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PARKWAY DRIVE
INTERVIEW
December 16, 2008
So
I get a SMS message on my phone and I see that Freddy my brother at
my favorite China magazine Painkiller wants me to interview Parkway
Drive in the next 24 hours. I think to myself “Oh my god, I know
that Parkway Drive is starting their HUGE tour with Suicide Silence,
The Acacia Strain, A Day to Remember, and Confession tonight!
They’ll probably be too busy!” So I quickly send Parkway Drive’s
manager an email. No luck. My email bounces back with a message that
says “Sorry, I’m out of town. If you want to contact me please call
my office.” So I call the Resist Records (Parkway Drive’s Australian
record label) office and get the phone number for Parkway Drive’s
tour manager’s phone number and a roadie’s phone number. Finally, I
call the roadie’s phone and explain to him that I’m calling from
Hong Kong and need to interview Parkway Drive sometime today
urgently. The roadie answers “Well, do you want to just talk to
Luke? He’s right here…” Luke is Parkway Drive guitar player’s name.
He picks up the phone and says “Riz? What’s up man! I talked to you
last night on MSN!”
He
told me to call back in one hour and I would be able to interview
Parkway Drive’s singer Winston. I go back to my job as a
Kindergarten teacher for another hour teaching kids and thinking of
questions to ask them…
Time to call them…
RIZ:
Hey Luke this is Riz bro!
LUKE: What’s up man! Okay I’ll pass the phone to Winston but I want
to ask you one thing about the China tour. Is it going to go ahead?
I just checked the prices for our plane tickets from Japan and if
re-schedule our flight tickets its going to cost us a LOT of money.
RIZ: Yeah it’s on man! I just got confirmation on the
Guangzhou show!
LUKE: Okay great! We’re just hoping that it works out because we
have to pay so much money to change the flight stuff…
RIZ: Trust me man, it’s worth it. You can’t come to Asia and
not play China! You have to play here…it’ll all be worth it!
LUKE: Okay! Here’s Winston…
WINSTON: Hey Riz!
RIZ: What’s up Winston!!! So I got you at a good time because
you have a show tonight on this HUGE tour with Suicide Silence, The
Acacia Strain, A Day to Remember, and Confession tonight right?
WINSTON: Yeah! Actually the first band just finished playing
already! Hahaha…
RIZ: What?! That was early! Who was it?
WINSTON: It was a local Australian band called Confession.
RIZ: Are you guys headlining this tour?
WINSTON: Yeah we are…
RIZ: That is SO amazing that you’re headlining a tour with
HUGE bands like that! Does it feel weird?
WINSTON: It feels so weird! I can’t believe we’re playing as
the main band on a tour with all these big US bands. But it just
shows you how big our support base is here in Australia.
RIZ: Absolutely! Because any one of those bands could do a
headlining tour in Australia right?
WINSTON: Yeah each one of these bands could have a headlining
tour here. But I don’t want to sound like a rockstar, but if these
bands came here and toured without us the most they would get a show
is around 800 people. Tonight there are over 3,000 kids here because
we’re playing!
RIZ: 3,000!
WINSTON: Yeah man! We all can’t believe how many kids are here.
We’re looking around and going where the fuck did all these people
come from? How come this many people don’t go watch the other local
shows in Australia?!
RIZ: So it seems like Australia also has a similar situation
like the rest of Asia where if local bands are playing then the
audience number is not that big, but if a US band is playing then
the turnout is huge!
WINSTON: Yes totally! That is NORMALLY the case, but not for
us! For us hundreds and hundreds of people come out to watch us.
It’s great that we have such great support at home. But it also
makes for a strange situation!
RIZ: The craziest thing about you guys is that your band only
started in 2003 and you guys have gotten so big so fast!
WINSTON: That really is what we don’t understand! I mean we
don’t play a type of music that is different from many other bands!
There are millions of bands around the world that play the exact
same style as us! So we don’t understand how this all happened. But
literally, every time we play a city, and then come back to that
city our shows just get bigger and bigger. We played this city 2
years ago to 300 people, tonight we’re playing to 3,000!
RIZ: Incredible! So for the past 5 years it’s just gotten
bigger and bigger…
WINSTON: Yes, everything just keeps getting bigger. Since we
started it never leveled off, it’s always just kept getting bigger.
