In 2003, Parkway Drive formed in Byron Bay; their first steps as a live band cultivated at the Byron Bay Youth Centre, before multiple Australian tours would establish the group as not just ones to watch, but a group with instant legacy potential.
Across seven studio albums – three of which are ARIA #1 records — two DVDs, a split album and even a book documenting the first decade of the band, Parkway Drive are revered as one of the most important groups in the Australian heavy scene.
Setting a blueprint for domestic and international success, Parkway Drive’s music and live reputation have remained fully aligned for two decades. Both are brutal, intelligent and unwavering in its approach to pushing the boundaries of what has been deemed successful for not just a heavy group, but for an Australian touring band, period.
Marking their 20th year, Parkway Drive have staged their biggest stage production to date – touring Australian arenas for the first time through September. The response to the tour announcement manifested in the first round of shows selling out within just one hour. With more shows added soon after, Parkway Drive have been able to take more steps forward in the curation of an experience that frontman Winston McCall promises is one people won’t forget.
“We’ve driven ourselves to the point of exhaustion with this creation process, but it’s all very articulated,” he explains. “There’s just a lot of work to do, but the work is there because you have, for the first time ever, a fully formed vision that has taken 20 years of creating different little elements.”
“To finally have the whole thing come together it’s like, I have all the colours now. I know how to paint it, I just have to put it down. I’m very proud of it. At the same point in time, I’m really psyched to see what the next part is going to be. The next chapter is written in our brains and if that comes to pass, then…when I say this is a jumping off point, you’ll understand in a few weeks’ time!”
When we speak with McCall, he is happy to indulge in some moments of introspection; looking back on a rollercoaster of a career that has seen him grow up on stages around the world with his bandmates Luke Kilpatrick, Jeff Ling, Ben Gordon and Jia O’Connor.
From those early youth centre shows, through to dominating stages throughout Europe, the UK, and North America, McCall has been able to see just how much the Australian heavy scene has evolved over the years.
Parkway Drive, along with groups like The Amity Affliction, were leaders of an important, formative period of the genre in the early 2000s. From here, new generations of groups were able to form with the confidence in taking up the mantle and continuing to push Australian heavy music forward internationally.
And on the home front too, the alternative/heavy communities in Australia have been key to many successful tours by bands including Polaris, Alpha Wolf and Make Them Suffer, not to mention the rise of festivals like Good Things and Knotfest.
Where longstanding brands like Falls Festival and Splendour in the Grass have fallen victim to a fractured Australian touring market, these types of events are seeming to grow stronger in both their investment from punters, and the calibre of lineup.
This is something that brings McCall much happiness and fulfilment.
“I get a lot of joy out of seeing this scene thrive,” he says. “It’s very hard for people to see the relevance of the [2020 Parkway Drive documentary] Viva the Underdogs mentality, for a band who is selling out arenas. I’ve always had the chip on my shoulder, championing that this is art that has value.”
“When I say “this art,” I don’t mean Parkway. I mean the alternative/heavy music culture in general. It’s still seen as bad. It’s still seen as shit music.” he adds. “I talked to one of my neighbours the other day and they still have no idea how big this music is, its value; not just personally, but its value to the economy.
“You think about the international tours; you think about the festivals like Good Things and Knotfest, everything else in this country is going under. All of these trends are moving on, but guess what’s not? Guess what no one talks about? Guess what no one gives the validation to? It’s the fact that the peak of this country’s music industry, at this point in time, is what we’re talking about right now. It exists in local heavy artists, which is awesome!”
Just because he has confidence in the scene, this doesn’t mean that McCall was expecting Parkway Drive to be selling out arena shows around the country. The original idea for this anniversary tour was to produce something more intimate; smaller-scale shows with multiple dates in each city.
Then Knotfest came along and changed everything for McCall. Doing what he describes as “the most Australian thing to do,” Parkway Drive pivoted their approach and swung big with this tour, purely based on the vibe they got from doing the East Coast festival tour.
“It felt like a massive gamble,” he admits. “[When] we did Knotfest – that honestly knocked us on our ass, in terms of the response and the feeling we got from those crowds. So then it’s like, even if you do four, eight nights, you’re still excluding so many people who have a connection to this band. We were just going to have to go for the biggest thing that we’d ever done, which was crazy.”
