(Winnipeg Sun) (01/02/03)

By Rob Williams

Edited By Michael Bennett

VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA - Success is relative.

If DEFAULT bassist Dave Benedict had to define it, it wouldn't be the day his band hit the million unit mark in sales of their first album but the day he was able to quit his full-time day job to concentrate on making music.

"Even though I quit my job earlier than I should of, the whole thing of getting to go into work and telling your boss, 'I've got to quit because I've got a record contract,' was great, but it could have gone either way," he says.

It's a good thing he did because there is no way he could have kept punching a clock with the way things have been going for the Vancouver band.

DEFAULT's 2001 debut, "The Fallout," sold more than 1.2 million copies, thanks to the singles 'Wasting My Time,' 'Deny, 'Live A Lie' and 'Sick & Tired.'

The cross-border success of the album led to a full-fledged North American tour and attention from the American entertainment media.

"Being on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno was quite the trip."

"I was like, 'What's going on? I've gotten drunk watching this show so many times, am I drunk right now?'" Benedict laughs.

The group -- Benedict, vocalist Dallas Smith, guitarist Jeremy James and drummer Danny Craig -- went on to win the 2002 Juno Award for best new rock band, but Benedict doesn't hold much stock in the award's supposed curse of future obscurity.

"That's the very first thing you hear after you win the award, it's like, 'Take it back, take it back,' but Nickelback demolished that cliche because they came back and became the biggest band in the world, so it's just a fable," he says.

Speaking of Nickelback, Benedict admits he is tired of the "baby Nickelback" tag the media has given them because of the similar post-grunge style the two bands share and Default's close ties to frontman Chad Kroeger, who helped produce "The Fallout."

"I don't really see the comparison."

"We're a rock band, so in that essence you can compare us, but as far as singers go, you listen to Chad and Dallas and if you can't distinguish the two, I'm sorry, there's something wrong with your ears," he says.

"It just keeps going around and once you're out and have established yourself, people have come up to me and said, 'Hey, have you heard so and so? They sound like you.'"

Because of their immediate success, there was a lot of pressure on Default when they were recording their follow-up.

The band had more time in the studio to experiment with different sounds but was less prepared than when recording their debut.

"Whether we've sold a million albums or not, you want to top what you did the last time."

"Writing the first album it was making us happy, and now your audience is a little bigger, so it's definitely pressure because I don't want to go back to my boss and ask for my job back," Benedict says.

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