Parkway Drive have distanced themselves from a former employee who’s pleaded guilty to an underage sex offence.
Earlier this month, Jed Gordon, a former member of the Australian metalcore band’s touring entourage and the brother of drummer Jed Gordon, pleaded guilty to charges of having sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old girl in 2002, when he was in his early 20s.
On March 21, the band responded with a social media statement, saying that they stand with the victim and have ended their relationship with Jed, who had become a part of their Australian merchandise team.
“We’ve recently learned that someone we’ve been associated with has pleaded guilty to an underage sex offence in 2002,” they wrote. “This is appalling and we condemn it. We’re gutted and we support the victim.
“This happened before we were a band, however we bear moral responsibility for contracting him from 2003, on and off over the years. While he hasn’t toured with us since 2017, more recently he’s been part of our Australian online merch team.
“When the band heard about this, we terminated his contract immediately. He’s no longer involved with Parkway Drive in any capacity. This is heartbreaking on a very human scale.’
Lead singer Winston McCall spoke further on the topic via Instagram earlier today (March 24), saying, “We support the victim 100 percent.”
He added, “She deserves justice. She deserves her space, she deserves her time, she deserves to be heard. 20 years of trauma, I cannot imagine what that is like to bear.”
He went on to unequivocally condemn Jed’s actions – saying, “This is fucked and this is Jed’s reckoning to answer for” – but added that the band bear the “moral responsibility” for employing him for more than 20 years.
“We always try to see the best in people and that sometimes means you’re blind to the worst,” he continued. “Anyone that’s had interactions with Jed while employed with us, we’re so sorry. We knew he could be bad with people and our inaction on just that level, there’s no excuse for that, and we apologise. But we did not know the extent of his behaviour. We’ve been completely blindsided by this.”
Together with guitarists Jeff Ling and Luke Kilpatrick, McCall and Ben Gordon founded Parkway Drive in Byron Bay in 2003, taking the band’s name from the street where the Gordons lived and the members used to rehearse. They found chart success with their second album, 2007’s Horizons, which reached number six in Australia. They started charting internationally with 2010’s Deep Blue and 2012’s Atlas, before 2015’s Ire marked their global breakthrough, as well as their first time topping the Australian charts.
The band’s last album was 2022’s Darker Still and McCall said earlier this year that the members are using 2026 to write new music. They have a number of standalone festival dates in Asia, the US and Australia booked for this year and early 2027. See their website for details.
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