Dale from the Hard Fast and Heavy show calls up Winston, vocalist from Aussie band Parkway Drive in early september 2010 before their headlining September NZ shows.
DALE: How’s your slice of paradise at the moment with Parkway Drive?
WINSTON: It’s really really nice, first day of spring, sun’s out, it’s uh, yeah- really good day.
DALE: Funnily enough, sounds like you could be in NZ, for once it’s a sunny day
WINSTON: *laughs* For once, you’re not England, you’re New Zealand, New Zealand’s nice- we have very good memories of that place.
DALE: Well, you seem to come to NZ after an album, and it tends to be this time of year any way (referring to Southern hemisphere summer)
WINSTON: Yeah, and the other times we’ve, well I’ve ever been to NZ is around this time of year ‘cos we like to go snow boarding. Yeah I guess I can only judge NZ from Spring slash winter time.
DALE: Some of your upcoming (September 2010) NZ gigs are all sold out, does that come as a shock to you, or is just F**k yeah we sold out..
WINSTON: Yeah, it’s kinda bizarre. I think it’s the first time we’ve sold out a show in NZ, so I …I don’t know what’s changed since the last time we came- it was definitely awesome last time, coming over to New Zealand, it’s a place we love playing but to sell a show out this time, it’s mental- we’re definitely looking forward to that gig.
DALE: I found out a few hours ago that wellington’s also sold out, making 2 outta 3
WINSTON: Really? I didn’t even realise that, ok, two out of the three that’s a nice average *laughs*
DALE: Don’t quote me on it, but I’m sure I read you sold out Wellington
WINSTON: Cool, Rippa. That’s insane.
DALE: After your September shows, you’re coming back…
WINSTON: Yeah we are on the No sleep til tour, which is, I think December. So it’s pretty insane- we haven’t been to NZ in I think 2 years, and all of a sudden we’re gonna be there two months-two times in two month’s pretty decent… making up for it, yeah, nice, looking forward to it.
DALE: What was the decision to be attached to that? ‘cos from a vague observers point of view, you’d be back overseas: Europe and the states, around that time of year, maybe..
WINSTON: It was just a… we’re back in Europe before that, we go to Europe in November, and then we just.. I don’t know it’s an amazing lineup and the people putting it on are friends of ours and it was just one of those situations that we thought ‘this looks really really fun’ so it’s not every day where we get to do a tour like that, especially in Australia and NZ- we don’t have the opportunity to be apart of the Big Day Out or anything and Soundwave doesn’t want to put us on so yeah as soon as we get that chance we’re gonna take it.
DALE: Sweet, are you looking forward to sharing the stage with GWAR?
WINSTON: We’ve done that once already, actually! It’s insane, if anyone’s never seen that live show it’s definitely one to see, like it’s.. I’m not even familiar with their music and I sat there and watched the whole set, like its.. its.. yeah *laughs* It’s one to be seen, out it that way.
DALE: I read somewhere that after a mere four hours of “Deep Blue” being released onto iTunes Australia it reached number 2
WINSTON: Yeah, it’s pretty bizarre isn’t it. *laughs* I don’t even know what to make of that kind of stuff. It’s one of those things where… it’s been three years since we put out a record and we wrote something we’re definitely proud of but then to see your name associated with numbers like that, it’s kind of surreal I guess- all of a sudden your name’s in charts and things like that you kinda go “really?” like is that actually happening? What does that mean, it kinda doesn’t make sense especially with the kinda music we make so yeah, I guess.. It might make sense when we start playing shows and we can, like, garner I guess the crowds reaction to the newer songs or something like that. But at the moment it’s kind of surreal.
DALE: Working on the album, you worked with Joe Barresi, he’s worked with some big names: Clutch, Tool, The Melvins, what was it like working with him?
WINSTON: Amazing! umm, he worked in a completely different manner to what we’re used to and that’s exactly what we were aiming for, and he’s definitely.. as you can see from the types of bands he’s done, he’s done a lot of different bands, massive bands- there’s no two bands that sound the same put it that way and he definitely has a very old school approach to the way he works, and it’s not so much digitally based which is what we’re looking for, so, he pushed us very hard to actually be musicians as opposed to being props for a computer to do the work on the recording side of things, so, we used a hell of a lot of his old vintage gear, and just basically worked our arses off. He was the kinda guy that said ‘here’s the tools to make the record, it’s up to you what sounds come out, I’ll show you how to make what you’re interesting in but I’m not gonna tell you what to do’ so it was a very interesting recording experience. To be honest it was the only time I actually felt like a musician being in this band, so it was pretty amazing to be apart and to be honest it’s my favourite record we’ve ever made and I think it will probably always be that way.
