Forming A Friendship With Wintersleep Before the Internet

Listening to music is commonly a one-sided affair. You place the needle, insert a disc, or press play to hear tracks, and occasionally get to experience a live concert. But in 2006, I began a series of email conversations with my favourite band's lead singer, Paul Murphy of Wintersleep. It's an uncommon position for a fan to be in. For the majority, recording artists are often inaccessible and seem to exist in an alternate universe. The opportunity to meet your favourites, let alone communicate at will, is reserved for the loftiest of dreams. But for me, this gulf was eliminated and I was getting insight into the band without having ever seen them live.

The internet fundamentally changed the relationship between not only musicians and record companies, but also between the artist and the fan. In the mid-2000s, every band, signed or otherwise, was propping up a MySpace profile and listing their record label mates and top influences in their Top 8's, and began clicking refresh in order to interact with fans in real-time. To help make up for the fall in record sale, others designed websites buttressed with exclusive content and online discussion boards reserved for hardcore fans. The collective organizational nature of the Internet quickly developed new avenues for artists to engage with fans unlike ever before.

In this awkward 2005 interview with Paul and drummer Loel Campbell, the two discuss the band's cult-like status with MuchMusic's Going Coastal. "The online community," Campbell said, "the message boards and stuff like that, it's just growing all the time. It's such a solid base right now. If people go to the website, it's something people can really get involved with." He wasn't lying.

Over the next several months, I joined an online forum hosted by the band's website and came to know several others from the Halifax area who knew members of the band personally. Most of Wintersleep grew up in coastal Nova Scotia towns and practiced within a small community of musicians in the province. As Murphy told interviewers "being from a smaller rural area, it was sort of easy to focus on writing music or jamming with people. It was basically what you looked forward to after school and on the weekends as something to do, and a way to hang out with friends." By chance, one by the name of Joey would give me Murphy's e-mail. I don't remember what I first wrote to Paul, but after a couple of exchanges, I was pretty sure I had the right guy.

Over the course of the next several months and years, I frequented Murphy with all sorts of questions, ranging from what guitar chords played on certain tracks to how the band's next albums, Welcome to the Night Sky and New Inheritors, were turning out. During one of our exchanges, he told me of one incident in 2007 where the band's van was broken into and much of their equipment taken. In another, I somehow convinced him to get me into a show while I was underage, but nothing ever came of it. The lead singer of my favourite band was e-mailing me in between shows on tour, and I was bugging out.

In September 2006, some friends in high school had come back from Toronto's first Virgin Music Festival impressed not by any headliners, but a group of east coast rockers that called themselves Wintersleep. For the better part of that school year, we gathered at a friend's house after class to listen to a gross range of progressive and alternative rock music that slowly took over my life. Wintersleep's sound was distinct; my ears reared as the band's haunting and masterfully subdued sound and dramatic songwriting filled the space. To their credit, the band's eponymous 2003 debut was recorded in a haunted opera house. To this day, the track acts as a prelude for an onslaught of mind-bending drum solos courtesy of the band's voracious engine, Loel Campbell.

Murphy grew up around Yarmouth, a remote, scenic fishing town at the southernmost point of Nova Scotia. His songwriting seems to reflect a rural and isolated upbringing. Paul's lyrics often invoke the night sky, wildlife, and the raw forces of nature. "I'll be a tidal wave when I grow up, crashing on harbours / I'll be a temperamental element, a raging water, he wails on Orca." Then there's "Drunk on Aluminum," where Murphy sings "Wild eyes, I feel the teeth again, gnawing and imminent, in the lost, lonely night." Both tracks utilize excruciatingly hushed melodies, but mix in heavy rock elements I first learned to appreciate during hazy after school sessions.

One month later, the same group of friends made it down to Hamilton to catch the band for a second time. As per my single mother, I wasn't allowed to go to music festivals or rock concerts just yet, but I wasn't going to let that be the end of it. Sometime in late 2006, I e-mailed in a video request for Wintersleep's new single into MuchMusic's The Wedge. At this point, YouTube was still an infant and Canadian TV was giving up airtime to indie Canadian music. Plus, it's badass when they play it on TV because you said so, right? I'd requested "Jaws of Life" from Untitled and stayed up to watch the clip on late night. As if I'd made a real stance. The video revolts against the rigidity and excesses of a highly consumerized life. As the lead sheds the material excesses pinning him back, the city's once pure animal inhabitants are corrupted by the briefcase, suit, and tie he leaves behind.

Murphy's grandparents passed sometime in 2009. In their memory, together with his brother, Paul wrote and released a musical homage of timeless folk tunes and called the set Postdata. "And my grandpa said don't trust those eyes you can't cry in / And my grandma said don't trust a thing your grandpa says." Much of Murphy's songwriting looks outwards into the big black belly of the universe—but at the same time begs listeners to find meaning in the emptiness his lyrics explore. Armed with an acoustic guitar and a melodica, he took the act on tour in 2010. When Murphy and co., including fellow Wintersleep guitarist Tim D'Eon and the talented Brian Borcherdt, appeared at Toronto's Music Gallery during Canadian Music Week, the guys stood near the entryway to greet the fans that recognized them. Most of the audience grabbed drinks and made their way into the church, where much of the crowd sat cross-legged on the floor. Others patiently filled the aisles.

It was at under these circumstances where Paul and I first met. I introduced myself at the doorway; he recognized me and pulled me aside to chat. After the show, I reached out to him to have my record signed, but not until the next day did I get a chance to take a look. Next to his name, Paul had scratched, "Finally." Sam Khanlari is a writer based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter.