It’s that time of year again when good things start to take form. The sun starts to re-emerge from its winter slumber, flowers start to blossom, Christmas appears on the holiday radar and the flood gates open on music festival announcements. That includes the return of the 2018 newbie that knocked our socks off, Good Things Festival.
In its inaugural year, Good Things set the benchmark, packing a punch with a gigantic headlining set from The Offspring playing ‘Smash’ in full. This year the festival has taken it up a notch with a double headline arrangement which sees Aussie festival favourites, A Day To Remember, return down under to be reunited with their ‘brother band’ and co-headliners, Parkway Drive.
“There’s a handful of bands that go back in time with us that we’re kind of like ‘those are our boys’ and Parkway Drive 100 percent falls into that category,” bassist Joshua Woodard says. “I love Australia, we love Australia, we love Australian shows so it is always a priority to us that when we go there it’s a big deal and we bring it!”
Australian crowds have experienced their fair share of A Day To Remember live antics. From their intense Australian debut at Sweatfest alongside their Australian brothers, to the zorb balls destroying the Soundwave crowd in 2014, they never cease to excite.
“The ball thing, that was crazy! Every time someone brings that up to Jeremy [McKinnon] I’m like, ‘I almost died at the ball bit’ so I don’t know we’ll be doing that again,” he laughs. “We’re always trying to do something that people leave the show feeling like, ‘wow, that band is bringing it every night’.”
If their recent weekend appearance at Reading and Leeds, along with the shows on the Degenerates Tour, is anything to go off of, we’re in for a ride. Australian audiences will, however, be delighted by some additions to their set.
“We’re having a new record come out at the end of this year! It’s going to be called You’re Welcome,” Woodard confirms. “The record I would like to think will be out before [Good Things] so there is a good chance that we will be playing a handful of new songs for sure!”
‘You’re Welcome’ follows on from their 2016 release, ‘Bad Vibrations’, which reached #1 in Australia, but does not mirror the making of the album. Singer Jeremy McKinnon experienced serious writer’s block and the album process almost broke the band. This time around the band took their time and the payoff is already showing. The album includes the anthemic new single release and tour title, ‘Degenerates’, the epitome of the age-old lesson – ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’.
“The response and the reaction from people; we’re really proud of it! I feel like releasing ‘Degenerates’ was the tip of the iceberg. There’s more music coming and I just feel like this whole next cycle is going to be bigger than we’ve ever done it. It’s a dream for us too because we don’t know how kids are going to respond but we just keep going and going. We’re just on the ride too!”
While ‘Degenerates’ takes on the pop-punk elements of A Day To Remember with its belting choruses and driving guitars, ‘You’re Welcome’ promises to be the perfect mix of the extremes the band is known for.
“We just tried to pull all of the different elements that A Day To Remember already has been bringing and just taking everything one notch higher, you know, one level higher than anything we’ve ever done. The catchy is still catchy, the heavy is still heavy, it’s just amped up. It’s one level above what I feel we’ve ever done,” Woodard explains.
“It’s a record that’s really all over the place. Truthfully, we were just going through and listening to a few songs two or three days ago and it was like ‘show me the two extremes’ and we did, and the A Day To Remember extremes are still on this record. If you’re a fan of A Day To Remember for a specific part of A Day To Remember sound, there’s something on this record for you.”
To get you hyped for their new boundary-pushing material you can also listen to their recent unexpected collaboration with anonymous producer, Marshmello for ‘Rescue Me’.
“I feel like A Day To Remember is a bit left of field. You can expect those maybe anthemic songs or whatever but we’ve got acoustic songs, we’ve got brutal heavy hardcore songs, so it kind of hasn’t ever made sense and we’ve kind of always just done what we wanted. When that opportunity came up it was just a no-brainer,” Woodard laughs. “It’s just really about pushing the envelope and ultimately just doing whatever the fuck we want to do. That’s all we’re going to do.”
Catch their headline set at Good Things Festival at Flemington Racecourse on Friday 6 December 2019.
By Tammy Walters