KILLSWITCH ENGAGE On Temporary Replacement Singer ALL THAT REMAINS' Phil Labonte - "If It Was Joe Schmoe It Wouldn't Work"
March 7, 2010, 14 years ago
MetalAssault.com's Julia Neuman caught up with KILLSWITCH ENGAGE guitarist Joel Stroetzel on March 6th in Los Angeles at The Wiltern. An excerpt from the interview is available below.
Julia: Howard (Jones) dropped out of the tour, and he has been temporarily replaced by Phil Labonte [from ALL THAT REMAINS]. So it's 'Philswitch' now! Tell me a little bit about how things are going with Phil.
Joel: "Things have been going great. Initially, we just had Phil come out with the thought that we had three shows we had to get through, then we'd postpone the tour and come back and do it with Howard in a few months. But it went so well with Phil the first few shows that everybody was so stoked. We have a lot of the same fans I think, so a lot of people were psyched to see him. If it was Joe Schmoe it wouldn't work, but since it's Phil, it works. And like I said, the shows were so much fun and Phil was willing to do the whole tour."
Julia: Did you have a lot of rehearsals with him or did he kind of just get thrown in there?
Joel: "No, he was thrown, thrown to the wolves. We called him I think at three in the morning and we were like 'Hey, can you fly to Florida in about five hours?' He was like 'Yeah I'll be there!' So we did like a quick sound check with him, went through the songs that he wasn't familiar with, and we played that night. That was pretty much it. So yeah, obviously after a couple of shows he started to get more comfortable."
Go to this location for the complete interview.