DALE: Regarding Adam D, he did your last two albums, didn’t he?
WINSTON: Yeah yeah, when I speak so highly of joe it’s definitely not a situation were like, “Adam sucks, we’re never gonna work with that guy again” we actually tried working with Adam and we couldn’t get our schedule to align and then, I guess we came to the conclusion it was never gonna happen so we had to work out who else to work with, stuck with no ideas and the idea of working with Joe came around it seemed so far from what we were used to that all of a sudden it made sense to go in that direction and go to the complete opposite of being comfortable, so that’s why it worked and whether or not we work with Adam again in the future or Joe remains to be seen, but I’d love to work with both of them again, or something.
DALE: Has the process of putting an album together, now that you’re a more globally recognised band, changed at all?
WINSTON: Umm, not.. well actually this album did change and it wasn’t so much because of I guess the band playing different places or anything like that, it was more the fact that we tried to write a record in a different manner and we tried to record it in a different manner as well. That being- we tried to write an album, it sounds weird but I guess when we’ve written in the past we’ve always just written songs and we get to a certain number of songs and say ‘yep, that’s enough for a record’ and as opposed to doing it that way we said ‘ lets write x amount of songs and we have to have one song that sounds like this and it has go into the next song that sounds like this, this kinda feel, and the next one has to have this kinda feel to match the one before it, and basically took everything into account when we were actually writing the individual songs as to how’d they’d work with one another, as opposed to getting to the end and putting it in order and chucking them on a record, kinda thing. So that was the way we tried to write this record and it was definitely something different and it lead to a different way of writing and recording as well, so I think that’s why this record came out sounding a little different to everything else.
DALE: With a title like “Deep Blue”, is it the closest thing you’re gonna put out that’s a hint to Byron Bay, surfie record or anything like that?
WINSTON: Maybe, maybe the title actually came from the ocean and one specific experience to cut a long story short we ended up, myself and our guitarist Luke, ended up in a boat looking for another boat about.. would’ve been several kilometres off shore to the point were you couldn’t see land and it was a crystal clear day, the water was absolutely perfectly clear but at the same time was the darkest, most ominous looking thing that I’ve probably ever seen in my life and at the same time it was completely still. It was just one of those things were it puts everything into perspective and you realise how small you are in relation to everything; I’m someone who’s spent my entire life being on the ocean and swimming and surfing and what not, it was the calmest day in the world and I felt that if I even touched that water I’d drown, so yeah that’s were the title came from.
DALE: Fair enough
WINSTON: *laughs*
DALE: With all the big tours and shows you’re doing, with big names, you just came off the Warp tour
WINSTON: Yes we have, still in recovery mode from that one
DALE: All these sort of things, something you take in your stride or are there moments were you can’t help but reflect on where you are..
WINSTON: It’s pretty insane that tour, there’s a lot of moments where you do say ‘wow look what I’m doing’ and then theres… it’s literally 45 shows in a row and a couple of off dates in the middle, which you then play off date shows on, and it gets to the point where after 2 months of playing you almost forget where you started and there’s so many good shows that top the one before it, or something insane happens, like there’s so many stories from that tour it’s ridiculous but you have trouble remembering them all. It’s one of those things where someone will tell you something and you’re like oh yeah that happened on this tour and it’s still going. So it was a mental, mental tour to be apart of, it’s kind of boot camp for bands- it’s ridiculously hot, ridiculously long and very intense.
DALE: To recap, you’re coming to New Zealand- in September and December
WINSTON: Yep
DALE: have a new album out
WINSTON: Yeah, got a new album out and pretty much everything new for us. It’s the first time we get to play a bunch of new songs, have a new album out, haven’t been to New Zealand for a couple of years, so it’s a lot to be excited about for us, so we’ll see how we go now- all that remains to be seen is the shows
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