Guitarist Pepper Keenan recently spoke about DOWN’s plans to return to touring in 2022 in a new interview with Ultimate Classic Rock.
Initially the plan was for DOWN to tour in support of the 25 year anniversary of their debut album ‘NOLA’, however that was sidelined due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Everybody’s just trying to come up for air,” Pepper said. “We played Psycho [Las Vegas festival] in Vegas and we played at Fillmore in New Orleans, and they were both slamming shows. We did live streams. It was just so bizarre to be sitting on your ass for a year — literally. We had shit planned all over the fucking place — both [DOWN and CORROSION OF CONFORMITY, Pepper’s other band]. And we just got hobbled. So now we’re just trying to slowly put it back together without going too fast. But, yeah, it’s definitely on the radar.”
Keenan also commented on having fellow guitarist Kirk Windstein back in DOWN after a six-year absence. Kirk left the band back in 2013 to focus on his other band, CROWBAR, and was replaced by DOWN’s former guitar tech Bobby Landgraf until Windstein announced his return to the band in 2019.
“[Kirk] was our missing link,” Pepper told Ultimate Classic Rock. “And I did tell everybody, I said, ‘I ain’t gonna do it unless Kirk’s in the band.’ I called Kirk. Kirk said, ‘I’m in.’ We went berserk. We were out of our element and went insane. But we’ve all known each since we were kids, so you can’t be mad that long. And nobody was mad. It was just… [Laughs] We were losing it. We were coming off the rails.”
Prior to the band’s August 2020 livestream event, DOWN’s last live show took place at the 2016 edition of Psycho Las Vegas.