Admitting the difficulties of touring for bands across the board at present, McCall remembers tickets going on sale for this run – the same day that Splendour in the Grass announced their cancellation for 2024.
If such an institution was going under, what would this mean for a Parkway Drive Australian tour that was hugely ambitious, even by their standards?
“It was gnarly,” McCall says. “I woke up and saw Splendour wasn’t on and was like, ‘Jesus Christ, okay. Things are cooked.’ If that was going under, we were in a really bad spot. Luke [Kilpatrick] then rings and is like, ‘Tickets are going on sale..’ and at the end of the day he’s like, ‘I think it’s going to be sold out by tonight!’
“I’m like, ‘Didn’t Splendour just go under? What universe do we live in right now? How is this happening for us?’ We didn’t expect it. After Knotfest, I could feel the vibe. I knew we had to do this thing. We had to go big.”
The tour, which sees Parkway Drive joined by US favourites I Prevail and The Ghost Inside, as well as Void of Vision, one of Australia’s most exciting names in metalcore, is a venture that shows the band at their most creatively fulfilled to date.
While the framework for their next artistic chapter is already coming together, Parkway Drive are set to revel in showcasing two decades’ worth of experiences and lessons learned from touring the world and redefining their sound, sharing this with their dedicated fans.
“It’s neat to be able to have the confidence to create the show that everyone is going to experience, 20 years into your career, and know that this is an introduction for people, to the actual realisation of what this band is and is going to be.” McCall says.
This vision and clarity in what Parkway Drive represents to McCall has never been stronger. Continuing to chase new experiences and learn more about himself as a songwriter, frontman, and member of this tight live unit, McCall thinks about the version of himself that took those first steps onto the stage at the Byron Bay Youth Centre in 2003.
“I’m definitely more ambitious than I gave myself credit for,” he muses. “It’s interesting, it’s been a constant game for me of stepping into something that you’d never considered before, realising you love it, then trying to articulate that skill.”
“It’s a weird way to put it in context, but you can trace it through the band’s sound. The band started because it was something we didn’t know how to do. We were like, ‘Let’s start something with some metal in it, even though we don’t know what metal is…let’s try learning this thing.”’
“Everything we’ve learned up until this point has been new to us. The reason we’ve held control is because we’ve always had an imagination we’ve wanted to fulfil. Our vision. The thing I’ve learned is that the vision keeps expanding. With everything I learn, I want to learn something else. The library of my brain keeps opening new wings. That’s the thing; I’m more creative than I ever thought I was, and would ever be.”
Looking forward, McCall is excited to see where the next 20 years of Parkway Drive take him. As a fan of the genre and many of the bands who are blazing their own trail of success for Australian heavy music internationally, he is also keen to see the community continue to expand and thrive on its own.
With tours such as this moving large numbers of tickets, and providing more opportunities for local and international visitors to expand their own presence in Australia, Parkway Drive are proving again that they are the type of band who relishes in bringing others up with them.
Wanting to eventually eradicate any remaining stigma against heavy music, McCall hopes that recent successes by Parkway Drive and their peers can bring more fans into the community.
“At the end of the day, no one is a fan of anything the first time they rock up – it just depends on how many pointy things there are to deter people from coming in,” he explains. “The more we talk about something, the more someone will go, ‘You know what? I’m going to go and check that out,’ and then they fall in love with it. From there, it gets even stronger.”
“You’ve got bands like Polaris, Northlane, Alpha Wolf… they’re doing massive numbers in this country. The big swell that got them there happened in a generation that was completely removed from the big swell that initially pushed Amity [Affliction] and ourselves. It’s happening over these generational pushes now and maintaining in between. Give it another couple of years and there’ll be another one.
“We have this depth of history and talent, and it’s growing within this scene. It’s amazing, not just for Australia, but internationally. We have a big, big reputation and it’s sick to be able to know we’re all exporting in a big way right now. It’s making a large impact and it’s nice. We exist in the generation that has built it from the ground up.”
Parkway Drive Remaining Tour Dates
Ticket information available via destroyalllines.com
Tuesday 24 September 24th
John Cain Arena, Melbourne, VIC
Friday 27 September 27th
AEC Arena, Adelaide, SA
Sunday 29 September 29th
RAC Arena, Perth, WA
