To reach the milestone of surviving ten years in the music industry is an achievement most bands can only dream about, but Byron Bay's metallers Parkway Drive are still going strong.
“It's pretty bizarre, you're talking about a band who estimated within the first year of being a band that our life expectancy as a band would be five years maximum,” says Parkway Drive frontman Winston McCall. “So for it to be ten years and have us still be going and still feeling fresh about it is really strange. It's great fun.”
To mark their ten year anniversary, Parkway Drive decided to compile a book about the band’s history. “We all contributed but our friend Callum [Preston] actually put it all together. We also did the artwork for the cover. We've worked with him over many, many years and we're great friends. Basically we had an idea for a book but didn't know how to go about it and Callum had done a book before.
“He came to us and said ‘here's what we're gonna do’ and gave us all the photos and all the files to put together. And while we were away on tour he'd send us stuff and say, ‘ok, now write a story about this, tell me something about this’. So he didn't actually write any of it but he knew what he was doing when it came to the input from us, and compiled all of the responses from us.”
Parkway Drive will be in Brisbane to perform at the under-18 festival Live It Up next month, and the boys couldn't be more excited to be a part of it. “We're stoked! It's awesome to be part of a completely under-18 concert. Growing up in Byron Bay the access to live music was incredibly limited, so we definitely know the feeling of having your favourite band come to town and not being able to go to the gig because they're only playing at a pub and you're under 18.
“We've always been champions of the idea of making access to live music not as discriminatory when it comes to age. The idea of there being a festival that's purely for under 18s is absolutely phenomenal.”
Written by Darcy Love
Parkway Drive headline Live It Up Music Festival at RNA Showgrounds on Saturday June 21 with Violent Soho, The Jungle Giants, Allday, In Hearts Wake, Lunatics On Pogosticks and The Creases.
