 By Melissa Hetu Every Time I Die: "Never go back to Wyoming!"Every Time I Die's guitarist Andrew Williams might be in a hardcore/metal band but that doesn't mean he wasn't scared when the band's van crashed while driving through Wyoming back at the beginning of January. The van slipped on the same road that Bayside did back in late October, which unfortunately led to the death of their drummer. I sat with Andrew who seemed to be in top shape before their show in Montreal to talk about this experience. Truth.Explosion: First thing I want to know is are you guys all ok?
Andrew: Yah everything's fine, it was the weirdest thing ever. I don't know if I blacked out but I broke the window with my head. What I remember; I remember the actual hit and then I remember Keith just being on top of me. That's the chain of events: Bam and then Keith is on top of me.
TE: So it was like a bad dream?
Andrew: Yah, it was really weird. We weren't freaking out about the van accident, we were freaking out because we had to get out of the van. It wasn't anything major but it was just like "Dude, we got to get out of here man" and I was like "Oh, I broke this window with my head, so we can just get out of here" (laughs). So we just climbed out of the window and that's when I was expecting to see everyone bleeding or someone with something broken but we were all standing in a circle and we're all like "You alright? Are you alright? Cool! Did that just happen?" because we were all fine and no one was hurt. Jordan's bag was thrown 20 feet out of the trailer somehow. There were a bunch of CD packets all over the place.
TE: Was that all over the road? Or just on the side of the road?
Andrew: Not on the road because we flipped off the road. Here's the weirdest part: I always sit in the back seat. So I'm in the 15-passenger van and I'm all the way in the back and I remember I had my phone in the van and the way the van was, we were facing the opposite way we were driving. So when the van was turned over, it was facing let's say South and we were going North. And my phone was like 15 feet from the front of the van which is the other way from where I was. I was in the back of the van which was facing north and my phone was 15 feet passed south. I don't know how the hell that happened.
TE: Maybe it was like gravity or something.
Andrew: Yah, I have no idea. It was the weirdest thing ever because I remember calling it and Jordan was like here's your phone and he was super far away.
TE: Who was driving?
Andrew: Jordan was driving.
TE: Did you guys slip on ice? I got the press release...
Andrew: We weren't going fast because we knew it was sketchy plus it was a stretch of highway where so many bands have accidents. That's where Bayside's van accident was, not even 20 miles from where we were, it was like 10 miles from where we were.
TE: Is it because it's in the mountains?
Andrew: It's not in the mountains, it's a flat highway, right where the winds from the mountains come over, so the whole thing is glazed with ice. We were driving and I just think a big gust of wind came along and the trailor slipped out and that's when we started losing control. That was the weirdest thing because I was laying down in the back seat and everyone was sleeping and I felt one weird jolt and I looked up and hear Jordan going "Oh shit!" and the van is going from side to side but then out of nowhere he had it straight, so I was like alright we're cool but I look back and the trailor was on the side of us and that's when it swung around. I remember I just duck my head and waited for the impact.
TE: You must have been scared, especially if you knew that Bayside had just had an accident there...
Andrew: Yah but then as soon as we were upside down I was just like "alright, is that it? I'm fine, I don't feel any sort of weird pain, the back of my head sort of hurts a little bit".
TE: Your head was fine even after smashing that window open? It wasn't cut?
Andrew: Everything was fine, super weird. I had a couple of cuts on my back from getting out of the van, getting out of the window.
TE: What did you learn from that experience?
Andrew: Never go back to Wyoming! (laughs) We're going to avoid that state like the plague; we'll leave days ahead just to get away from it.
TE: Are you guys still touring in a van right now?
Andrew: Yah. Some company out of Chicago drove out a guy with a van and a trailer so it allowed us to keep going. We didn't know if we wanted to keep going because we were kind of scared.
TE: Did you lose all of your stuff? Did your equipment get broken?
Andrew: No, this is the weirdest thing ever. I have about 16 guitars that I own but I only bring two out on tour. Before we left I had my two usual guitars that I bring with me and I remember telling my mother "Yah, I have this weird feeling about the tour, so I'm bringing an extra guitar". So I brought an old guitar that I had that I didn't pay much money for and that's the only thing that broke. The neck snapped and that was it.
TE: Wow, that's weird.
Andrew: It was seriously unbelievable!
(Andrew and I had been sitting around tables on the side of the stage for the interview and the doors to the venue opened to the public)
Andrew: These kids are running to the front of the stage, like they couldn't get there faster!
TE: I know, they've been waiting outside since like lunch time.
Andrew: Look at them, they couldn't get there fast enough!
TE: (Laughs) it's because they need to be in the front!
Andrew: God! (laughs)
TE: What do you think of the crowd here?
Andrew: It's not a mature crowd. It's like 13 to 18.
TE: Is it different in the states?
Andrew: No, no! I'm 28-years-old, so walking around I feel like a dinosaur or the bad chaperone like everyone's ashamed of.
TE: Going around like "quite guys, keep it down now!"
Andrew: (Laughs) right...I walk around in the crowd and everyone's like laughing and pointing "who's that guy?"
TE: Getting back to the accident...Did you guys receive a lot of support from your fans following what happened?
Andrew: Yah but the weird thing was that there were a lot of rumors going around on the net that we had died or that one of us had died or was super hurt. The weird thing was that we were stuck in Colorado Springs for four days. The van company came and got us and we had a super big drive if we wanted to meet up with Story Of The Year but we had our headlining show in Colorado Springs so we were there for four days. We went to the movies one night and a group of kids were there that knew whom we were or recognized us and they all said that they had read we were dead. The funny thing was that we kind of disappeared. We put that press release out but we never said where we were after that so people were like "oh my god, they're missing" but we were just in Colorado Springs, watching movies, staying in a hotel. I never thought this would be true but, if you get in a bad accident, they say it doesn't hurt right away; it hurts the next day or the day after. So the next day, we were all completely battered, our ribs, necks were hurting. All together we had like six days off and that was the perfect amount of time off.
TE: My last question...what's the "truth" about Every Time I Die?
Andrew: I think that the biggest truth about us is that it's really cliché for a lot of bands to say that they don't give a shit about things. That they don't give a shit about sounds cans, don't give a shit about how many kids come to their shows but I think the truth is we really are that band. We're just here to play music. If I was playing in front of 70-year-old people it would be just as fulfilling to me as if we were playing to 13 to18-year-old kids. We're not the type of band that's going to put make-up on, we're not the type of band that's going to talk about how we have sex with a ton of girls because we don't do that. We are not druggies, we are just music fans, we love making music and that's the truth, that's the reason why we are here.
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