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Parkway Drive.
 Living a double life isn't easy, according to Parkway Drive's mainman Winston McCall. "I work in a cafe making coffees and sandwiches, Jeff works at a video store, and Ben makes pizzas - and they're all morning jobs too! So you're staying up late every night doing a show, then you get about two hours of sleep, and you got to get up for normal work the next day. It's really weird!"
Having just kicked off a national tour in support of their debut 'Killing With A Smile', followed by a couple of more support-slot tours in the coming months, taking a breather and maybe getting a few extra hours of sleep doesn't look very likely for Parkway Drive.
But that's OK, says McCall, "I think rest is a bit overrated at the moment anyway. It usually takes a lot out of you but considering we've just finished recording, we've kind of had enough of sitting around and waiting for the CD to come out. So we just want to get back on the road and play shows again."
The guys are also looking forward to showing off their newest band member, bassist Shaun Cash, who hooked up with the band as soon as they returned from recording in the States.
"Cashie's great! It was really, really hard letting our old bass player go, because he's a really good friend and he's been with us from the start, but it became pretty clear in the writing process that he just didn't have it together, his heart just didn't seem to be in it anymore. So when we got to the 'States to record, because he hadn't written any stuff on bass, we actually had to get Luke [Kilpatrick, guitar] to write and record it. Then we just redid the bass parts in the 'States."
Recording with Adam Dutkiewitz from Killswitch Engage in the small town of Springfield, just outside of Boston, was a unique experience according to McCall - not only did the guys manage to hook up with Dutkiewitz "on some freak occurrence!" in the first place, but the studio itself was haunted.
"We never knew Adam, we just always thought he was amazing. So we were like 'why don't we just try sending him an email and see what he says?' We didn't ever expect a reply from the guy, let alone a 'yeah, I'll do your CD'! It was just a real luck thing... But then we got to the States to work with him, and this studio was really, really creepy. The guy that owns it, he actually had a sˇance in there the year before, and he was contacting his father who passed away. Apparently they weren't on good terms when his father died, and the guy never got the chance to say goodbye and tell him he loved him and stuff. So they contacted the spirit, but they never exorcised it from the studio, and there were some really freaky, tripped out ghost stories, and a really weird vibe in there. A couple of times you felt like someone was watching you and you'd see a person walk past out in the corner of your eye, but when you'd turn around there'd be no one there. And on top of that, the studio was kind of in the middle of these weird woods, like 'The Blair Witch Project' and stuff, it was so creepy at night time!"
It's an unexpected confession to come from a seemingly fearless bunch of guys who otherwise like to go tornado-chasing and jumping off bridges in their spare time.
"Oh, where do I start? We're people that like to do stupid stuff. When you're on tour you get really bored, so you just do random things that you come across. Yeah, we went tornado-chasing in the middle of somewhere, I don't even know where we were, but we found a giant dust storm and drove two hundred kilometers off our actual tour because we saw the tornadoes coming on the horizon... We've considered making a DVD of the stuff we do, but we're always too lazy to bring out a camera and you know, actually get it out of the bag and film something."
A shame, really, considering the quality and chaos that Parkway Drive shows are already becoming notorious for.
"Our last tour with Bleeding Through was just absolutely amazing! That was the one for me! It was just absolutely packed, and there were no barriers so there were people all over the stage, hanging from the roof, and just bodies flying everywhere. This time we've got Mourning Tide and Her Nightmare coming along, who are really great, and, personally, I'm definitely looking forward to playing in Adelaide. There are so many people that are friendly to us, and the shows are always great."
Nina Bertok
 | 'Killing With A Smile' is out now through Resist Records, and Parkway Drive play at Fowler's Live Wed 19 Oct with Mourning Tide and Her Nightmare. |
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