 RIZ:
So let’s talk about your first album Killing with a Smile. Not many
international metal or metalcore bands can say that their very FIRST
album was recorded by the high and mighty Adam Dutkiewicz (guitar
player of Killswitch Engage who has also produced albums by Unearth,
Killswitch Engage, As I Lay Dying, Underoath). How did that come
about?
WINSTON: Luck! We were just lucky. We recorded an EP and then
when it was time to record our first album we thought well we could
either just record it in Australia and the sound won’t be that great
because local recordings are really not that good. Or we can look
outside and try to make a record that is at the level that is coming
out worldwide. So we started looking at producers that we could work
with. I didn’t even know what a producer was! So we just thought
that well maybe a producer is someone kind of important to have, so
we should look for people whose albums we like. We looked at all the
stuff that Adam had been doing and decided to ask him.
RIZ: Did you guys have to send him demos to see if he would
be interested?
WINSTON: Yeah, our manager sent him and email and then we sent
him our first demos. I have no idea why he wanted to work with us
after listening to those horrible demos! They were SO bad!!! Maybe
he just chose to work with us as a novelty thing! Maybe because we
were from Australia so he wanted to give us a chance.
RIZ: I think it’s a known fact all over the world that he has
incredibly high standards of musicians when he records them. Was it
tough working with him?
WINSTON: Well, we’re not really good studio musicians so yeah
it was tough man! Sometimes he would make us record a guitar riff
over and over for 3 hours! He makes you work until breaking point.
He doesn’t say anything negative, but he just makes you know that he
thinks you can do better.
RIZ: In one of the videos online of you guys in the studio
working with Adam, one of your guitar players throws his own guitar
in a trash can!
WINSTON: Yeah, that was probably Luke! Hahahaha…After three
hours of recording a riff over and over again you just feel like
shit! And Adam is such a great musician, that sometimes he just
takes our guitar and says “This is how to play that part!” Hahahaha…And
he plays it perfect and we all think “Shit! Why don’t YOU just
record it!”
RIZ: So then was it because of this first album that things
really started taking off for you guys?
WINSTON: Yeah man, after we recorded our first EP the response was
already good. But when we came back to Australia to play some CD
release shows for Killing with a Smile the response was crazy! It
was the first time that we had over 500 kids at shows getting on
stage singing all our words. The CD had only been out a few days but
I remember playing Romance is Dead and people were singing along
going crazy! I remember thinking “What the fuck is happening?”
Everything from then on started going out of control…
RIZ: So until this point you guys had still not started playing
outside of Australia?
WINSTON: Yeah, so we decided that after this album was out that
we wanted to play overseas. So we borrowed money from people and
bought around the world plane tickets and started playing in Europe
and the US. I remember one of the first tours of the US we went on
was with Himsa and we played in front of 20 kids. But then we just
got back from touring the US and there were over 1,000 people there
to see us! Looking back at all of this I just can’t believe it
sometimes. I personally don’t understand! I mean we really play a
style of music that millions and millions of bands around the world
play but in just five years we’ve gone from playing to a few hundred
kids to thousands! I keep waiting for us to come to a show and only
20 people there! I keep waiting for the day when everyone starts
hating us!
RIZ: When did you guys start doing Parkway Drive as a full-time
band?
WINSTON: Right when we started touring internationally. We come
from a really small town that has a very high unemployment rate. So
we were working in pizza shops, washing dishes and things like that
but every time we left to go for tour, it was hard to ask our
employers to hold our jobs until we got back. So we had to decide
either to lose our jobs or tour. I mean sometimes we tour and we
only have one month off and then have to go on tour again. Our
yearly average of shows is around 150 shows a year…it’s hard to keep
a job when you’re away for so long.
RIZ: Playing this many shows night after night must really do
some damage to your vocal chords. How do you do it?
WINSTON: Well, I actually think singing like this night after
night is better then if I play a few shows and take a break and come
back. When singing I’m training my muscles and making sure that I’m
using them properly.
RIZ: So let’s get to this Asian tour the part that most of
our readers are going to get most excited about! How did this all
happen?
