DOWN guitarist Kirk Windstein is featured in a new interview with The Examiner. An excerpt is available below:

E: Why the longevity?

Kirk: "If it weren’t for taking breaks, sometimes long sabbaticals and doing other things … we toured ourselves silly in the past at times. We now know how long of a tour we can do without wanting to kill one another and how long we can go until we need a break. It’s difficult because we’ve got five very strong personalities, very talented guys that have all been successful in other bands, and it can get to be a bit much. I will say that we’ve mellowed with age. It’s helped a lot, not only as in partying and stuff like that, but our whole attitude. We realize that we’re blessed to be able to do what we’re doing, which is make a living playing the music we create, and we have a great diehard fan base and we’re grateful for that. As we get older, we realize how fortunate we really are to still be doing this and at some level of success. We all appreciate the band, and ourselves in general, more than we did ten years ago."

E: This band has outlasted most marriages.

Kirk: "You’re right. It’s absolutely a relationship. Everyone’s got a different personality, everyone’s got different quirks and different moody things, and you really have to learn to put up with each other and cut someone a little slack when they’re having a bad day. We’ve talked about it quite a bit. Like in any band, there are ups and downs, you get burned out on each other. Sometimes we tour for months and months with very little time off, and we’d joke but we’d be serious — we’d literally get to the airport and be like, 'Yeah, I’ll call you,' and we’d get home and not talk to each other for a month because you need to get back to your life and your own thing and just break from one another. When the creative juices start flowing, you get ready to jam again. We all consider ourselves brothers and great friends, but we’ve tried to remedy what happened in the past, which was being burned out from over-touring. Now we pick and choose the touring, and the way we want to do our music, and it seems to be working out great."

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As previously reported, instead of going the traditional album route, Down plan to issue four EPs, the first of which will be heavy in nature. A release date has not yet been revealed.

Down's remaining 2011 tour dates are as follows:

October

29 - Southport Music Hall - New Orleans, LA
30 - Southport Music Hall - New Orleans, LA

November

11 - El Teatro - Buenos Aires, Argentina
12 - Maquinaria Festival - Santiago, Chile
14 - Starts With You Festival - Sao Paulo, Brazil
16 - Opinao - Porto Alegre, Brazil
17 - Master Hall - Curitiba, Brazil
19 - Vivo Cuervo - Mexico City, Mexico