From a sell-out national tour to a headlining spot at January’s Unify festival, Australian fans have gotten behind the band now more than ever before – even throwing them two positions in the coveted triple j Hottest 100 of 2015.
Beyond that, they’ve been focusing on promoting Ire abroad, where they are growing a momentous following. Runs through the States and Europe earlier in the year proved fruitful, with the band playing to some of their biggest ever crowds. “Playing those massive festivals was such a wild experience for us,” says vocalist Winston McCall of appearances at Welcome To Rockville, Northern Rebellion and The River’s Rockfest.
“There was such a massive audience out there – and I’m gonna guess that probably about 80 per cent of them had never seen a Parkway show before. The reaction was so great. It was one of those things that really took you by surprise,” he says. “I don’t think we’ve ever had that much new ground to cover in years. We used the days off to play shows opening for A Day To Remember and do our own headlining shows, as well – we were only there for a relatively short amount of time, but it felt like a three-in-one. Every day was a different environment.”
With dozens of songs in their catalogue to select from, it’s more difficult now than ever to balance out between all of the band’s releases, dating back to 2005’s Killing with a Smile. No one is more aware of this than McCall, who finds it’s best to adapt what the band will play depending on who they are playing to.
“We’re trying to touch on everything,” he says. “We’re lucky that we have so many songs across our albums that go down so well in the live environment. We’ve gotten to the point where we’re trying to curate it as best as we possibly can. We’ll have a run of songs that we know will always work, some room for an old song and we even have a blacklist of songs that we’re never going to play. Those are the songs that we’ve played once and they ended up being a trainwreck – we don’t ever want to relive that moment again. Thankfully, there’s only a few that have made the blacklist.”
A return to Europe is scheduled for August, and then it will be back to American soil in October for some more huge festivals. However, in the meantime the band have some serious shrimp on the barbie to fry here at home. As you read this the quintet are hurtling across the country on the Russell Coight-referencing All-Aussie Adventure tour.
Far removed from the capital cities, the band are instead taking in places like Toowoomba, Wodonga, Bendigo and Wollongong – all, surprisingly enough, places they have played in the past on one of their several regional tours of Australia. Having grown up remote and regional themselves, McCall sees this as a chance to give back to the fans that have always had to travel for hours on end to see them in the city.
“Our access to music was very limited when we were growing up,” he says. “That’s why it’s always been important to us to do these. I think the first regional tour we did was the second or third year of being a band, and it was all about providing a chance to see live music to areas that had none regularly coming through. When a show comes to town in a place like that, it’s about showing a sense of pride in your community and showing what your town has to offer.
“I can remember the elation every time a band was coming to Byron when we were kids – we had to make sure that everyone was coming and that it was going to be wild. It was a chance for us to find out about local bands that we never knew about, and for us to make connections with people that we had no idea were into the same kind of music. I think tours like this strengthens the national music scene,” says McCall.
So, what can people expect from a show on the All Aussie Adventure tour? With a laugh, McCall assures they won’t be trying to pack their pyro set-up into local community halls. “It’s going to be an adapted show,” he says. “We’re not going to try and set the place on fire or anything. We’ve made a commitment to try and make sure that we duplicate the visual effect of what we would do in a large venue, though. We want it to be equal to a show of any other size. We want this to be a show that can work in any environment. It’s a creative challenge, and we’re looking forward to meeting it on this run of shows. We’ve managed to overcome it so far.”
BY DAVID JAMES YOUNG