WINSTON: Well we’ve been getting emails and myspace messages
from people all over Asia for a long time now. People usually keep
inviting us to play here or there, and then some promoter will email
us and say “Come to Malaysia” or Korea or Thailand. But we could
never do it because of other commitments. So with this tour I don’t
even know how it happened. But we were able to get enough contacts
in a lot of countries to finally put together an Asian tour! So I
cannot even begin to tell you how excited we are about this tour! It
is just unbelievable and mind-blowing that we are going to be going
to Asia to play! I don’t care if only 2 people show up at some of
the shows, just the fact that we will be there is more than enough!
RIZ: So when you guys get over here what kind of myths about
Asia do you want to dispel? Hahaha…
WINSTON: Well, actually I’m more interested to see what the
Asian scene is expecting of us!
RIZ: Oh, that’s interesting!
WINSTON: Yeah absolutely! I mean we are not your “typical”
metal guys! We are not angry at all and we don’t look “brutal”!
We’re just some surfers from a really small town in Australia
playing metal! We just want to come and have fun, see some smiling
faces, and make some new experiences!
RIZ: I would definitely have to say from looking at photos of
you guys, reading interviews, etc., that you seem to have a much
more “hardcore/punk rock” background then metal.
WINSTON: Yeah we all come from the hardcore community. We grew
up on punk rock like Bad Religion, Pennywise and NOFX. We then got
into hardcore but we got into this type of music just because we
wanted to challenge ourselves musically. It’s weird…
RIZ: But the type of music you play doesn’t reflect those
influences of Bad Religion, etc.,
WINSTON: Yeah, it really happened when we first heard Unearth!
We just couldn’t believe a band could be that heavy and technical at
the same time! I mean they had all those technical riffs in there,
but at the same time I could still hear their raw passion which also
comes from their own hardcore background. We just love that heavy
style and the technical stuff so we decided to try stuff like that…
RIZ: So you would say that Unearth is your main inspiration?
WINSTON: Absolutely! Unearth was the real spark that showed us
you can connect heaviness with technical guitar riffs. That’s what
we just started doing to challenge ourselves. Instead of writing
chords we decided to write these guitar riffs. At the time that
Unearth released their first album Strings of Conscience, there
really wasn’t “metalcore”. It was more like metallic hardcore, or
melodic metal like Arch Enemy and things like that in Sweden. I
remember just listening to Unearth and thinking that this is metal
but it’s so heavy that I just want to bash some kids heads in! That
first album had weird guitar sounds and we were always like “How are
they making those weird noises with their guitars!”
RIZ: Like the first song on that album with the guitar
squeals!
WINSTON: Yeah! With Unearth came this whole “metalcore” thing
which right now is the most hated word all over the world! Everyone
hates “metalcore” right now…
RIZ: What would you call yourselves though?
WINSTON: Well if someone really wanted a label for the type of
music we play, then we are metalcore. I remember when I first heard
that Unearth album and we wanted to start a band like that, a year
later there were a MILLION bands playing that style!
RIZ: Anyway, let’s get back to touring China! What are your
thoughts?
WINSTON: I can’t believe we’re going!!! I have no idea what to
expect. Even if there are only 2 people in the crowd we’re going to
be playing our hearts out every night! It’s so crazy to think that
we’re from this tiny city, but there are people in China who have
heard our music and want to see us! I’ve heard that playing in China
is crazy fun! We don’t know how crazy yet but we cannot wait! To
play China is our honor and privilege.
RIZ: Okay so let’s wrap this interview up…what’s in Parkway
Drive’s future? I hear a new album and DVD are in the works.
(UPDATE: DVD is already out! And it's AMAZING!!!)
WINSTON: Yes we’ve started writing for our new album but we’re
not anywhere near yet.
RIZ: So it probably won’t be out until 2010…
WINSTON: Yeah at least. But our DVD will be out in 2009. It’s
not a LIVE DVD, it’s a documentary about our life in this band. This
was completely filmed and edited by our drummer and he started
filming Parkway Drive before the band even started! He has something
like 120 video tapes that he went through to edit and turn into a
DVD. There will be some LIVE stuff, but it is more about our lives.
RIZ: I think what readers will want to know if you’ll film
anything from the upcoming Asian tour to include in the DVD?
WINSTON: Oh yeah! We will film the tour and some of that stuff
will definitely make it onto the DVD! The tour is very close to our
deadline – but we’ll end that tour right in time to put some stuff
onto this DVD!
RIZ: Okay man! That about wraps it up! See you in a Hong Kong
in a few months!
WINSTON: See you soon! Still can’t believe we’re coming! |
