Wintersleep make their mark at Junos

By Michael Gorman

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

When members of Halifax band Wintersleep heard their name announced at the 2008 Juno Awards in Calgary last week they got out of their seats, looks of shock plastered across their faces, and headed for the stage. They were the best new group of 2008. But as they accepted their award even the most casual fan of the band noticed something was amiss.

Tim D'Eon could not have picked a worse time to go to the bathroom.

D'Eon, the band's lead guitarist, said he waited as long as he possibly could before finally giving into his bodily urge. Besides, said the Yarmouth native, he wasn't feeling that great about his band's chances, describing them as "pretty far fetched."

Wintersleep lost their first nomination the night before at the awards banquet when Arcade Fire captured the trophy for Best Alternative Album. A night later and already with one loss, D'Eon didn't expect the other nomination to come through either.

So it was that he found himself in the hallway of the Saddledome watching his bandmates on stage accepting the award.

"I probably wasn't going to say anything on stage, anyway," he says with a laugh. D'Eon quickly headed for the backstage area to meet up with the rest of the band. His call home later that night definitely took on a different twist because of his onstage absence.

"I called my folks and the first thing my dad said was, 'where the hell were you.' And then he goes, 'Oh, I mean congratulations. But where the hell were you?'"

The win for Wintersleep, which besides D'Eon includes Loel Campbell, Jon Samuel, Mike Bigelow and Paul Murphy, who, like D'Eon, is from Yarmouth, should only help the group's trajectory, which at the moment is only heading up.

With the win they join a select group of bands, such as the Tragically Hip, who didn't just flame out after winning the award.

"When you look at the list of bands that have won our category in the past . . . most of them have had at least a decent amount of success and continue to have some," said D'Eon.

And for now that success continues to grow. Up next for the group is a tour through the U.K. with Vancouver buzz band Black Mountain, a trip D'Eon said they are all excited about. The summer is also starting to fill up, most notably with an appearance at the Pemberton Festival in July in B.C. where the band will be on the same bill as acts such as The Flaming Lips, Nine Inch Nails, Coldplay and Jay-Z.

"When we started playing festivals our name would be at the very bottom (of the list) in the smallest fine print that you could never read unless you had a microscope on it," says D'Eon. "But it's cool that we're starting to work our way up there."

But for every high profile appearance such as Pemberton, there are many more that aren't high profile and, quite frankly, don't do much for the band's collective pocketbooks.

"It's hard because you have to choose wisely," says Murphy of tour planning. "You have to turn down easier or better paying shows for shows that don't pay at all."

This means resisting the urge to play frequently in certain parts of Canada where they know they will be a draw in favour of parts of the U.S. where they still need to build up their name and following.

For at least a few days in Calgary, though, both D'Eon and Murphy say they enjoined being in a situation where they were known and recognized. And for a group that prefers to be on the road each night rather than being in the same place for a number of days and only playing one show while they're there, Murphy said it wasn't that difficult to get into the Juno atmosphere.

"You get into it," he said. "Once you're there you kind of become a part of it. It is kind of cool, the general idea of music being celebrated."

And of course that idea is made even better when the music being celebrated is your own. Murphy and D'Eon are a long way from the days when they graced the stage at Yarmouth Consolidated Memorial High School for the annual Battle of the Bands. They still have a long way to go. But they both say that — even before the Juno win — that thinking of themselves as musicians isn't such a foreign idea anymore.

"There's a certain point where if it doesn't feel easy to say you're a musician you probably shouldn't do it anymore," says Murphy.

Still, having a Juno doesn't hurt when telling people that's what you do.

"When you're talking to someone you haven't seen in a long time and they ask what you do and you say 'I play in a band,' you kind of get a look," says D'Eon. "But now I can say I play in a Juno-award winning band."