In Conversation With Colin: Meghan Parnell of Bywater Call

Bywater Call is one of the most compelling acts on the music scene today.

Gritty blues, gospel, soul and classic rock fuse seamlessly on Shepherd, the latest studio album from Canadian band Bywater Call. Based around the soulful and passionate singing of Meghan Parnell and the slide guitar mastery of Dave Barnes both founding members of this seven-piece band. They are a blissed-out, sometimes retro-soaked revelation in the best sense, multi layered musicality as welcoming of southern soul as it is of blues rock.

The name comes from frequent trips that guitarist Dave Barnes and vocalist Meghan Parnell have made to the quiet Bywater neighbourhood of New Orleans, a setting which seems to call them back often.

Colin Palmer spoke with lead singer Meghan Parnell from the lobby of a hotel in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, some 600 miles from their native Toronto for ‘The Rock Vault’.

The band formed in 2017 with humble beginnings, as Meghan explains. “Dave (Barnes) and I had been running an event band, a wedding party function band for about ten years and we had always talked about writing but never got around to it. We got to a point where we were losing the spark for performing other people’s music. We were covering anything from The Beatles to Aretha Franklin to Bruno Mars. Also at that time we were listening to a lot of music that was inspiring us, Amy Winehouse, Tedeschi Trucks, Alabama Shakes stuff like that.”

The current line-up expanded from the two founder members consisting of Meghan and Dave into the current seven-piece line up. “We always knew we wanted horns in the band from the time we started writing music”, says Meghan. “But we needed to get a core band together first and write some tunes and start playing them and see how that felt. Then we started to do some competitions and we won a couple of them, one of the prizes was a festival pretty close to home called Southside Shuffle which we actually played for the third time last weekend, it’s in Port Credit, Ontario.”

Describing the song-writing process, Meghan offers this explanation, “a lot of it starts with Dave, he will have a chord progression, sometimes he has melody or a lyrical idea started in his brain and then he and I bounce stuff back off each other. Then we bring it into the whole band and everybody is involved in the final product, so everybody’s voice is heard and all the guys are jazz school trained musicians and we do want it to sound like it’s a group effort.”

While there’s no denying the sheer power of Bywater Call on disc, nothing approaches the absolute joy of watching this band performing live from the crowded environment of a noisy club. Bywater Call are always a party, with a style that encompasses rock, soul, and R&B, and a grooving horn section where all seven members of the band play a role in forging irresistible upbeat sounds. Their set encompasses both originals and a couple of covers that dig deep into the history of music, figures like Stephen Stills’ Love The One You’re With and fellow Canadian’s The Band are represented with a masterful interpretation of The Weight that has become a staple of the band’s set list.

With a new live album set for release August 22^nd 2025 that includes Love The One You’re With, a dynamic extended cover version running at ten minutes and a favourite of Bywater Call concert goers. The live take comes from one of the band’s two sold-out shows at the historic Rivoli theatre on Queen Street, West Toronto, Canada in December 2024.

“This song is a great representation of our live show and the chemistry between all the band members,” says Meghan. “You really get to hear the power of the vocal and then the craftsmanship of the instrumentalists as I step away from the mic and really let them do their thing. No live version of this song is the same. Every time we perform it, it’s a journey.”

Sunshine is Bywater Call’s first live album. It features a mix of newly released music, including the funky new original title-track Sunshine (previously released as a single in May 2025), plus favourites As If, Sign of Peace, and Everybody Knows from 2024’s Shepherd album, plus Bring Me Down taken from their 2019 self-titled debut album. Songs feature extended jams and fiery solos from shows in Toronto, Canada, Woodstock, New York, and Newbury, UK.

There’s one thing worth saying about these rockers from Toronto: These guys work for it on stage, nearly two hours of full on showmanship where their jamming displays an obvious camaraderie on stage. Every song performed is ridiculously good, for example Everybody Knows coming in at eight minutes long is a high-energy anthem with 70’s flourishes showcasing the inescapable fact that Meghan has one of the best vocal deliveries that simply soars, she is without question up there with the all-time great vocalists.

When you see a band on stage thoroughly enjoying themselves, it’s contagious. Throughout their live performances they genuinely look like a group of friends just having a fun time, jamming with each other as they continue building the arrangements that gave the songs a captivating vibrancy. One thing is certain, Bywater Call give one hell of a performance.

The band are visiting Wales again later this year at Planet Rockstock, Trecco Bay on Thursday, 27^th November 2025.

 Words by Colin Palmer

Photos by Denis Carpenter