Photo by Kyle Cunjak

by Matt Dixon, April '06

1. Please introduce The Sleepless Nights and give a bit of back info:
Currently there are 7 main Sleepless Nights and a few satellite members. Most of the instrumentation is doubled. It’s basically like having two rock bands playing at the same time. We started in 2004 as a three piece with the idea to make the slowest and most minimal music we could while still playing in a song driven format. We’ve since evolved from that but we did manage to make one full length that fulfilled that idea. It was released in October 2004 and is currently out of print. Since then we’ve released a 7” single but should have a new ep out before our summer tour and an LP early in the new year. Our sound has changed a lot but it’s been a pretty gradual evolution. We’re a lot more energetic now.

2. How would you describe your music to someone outside of the indie scene? How would you describe it to someone within the indie scene?
Outside the indie scene I’d say we’re a none traditional rock band and would probably compare us to a few well known bands. We’ve been compared to artists like Beck, Low, and Mogwai repeatedly so I’d probably drop those names although I don’t really agree [with] those comparisons. As for people in the indie scene I’d say we’re like if Tortoise played songs by the Band. With so many people in the band some very diverse influences are brought to the table.

3. What do you try to communicate through your music?
The Sleepless Nights is a fairly a-political outfit. At this point I (Aaron the singer/guitar player) write all the songs so there is a thematic link between most of them. Our most common subjects are miscommunication, dying, and eccentricities. Our two newest songs are about a girl we all know who is afraid of germs and members of my family who insist on hyphenating their names. So while we do have songs about such staples as love and things like that, the majority are about personal details most writers would gloss over to get to the love story.

4. What bands and/or artists, past and present have influenced the sleepless nights?
I’m a fan of the usual old songwriters and lyricists like Robbie Robertson, Bob Dylan, Van Dyke Parks, and locals like Rick White and Chris Murphy. The music for the band is mainly influenced by arrangement ideas borrowed (stolen) from electronic music and various ethnic musical styles. The other members of the band grew up listening so many different bands it’s not worth mentioning. Mary one of our drummer/vocalists released an album of songs about Jay Ferguson so it would be an understatement to say most of us have been into Sloan at one point or another.

5. What drives you to play music together as The Sleepless Nights?
Other than our awesome new tour van i’m really not sure. Most bands have a hard time organizing a group half the size of ours but we’ve had a lot of good reactions to our shows and positive feedback so that helps keep everyone motivated.

6. Tell me a little about Sleepless Recordings.
The label came about because we had been ignored by the musical collectives/communities that existed in our city (Halifax) and came to the realization that they didn’t represent us anyway. So instead of trying to fit into what’s going on we decided to try and make our own community. Since starting almost two years ago we’ve been pretty prolific releasing records by Benn Ross, Thomas/Richard, Share and The Sleepless Nights.

7. What can we expect from The Sleepless Nights in the future?
More of everything. we just got a van so we’re going to be playing everywhere we can and touring more. Also ideally we’d like to release at least two albums per year. I’m a pretty prolific songwriter and we’re going to start performing songs by other band members soon so we have a mountainous back log of material.

8. How can ppl contact you?
www.slowitdown.ca
www.myspace.com/thesleeplessnights
cheval93@hotmail.com

9. Final words?
Hang up your damn phone if you’re driving.