had to use it.
Want more? Then help yourself to Into The Roaring; PK’s 2009 full length debut which you can download for FREE. And keep up with their goings on in the usual places: their official website and Facebook.
You’re welcome.
@dharma69