28 February 2011
“It’s important to have your face out there but not bug the shit out of people.” Greg Byrne, frontman of alt-rock outfit, Stone Parade is hungover when he offers his best advice on landing a record deal. “Don’t be like ‘I’ve got a demo! I’ve got a demo!’ Avoid everything but music and the weather,” he laughs.
The quintet from Sydney’s Northern Beaches may not be signed to a major label themselves but they’ve been in the game long enough to know what not to do. 2010 saw the band release so phomore albumStratosphere in October, changing what Byrne calls their “thought provoking, sorrowful” sound to “more uptempo with a bit more energy.”
The quintet from Sydney’s Northern Beaches may not be signed to a major label themselves but they’ve been in the game long enough to know what not to do. 2010 saw the band release so phomore albumStratosphere in October, changing what Byrne calls their “thought provoking, sorrowful” sound to “more uptempo with a bit more energy.”
That same year the band landed some serious sync deals including a football advertisement on One HD and another with US animated series, Beavis and Butt-head.
They also secured a spot on the bill for next month’s Canadian Music Festival. Byrne is well aware the festival could potentially mark an epoch for Stone Parade as it’s known to be teeming with A&R, but he’s not getting his hopes up.
“We were fortunate enough to get a grant from Arts NSW so that’s allowed us to go over there,” says Byrne. “We’re treating it as we get a free trip overseas which is awesome; we’ll do our showcases and put on a good show and see if anything happens, if it doesn’t, that’s just life.”
This apprehension is normal when you consider how close the band got to signing with Sony in their embryonic years.
“There’s only been one time when we’ve had very serious interest from a major label in Australia and we showcased to the whole company pretty much. We didn’t end up signing a deal at that stage.”
Byrne says he’s thankful to be a slow- burning band, who are building a loyal Australian fanbase along their own independent road. “Bands like Jet have kind of tapered off a little bit now. Same with Wolfmotherwho had a really big profile at one stage and won a Grammy and all that kind of stuff, now they’re sort of ‘meh’. It died off a little bit,” says Byrne. “The problem is when you go up early, there’s only one way... down,” he deduces.
Speaking of their own trajectory, for album number two, Stone Parade decided to take a different route, both metaphorically and literally. Whereas their debut album Chase The Setting Sun was tailored to the US market, which meant expensive jaunts overseas, this time they decided to keep a local focus and experiment with their sound. “We can’t afford to keep going back to America. We’ve been there three times, it’s just gonna break the band up. We needed to change our tact a little bit. We thought okay let’s get a bit more gritty and see how we go in Australia.”
The switch to grit may have been necessary for the band, but along with a change in sound comes the possibility of a backlash from devout fans. Byrne’s justification is, “if you put out the same record twice you’re not going anywhere.
“I look at some bands, I’m not talking about us, of course,” he laughs. “But [their later albums] don’t stack up to the first album. Linkin Park is a prime example; Hybrid Theory was such a groundbreaking album, the later albums haven’t caught me as much.”
The musical makeover has also made Stone Parade’s live show more appealing. “We wanted to have the album contribute to the parts we wanted to fix about our live set,” he says. The band have been polishing their performance in and around Sydney of late, just in time for showcases in Canada, New York and Los Angeles.
Despite their early flirtations with a major label they remain optimistic about the future as a self-funded band, noting, “if you sign with a major label you have to be careful. You don’t want to be a small fish in a big pond, unless you’re U2 and you’re signing a record deal and you get paid $20million before you even do the record...I think you have to build your fanbase as independently as you can.”
“We were fortunate enough to get a grant from Arts NSW so that’s allowed us to go over there,” says Byrne. “We’re treating it as we get a free trip overseas which is awesome; we’ll do our showcases and put on a good show and see if anything happens, if it doesn’t, that’s just life.”
This apprehension is normal when you consider how close the band got to signing with Sony in their embryonic years.
“There’s only been one time when we’ve had very serious interest from a major label in Australia and we showcased to the whole company pretty much. We didn’t end up signing a deal at that stage.”
Byrne says he’s thankful to be a slow- burning band, who are building a loyal Australian fanbase along their own independent road. “Bands like Jet have kind of tapered off a little bit now. Same with Wolfmotherwho had a really big profile at one stage and won a Grammy and all that kind of stuff, now they’re sort of ‘meh’. It died off a little bit,” says Byrne. “The problem is when you go up early, there’s only one way... down,” he deduces.
Speaking of their own trajectory, for album number two, Stone Parade decided to take a different route, both metaphorically and literally. Whereas their debut album Chase The Setting Sun was tailored to the US market, which meant expensive jaunts overseas, this time they decided to keep a local focus and experiment with their sound. “We can’t afford to keep going back to America. We’ve been there three times, it’s just gonna break the band up. We needed to change our tact a little bit. We thought okay let’s get a bit more gritty and see how we go in Australia.”
The switch to grit may have been necessary for the band, but along with a change in sound comes the possibility of a backlash from devout fans. Byrne’s justification is, “if you put out the same record twice you’re not going anywhere.
“I look at some bands, I’m not talking about us, of course,” he laughs. “But [their later albums] don’t stack up to the first album. Linkin Park is a prime example; Hybrid Theory was such a groundbreaking album, the later albums haven’t caught me as much.”
The musical makeover has also made Stone Parade’s live show more appealing. “We wanted to have the album contribute to the parts we wanted to fix about our live set,” he says. The band have been polishing their performance in and around Sydney of late, just in time for showcases in Canada, New York and Los Angeles.
Despite their early flirtations with a major label they remain optimistic about the future as a self-funded band, noting, “if you sign with a major label you have to be careful. You don’t want to be a small fish in a big pond, unless you’re U2 and you’re signing a record deal and you get paid $20million before you even do the record...I think you have to build your fanbase as independently as you can.”
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