Collin Walsh - Grayscale ‘Making Up For A Lot of Lost Time in Australia’

It’s been a long time coming, but for the first time in their long-spanning career, Grayscale finally touched down in Australia.

Gallivanting from state to state, their travels saw them supporting Slowly Slowly on their nationwide tour (our Melbourne show coverage here). With a few cheeky headline shows too, fans new and old finally got the chance to indulge in the Philadelphia pop-punk pioneers’ extensive, profound, and equally groovy/heartbreaking discography! 

Between the Canberra headline show and the Sydney opening slot, Wall Of Sound had the chance to catch up with the one and only Collin Walsh, of course, the source of the band’s unmissable and strikingly identifiable musings. From exploring The Hart, the band’s long-running intertwinement with the notions of home, and the nature of a Grayscale show, not even planes flying overhead could stop this chat! 

Get the lowdown in the video below, or catch some highlights from the chat a little further down...

Now, this is your first time in Australia, and we just so happen to be celebrating The Hart, which is a beautiful release. Retrospectively, though, is there ever a moment in your career, or was there a moment in your career, that you just wish you could have showcased a whole album to its full potential in Australia? Or do you think this visit falling into the same space as The Hart was good for you?

‍Yeah, I think it was good. I think we were supposed to come to Australia a couple of times, but lockdown and everything messed it up. I think it would have been really cool for fans to give them each of our records, or every other record, even, to come through. But it's a shame it took until our fourth record to get over here. But it's been amazing. We're doing as many songs as we can in our set, and we have a couple of headliners over here, and we're doing some old songs as well as ones for the older fans. So it's making up for a lot of lost time!

‍The headline show setlist was flawless. But obviously, the Grayscale experience itself is full of unique emotions. From one moment you're dancing, another moment you're bawling your eyes out. You explored your catalogue quite deeply in the setlist. Within a three-song period of time, we went from ‘Mum II’ to ‘Motown’. How do you manage to still capture the feelings of these songs whilst keeping it authentic, changing through all these different emotions?

Our music has a... There's a diverse range in terms of the sentiment of what the songs are about. I think fans know to expect that to a degree. I think that's a part of what makes it really fun playing shows. There are a lot of different moods to your point of happy, sad, and everything in between at a Grayscale show. Yeah, we're definitely proud of that!

‍This tour, more than any, you're probably bombarded with requests. I can add one… I want to see ‘What's On Your Mind?’ live so badly, but I know that probably won't happen. For you guys, what is the song request you get the most often that you haven't played?

‍That's a good question. I think some of the acoustic, ‘Asbury’, ‘Forever Yours’, definitely. Because a lot of the time, especially internationally, it's hard to. Sometimes we'll have an acoustic with us, or sometimes we won't. It's hard to play some of the acoustic-oriented songs a little bit on international tours. Or if we have them, it might be one of those things where if we only have a 30-minute set, it's hard to, with all the guitar changes and everything, to get it in. Having an acoustic, traveling with it, and getting it in and out for one song, with the amount of time that it takes up with all the changes and everything. So I think some of the more acoustic-leaning ones, like ‘Slept’ and ‘Forever Yours’ and ‘Asbury’, are ones that we get requests for but are tough to do.

Interview by Georgia Haskins @ghaskins2002