I got to sit down with Nashville based alt-pop band NIGHTLY before their set supporting rapper NF at New York City’s Terminal 5. Find our conversation and live photos below!
Melodic Mag (Elizabeth): To start off, can you guys introduce yourselves?
Joey Beretta: Yeah! I’m Joey, I play guitar in Nightly.
Jonathan Capeci: I’m Jon, I sing.
Nicholas Sainato: And I’m Nick, I play drums.
MM: You guys have toured with NF before, what’s it like touring with him for a second time?
JC: It’s great! It’s a lot more fun this time because we know him better now, we’re more comfortable. It’s awesome.
MM: And what about hitting cities you’ve hit before, what’s that like? Do you see a lot of familiar faces in the crowd?
JC: Yeah, totally! We usually say something on stage about how many people were here last tour, and it’s cool to see those people. A lot of times they’ll come up to us afterwards like, “I saw you in Boston last time!” or something. It’s definitely nice.
MM: That’s awesome! So, when you guys are playing live shows and play an unreleased song, do you feel like it’s a good way to gauge the possible success of that song once it’s released?
JC: Maybe, a little bit, yeah. Up until recently we didn’t have enough songs to play a full set, so we kind of had to play a lot of unreleased stuff and try new stuff out. It’s a good way to see if people are feeling it live, you know?
MM: Is it kind of intimidating playing an unreleased song for the first time and feeling it out?
JB: No, it’s fine! It’s just always fun to play new stuff. But, we did one song one time that we’ll definitely never play again. (laughs) “The Car”? Remember when we played that song?
JC: Oh dude, I love that song! (laughs)
JB: We played it live one time and it was just…nobody liked it! (laughs)
JC: Yeah, we’ve gotta re-write it.
JB: But yeah, we’ll probably never play that one again!
MM: Hey, at least you know what you have to do with it!
JC: Exactly! It helps.
MM: So, are you guys in the process of writing another EP right now? What’s the writing process like for you guys?
JC: We’re done with the second EP, so there’s like at least one more song coming out and then the second EP. We have a bunch of other new songs, and we’ll figure out if it’s album time or EP 3…we haven’t figured out exactly what we want to do, we have four or five new songs after the next EP, but that’s done already.
MM: I feel like there’s a bit of a difference in your production sound more recently, can you talk about that?
JC: Yeah! We have more freedom now to be able to experiment and incorporate some things like some live drums. We’ve also been co-producing some stuff, and that’s sort of something new for us. We’ve worked with some new producers, but not much! I think maybe one from the first EP. We’re just overall experimenting more, especially with the live sounds.
MM: That’s great! Is that something that you guys have always wanted to do and bring into the newer music?
JC: Yeah, I think also with touring for a year and a half or whatever, you learn a little bit more about yourselves and how it translates live and that can maybe influence if you’re like, “Oh, we should have another upbeat song because we only have one of those,” or something like that. It definitely somewhat influences us writing for sure, the touring aspect.
MM: Do you have a demo that you’re most excited to release?
JB: We have a lot of demos! We write like crazy, we love writing, so we’ve got a lot of songs we’re stoked about. There are a couple in particular that I’m really excited about, though. I’m excited for people to hear the new stuff.
MM: I’m excited to hear it! So, going back to the writing process, do you guys write on the road a lot?
JC: We do write on the road some, yeah, a lot of voice memos. We have a little studio thing that we haven’t really been able to set up this tour yet, but we have some days off next week so we’ll probably set it up then. It just kind of depends on the logistics. We do try to write on the road though, we try to write on this tour. And, if nothing else, I make little notes and stuff about things that pop into my head.
MM: You guys tour a lot, so what are your favorite and least favorite things about being on the road?
JC: Clean underwear.
MM: Oh yeah, that’s a big one.
JB: That’s in both categories that you just mentioned.
JC: You’ve gotta really plan it out, if you get down to the last one, it’s not good. You’ve gotta plan it out. Like, “I’ve got three pairs left…”
NS: If you’ve got three pairs left, it’s only going to last you another two weeks. (laughs)
MM: Yeah, you have to plan it out pretty far in advance, I’d imagine!
NS: If I’ve got three pairs, I’ve gotta do laundry.
JC: Or you can go through three pairs a day.
JB: Nick loves to shower. He’ll shower, like, three times in a day.
NS: If I could, I would. (laughs)
MM: So, what’s next for you once this tour ends? Is there a headlining tour in the works?
JC: Yep! Yeah, we haven’t announced it yet, but we’re going to announce a headlining tour after this tour.
MM: That’s great! What’s it going to be like going from playing shorter sets to playing much longer ones?
JB: It’ll be a lot! (laughs)
JC: We’re excited! We want to!
JB: We definitely want to.
JC: We’ve been opening forever.
NS: We haven’t really played a set that long. I think the longest set we’ve ever done was like, 45 minutes. One college we played at, we played like an hour or 52 minuets or something.
JC: We’ve got more songs now, though.
MM: Having new songs to add to the set should make it easier!
JC: Yeah! We can’t wait. I can’t wait to do our home shows, that’s going to be dope.
MM: Something I really enjoy about you guys is the visual elements to your music, especially in the music videos. They sort of follow a story line, instead of some of the newer, generic ones with somebody just singing into the mic. What inspired you to go in that direction?
JC: We wanted each thing we did to tell a little bit of a story, all of it kind of feels similar, between the stuff we post and the live shows. We just really went for it. Like you said, we didn’t want to be super generic. That was kind of our vision for it, and we’re really happy with how the videos came out.
MM: When I was watching them, I was thinking about how different it is from a lot of the bands who don’t show that creative side. It’s refreshing.
JB: Thank you! That’s our goal.
MM: Finally, what are you guys most excited about for the rest of this tour?
NS: Warmer weather! (laughs)
JC: Oh yeah, the beach. There’s going to be some beach days in Florida and California.
JB: California!
JC: A lot of the shows that I was really looking forward to have already happened, and they were amazing. New York’s one, we were really looking forward to Boston and Chicago, some places that we really know we have a lot of fans.
JB: Oh, I’m stoked for Vegas too!
JC: Yeah, Vegas, we’ve never played in Vegas before! I feel like it’s gonna be kinda crazy, but fun. Like the rest of this tour.
Nightly
Keep up with NIGHTLY here: Website // Instagram // Twitter // Facebook // Spotify
