How many music lovers dream of getting onstage with a favorite band? How many actually get a chance to do it?
Apollo native Dan Swank is one of the lucky ones. In 2020, he became a member of his all-time favorite band, All Time Low.
Working with the band as an assistant tour manager, then an auxiliary member, then a full-time member, has been a surreal experience, he said.
“I’d see (vocalist Alex Gaskarth) and try to act like he’s just my boss and try to forget that he’s the reason I wanted to sing in the first place,” Swank said. “At first, I was almost too nervous to just hang out with the guys.”
By now, he’s settled in.
Courtesy of Nolan Knight Photography
From left: Members of rock band All Time Low are Alex Gaskarth, Dan Swank, Rian Dawson, Zach Merrick and Jack Barakat.
Prior to the pandemic shutdown, Swank was onstage with All Time Low for brief tours around the United States and the United Kingdom. Recently, they’ve appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “The Ellen Degeneres Show.”
Tonight, they’ll be on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” at 11:35 p.m. on ABC.
Keep it pure
Now 26 and living in Nashville, Swank first developed a working relationship and friendship with All Time Low drummer Rian Dawson — but the story has its roots in Swank’s childhood in Apollo, where his older brother, Mac, taught him to play guitar.
Music was sidelined for football and track during his high school years, first at Greensburg Central Catholic and then at The Kiski School. Swank also played football during his freshman year at Westminster College.
“After one year, I had to stop kidding myself to think I could squeeze in academics, music, sports and my personal life,” he said. “I had to get rid of one. I stopped playing football.”
Except for a few lessons on a drum pad and bass guitar during elementary school, Swank said, he has no formal musical training.
“In my down time, I would play music and write songs,” he said. “I wanted to learn it on my own. I wasn’t a prodigy, I just knew I loved it and wanted to keep it pure — but it probably took 10 years longer that way.”
In college, he played solo acoustic gigs on the Westminster campus, around New Castle and in Pittsburgh-area venues like the Smiling Moose and Altar Bar.
Just like them
Through all that time, he followed All Time Low, which formed in Maryland in 2003 and is described variously as an alternative rock, pop, punk and emo band, in the manner of Blink-182, Green Day, New Found Glory and The Get Up Kids. The band has headlined its own tours and played the Warped Tour and festivals like Reading and Leeds in England and Soundwave in Australia.
“I was always a fan of All Time Low,” Swank said. “I most definitely, definitely wanted to start a band and be just like them.”
Following band members’ social media accounts, Swank saw that Dawson had opened a recording studio in Nashville. He reached out to the band’s manager and got an invitation to record a song at Dawson’s Track Happy Studios in October 2016, during his senior year of college.
“It felt like a calling from the universe,” he said.
During two days in the studio, Swank said he and Dawson “really clicked.” Swank also submitted a resume for an assistant’s job in the studio.
“Before I left, I told (Dawson) I’d put in my resume and that I’d love to work with him,” he said. “He said, ‘yeah, yeah, OK,’ and then I didn’t hear anything for months.
“In April I was working a Sunday shift at a winery, it was a month before graduation, and I got a text out of the blue from Rian — ‘Hey, you still wanna do this?’ I’m throwing my phone and doing a quick lap around the winery.”
Sad Summer Tour
He moved to Nashville right after graduation and began learning his way around the recording equipment that “looked like the cockpit of a plane,” along with getting coffee, keeping things clean and generally doing whatever needed to be done in the studio.
“Rian saw that I was an asset, and that’s where the connection started,” he said. “We developed a strong working relationship and a friendship. We ended up getting matching tattoos of the studio address.”
That connection led to the job on the 2018 tour.
Courtesy of Nolan Knight Photography
All Time Low, whose members include Apollo native Dan Swank, will play a July 21 show outdoors at Stage AE in Pittsburgh.
“They told me, ‘Whatever we say, you’re the guy we need to do that,’” he said, from getting food to keeping the bus clean. “I had the full tour experience of being on the bus, sleeping in a bunk and being in a new city every day.”
That progressed to being an auxiliary band member on tour and then a full-fledged member, singing and playing guitar and keyboards.
Swank said he’s been teased for being both a blessing and a curse to the band, with his joining coinciding with the pandemic shutdown of live shows — and also with an unexpected stroke of good luck.
“They’ve never been a huge radio band, they were always a touring band with a die-hard fan base,” he said. But then “Monsters,” a single from the January 2020 release, “Wake Up, Sunshine,” started getting radio play.
“It was No. 1 for 18 weeks on the alternative charts,” Swank said.
That interest led to the recent television appearances. All Time Low also has scheduled a summer tour of outdoor concert venues, including a July 21 date at Stage AE in Pittsburgh.
Called the “Sad Summer Tour,” the name is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the band’s association with the angst-filled emo genre, Swank said.
While in Pittsburgh, Swank will have a chance to connect with his parents, who now live in the Strip District.
As for that song he recorded at Track Happy Studios to start the odyssey, it never went anywhere.
“I didn’t ever put it out,” Swank said. “I was no longer in the head space of playing and releasing songs. It was all about, ‘How do I get back to Nashville for that studio job?’”
But if you ever see a track called, “Write a Song About Me,” on an All Time Low album, that’s the one.
Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Shirley at 724-836-5750, smcmarlin@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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