Default: Time is on Their Side

Default's current hit is "Wasting My Time," so the VH1.com irony meter was beeping like Dutch techno when singer Dallas Smith turned up two hours late for our interview. Sure, he's busy with meet and greet-type things, but doesn't the guy own a watch?

As it turned out, no. "I'm just not a watch guy," confessed the footloose Dallas. So, whose idea was it to have the Vancouver quartet perform inside a giant timepiece in their "Wasting My Time" video?

"They wanted us to do a performance video and play in a warehouse," he said. "We were like, 'That's been done a million times.' We wanted to do something different, so we left it to the director to come up with an idea. We write songs, we don't make videos, so we just let him do what he gets paid for."

As it turns out, time is a key factor to the Default experience. For instance, when they were recording their 2001 debut album The Fallout, Nickelback's Chad Kroeger taught the fledgling rockers how to trim away the seconds to make the ferocious attack of their songs even more concise and powerful.

"We were really inexperienced as to what radio wants," Smith recalled, "so we had to snip the five-minute songs down to nice three-and-a-half minute packages."

Tracks like "Wasting My Time" and "Deny' aren't merely distinguished by remorseless post-grunge riffs. Just as significant are Smith's distinctive vocals - a hybrid of the growls brought to us by Eddie Vedder and Scott Weiland. So did Kroeger, himself no slouch in the emoting sweepstakes, offer any tips when it comes to letting the passion pour out?

"He gave me that little push I needed to get myself out there and get the confidence," Smith said. Very wise. Smith had no prior vocal experience beyond wailing along to favorite albums like Pearl Jam's Ten. He soon learned there was a big difference between singing to yourself and wooing an audience. Default's second show was supporting Nickelback. The experience inspired their telling song "Live a Lie."

"Imagine the shy guy in high school getting up there, never having sung in front of anybody," Smith remembered. "And then it's a packed house, opening up for Nickelback. I was thrown to the dogs and picked apart right away. I just stood still. I was scared shitless!

"'Live a Lie' is about how I felt at the beginning of the band. I didn't feel like I was being myself, trying to please everybody else. The guys bugged me, 'Do this onstage, do that onstage.' I said, 'Just let me get up there and as long as it takes, I'm going to keep getting up there and keep getting up there and just let it happen.' So far it's worked for me."

So what advice would he give to aspiring rock stars making the move from shower stall to concert hall?

"The crowd wants to be entertained," he explained. "You put your hands up, they're going to put their hands up too. I'm starting to realize how easy it is. You've just got to be confident with yourself, and everybody sees that onstage."

Smith has been getting plenty of practice. Default toured the U.S. with both Nickelback and Bush, and now Chad and the boys are bringing them along on the MTV Campus Invasion tour. The tour bus is customized with DVD players, speakers and family photos. They're becoming pros at throwing after-show parties, too.

"You've got to crank either the AC/DC or the Van Halen," Dallas says of their not-quite-Queen-sized bacchanalias. "We transform the bus pretty quickly. We break out the little disco ball. There are no guys allowed on the bus. No sausage. All they do is they drink the beer and they scare the girls away!"

There's a chance that this rolling den on iniquity is going to become a creative space, however. Since they don't get much of a sound check, the often have plenty of time on their hands. The group want to install some recording gear in the bus and start toiling on The Fallout's successor.

"They always say you have a year to write your first record and two weeks to write your second," reminds Dallas. "I think that's one of the biggest mistakes you can make. We're going to start laying some stuff down and send some demos to different producers and take our time with it. If it takes a year and a half from now to release the next record, that's what we're going to do."

Sounds like time well spent.