We catch up with Ben Hallett from Gold Coast group Skyway ahead of their appearance at Newton’s Nation festival in Bathurst, NSW this weekend!
Skyway have been announced to play Newtowns Nation Festival on Saturday the 28th of April. Being a 3 day festival as it is, is the band thinking about pitching a tent and setting up camp during the festival?
Certainly considered it, a little known fact is that Dan has always been an rampant mountain luge enthusiast. Might even catch him on theslopes before we hit the road home this weekend…
A big attraction of Newtowns Nation Festival are the action sports events, which include downhill/street skateboarding, BMX, mountain bike events and more. Any categories that’ll take your fancy when the band isn’t playing?
Like I mentioned above, probably some of the downhill skateboarding and I think I saw some parkour on the TV ad? Never seen it in real life haha might have a geez.
Your debut full length album Finders Keepers was mixed by Steve Evetts who has worked with bands like Story Of The Year and Saves The Day. Although being a credible source, what made the band agree to work with him and trust him with your baby debut?
We’d heard nothing but positive things about him from our friends in Mourning Tide and The Wonders Years who had worked with him. Apart from that, we grew up worshiping the albums he’d worked on, Lifetime, Hatebreed, Kid Dynamite, Sick of it All and the list goes on and on. Think Dizza learnt guitar by riffing in his bedroom to the Story of the Year album Evetts recorded haha.
With an impressive list of bands you guys have played with (ranging between Bodyjar, Parkway Drive, Frenzal Rhomb, No Use For A Name…) has there been a favourite? Or perhaps a band you have felt honoured to play with?
Really we’ve been honoured to have shared the stage with all of them but probably our first big one was when we toured Japan with Frenzal. We had been a band for less than two years, most of us 19 years old and all of a sudden we we’re in a foreign country playing with a band we used to jam in Ron’s shed as kids. Was a ridiculous tour. Most of us hadn’t even been out of the country.
Skyway was a part of the recent Pushover Festival, alongside Tonight Alive, Dangerous!, 360 and more… Any other big shows coming up that we should keep an eye out for?
You forgot the headliner Parkway! haha. In June we head out on the road with Silverstein actually. Pretty stoked on that, another band that takes us back to our teens haha. Thats about all we can tell you about just at the moment.
When you’re not on the road or playing shows does everyone in the band go back to reality and back to a ‘real job’?
ahhhh yeah…. Always stoked to come home and catch up with friends and family but with home comes the ‘real job’ reality. ‘Punk rock don’t pay the bills’. Think the only person who enjoys their ‘real job’ is Mike, the dude has a weird fetish for punishing dudes with his tattoo laser haha. You’ll have to ask him about it.
What’s the best thing about being in a band?
Chicks. haha nah, to be honest for me it’s all about the mates we make along the way from every corner of the globe and of life.
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Tickets to Newton’s Nation are on sale now! http://www.newtonsnation.com.au/
