Music

PK

PHOTOGRAPH BY JON WEINER

It has been a busy year for local band PK, and the pace is accelerating. They were recently spotlighted by MTV, who called them “one of the top unsigned bands of 2012” and they were also featured in the pages of Rolling Stone Magazine. Last year’s tour schedule included opening for The Script at a sold out show in San Diego, touring with Angels and Airways (led by Tom DeLong of Blink 182), playing at SXSW in Austin, Texas, as well as appearing at an event leading up to the Indy 500.

Four of the five members hail from Templeton High School, where they dreamed of someday making a career playing music together. According to the band, they were either “playing music, listening to music, writing music, or going to a show.” Despite their common passion, at some point along the way, a more practical option revealed itself and they all went off to separate colleges in search of higher education and stable paychecks. College was fine and the careers that they led to were interesting

enough, but something was missing. And, each one of them recognized it in different ways. When the high school friends reunited in 2010, then a couple of years out of college, everything “just clicked” and talk turned almost immediately to writing songs and choosing a band name. At the time, lead singer, Travis Hawley, had been reading a book called The Power of One and he suggested the name “PK,” after the protagonist of the story, “a scrappy, boxer kid.” Although a few other ideas were bantered about, the band quickly embraced the name. Not wasting any time, newly formed PK got started writing songs. They describe it as a collaborative process where one of the members initiates an idea and the others build on it. Although it can be a grind, they explain that some of their best, most popular songs come to them almost instantaneously in a process they liken to “blacking out.” In other words, when the band is fully immersed and fully engaged in song writing, the members report being so completely in the flow of the creative process that they almost cannot remember having done it at all. This phenomenon was particularly true of their hit song “London,” which came together after one afternoon of intense focus in a recording studio. [You can listen to this song as well as some of their others by going to this article at slolifemagazine.com] Although the band initially wrote and self-produced their early songs, they have recently begun branching out by agreeing to work with some seasoned music producers. The recording studio work they have been developing lately will culminate in a new album that is expected to release soon. The band hopes that the new album will lead to opening shows for bigger bands. Their music, which the band describes as “pop rock” and has been compared to The Killers, The Cure, and The Kooks, is catchy, upbeat and soulful. It is unlike anything currently playing today. And it would not be hard to imagine PK making it big, really big just like they imagined they would back at Templeton High School. SLO LIFE left to right Nick Fotinakes, Rico Rodriguez, Travis Hawley, Matt DePauw, Mikel Van Kranenburg