All The Best: Parkway Drive

From relative obscurity in their hometown of Byron Bay, to sold out Australia-wide and international tours, it’s been a wild ride for Australia’s biggest new hardcore act, Parkway Drive. And they’re loving it. It’s been just over a year since their second album, Horizons, was released, and the support tours are still going strong. More and more critics are hailing Parkway as the frontline in Australian music. With good reason, as it happens. Lead singer and frontman Winston McCall happily calls up The Dwarf to talk all things past, present and future.

So where are you at the moment, Winston? “I’m at home. It’s great!” came the laughing reply. The simple irony of this statement is not lost; Parkway have just finished a tour around Australia and New Zealand, and Winston’s happiness at simply being able to lie around and chill out says a lot about the lifestyle of the Parkway members. But the band is soon to be off again. Throughout November Parkway Drive will be headlining the ‘Never Say Die’ tour in Europe, playing all through the continent along with several other bands. Parkway is eagerly looking forward to the experience. “We’re stoked to be going again. Europe is a great place to be able to tour,” affirmed Winston. “There’s nowhere that isn’t fun to play.” In particular the band is looking forward to being able to play the tour alongside fellow band Unearthed. “They influenced us so much… They really contributed to how our music sounds,” the singer stated. “Being able to play over them will be amazing.”

Of course, it wasn’t always like this for Parkway Drive. The success of the band has really spiked up with the sale of second album Horizons, and Parkway have exploded into the music market in the last two years. One of the best things about the European tour is that the band will be able to simply focus on playing the music. “It’s so good that we don’t have to worry about vans breaking down, or venues cancelling on us, or about where our next meal is coming from,” admitted Winston. “People are so good to us… We’ve got a tour bus and beds to sleep in and everything! We’re just looking forwards to having fun.”

After the European tour is over, Parkway will be coming back to Australia for a nice wide homecoming stint across the capital cities, and a few other towns beside. But surely Parkway Drive are sick of playing Australia by now? “No, definitely not,” laughed the singer. “The crowds are getting bigger…we don’t know where the kids come from. Every time you step on stage you’re just like ‘oh my god’.” Things have changed as well; this time around Parkway will be playing larger venues. Unfortunately for the band, this also means a lot more stage protection. Winston elaborated on this. “Some places there are 12 foot barriers and the stage is 3 metres high and you can hardly see who you’re playing to… We prefer playing without the barrier, but we understand that the venue doesn’t want a thousand kids climbing on the stage and the stage collapsing and people suing them. We do kinda miss the smaller venues...” That’s why Europe is so good, right? “Yeah,” laughed the singer, “people just rush the stage and destroy shit.”

While we were on the topic of mosh antics, I thought I’d ask Winston about the naked guys I’d seen jumping into the mosh pit at the shows I’d been to. “Oh,” the singer calmly ruminated, “naked people seem to be pretty much a standard these days.” The most extreme mosh antics at a Parkway Show seem to be far beyond that now. “The best one I’ve seen was in Russia,” Winston remembers. “Halfway through the set some dude set himself on fire and was running around at the front of the barrier… The band were all like “what the fuck” but we kept playing. He did it like 3 times… After the show a guy came up to us and said (imitation Russian voice) ‘Did you see the burning man that was me’, and we were like ‘yeah we caught that one man’ (laughter)”. No shit. Here’s hoping for some of that in Oz!

I also thought I’d bring up the fact that fans were clamouring for new material from the band; check out fans MySpace comments on Parkway’s websites to see what I mean. When asked if anything besides touring was in the works for the Drive, the results were both surprising and very very pleasing. “Yeah, we’ve started work on a new album… we’ve also started writing a DVD.” Don’t get too hopeful though Parkway fans; it may be a while in the coming, especially since Parkway are touring so heavily. However, the quality sounds promising. “The DVD is sort of a documentary about our lives since Parkway, and a little bit before that… We have some 6 years of footage to sift through so it could take a while.” And the album? “We have plans for it… we’re working around some kind of concept. We’re also putting a bit more time into this album. The first two we pumped out pretty fast… We thought ‘third one, let’s take our time’”. I for one am sure the quality will be worth it.

Any final message for the fans Winston? “Thankyou. Thankyou so much,” earnestly said the man. “This is the best time of my life”. Our pleasure mate.

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