I was fortunate enough to interview the alt-pop duo Nightly, singer Jonathan Capeci and guitarist Joey Beretta, before their sold out Atlanta show at Eddie’s Attic of their first headlining tour!
Melodic Magazine: I know that Nightly stands for Night, love you, but where did that come from and how did you guys think of the name?
Jonathan: Pretty much every band name in the world was taken, haha so we had to get creative. One of the first songs we ever wrote was called “The Night”, but we never released it. So we started thinking of things that had to do with night, and we came up with night, love you. Because it’s a personal sentiment and it’s somewhat universal. We liked that phrase and thought it was too long to be a band name and shortened it to Night-LY. It’s a hidden meaning within the name.
MM: Nashville is the place that helped you guys launch your music careers, what are you most thankful for of Nashville?
Joey: That’s a hard question, but the culture that’s been the created there for young musicians. There’s a great community there, and I think that’s the best thing about it. If you need help with something or someone to bounce ideas off of, people are willing to hear you out and do things with you in this competitive yet cooperative environment.
MM: So your duo has been able to accomplish a lot and has creatively evolved multiple times, they, and now that you are under a label, Interscope, has anything changed?
Joey: That’s a great question. The most important thing to us is that we love to create things together and we’ve been very fortunate to have a team that supports that, but at the end of the day we just love making music together, and we’re still doing that to this day, we’ve had help here and there for different things but at the core it, it’s always going to be the two of us.
Jon: I don’t think it’s changed the way we create, we’ve just had more people help us as far releasing things and more on the technical side, but there isn’t any pressure to be anything but ourselves.
MM: Congrats on the release of your new song by the way, “No Call, No Reply”. What gave you guys the idea to release a phone number for fans to call that gave them a clip of the song before its release as a promo for it?
Jon: It was something that someone on our management came up with. We thought it’d be cool so that when people wanted to text or call the number we can text back through an app.
MM: What is the inspiration for most of your visuals- like the video “Who Am I To You?”
Jon: When we were coming up with concepts with Nolan Knight, the photographer, everything we were doing for the EP was blue or red. If you see the cover of the EP there blue and red lights on the girl’s face. For different songs there are different colors for example: “Holding On” was blue and “Miss You Like Hell” was red, so for that song, we decided to do both as a contrast. There’s probably a deeper significance if you want to dig, like how love and hate or love and hurt are so connected- like the people that love you the most can hurt you the most. We just wanted an intense performance piece. We didn’t overthink that video too much.
MM: Between your EP Honest and your most recent The Sounds Of Your Voice, it’s clear you guys have been inspired by everything, so who are some artists that have influenced or inspired you musically?
Joey: U2, Coldplay, The Killers, huge influences into what we’re doing. A lot of modern stuff is cool too, but what we always go back to is the roots of it.
Jon: We like to think of ourselves as a band in 2019. We know music and groups aren’t the same as it was in the 1970s-90s. It’s what we strive for by keeping the guitar, vocals, and trying to keep someone of the soul feeling.
MM: So in 2018 you guys were on tour with NF, which is exciting, but if given the chance who you want to go on tour with, or tour with you?
Joey: That’s tough because there are so many amazing bands.
Jon: There’s s many legends that it’d be amazing. To be able to say you were on tour with someone during their last tour would be sick to be able to say you did a show with U2.
MM: For most musicians, the music they create comes from a personal place from within, do you think there’d ever be something too hard or off limits for you guys to write about and release to your fans?
Jon: Personally I don’t think so, there are songs we’ve written, that aren’t necessarily out yet but about death, God, and in “no call, no reply” I say a girl’s name. We’ve written stuff on things we were really feeling, but they just weren’t a good song or we just didn’t release it, but if we loved it and thought it was good we’ll release it.
Joey: Everything we release comes from a real place, and there’s nothing that we would shy away from. It’s just what we’re inspired by at the time.
MM: You guys are sold out in Atlanta tonight congrats! Have you been able to check anything out, and if not where do you wish you could’ve gone?
Both: Thank you!
Joey: Honestly we haven’t been able to since we got here the same the same day as the show, and it’s hard to find time while on tour and it isn’t your off day.
Jon: Yeah it’s hard, but I heard there’s a lot of cool things and food in the area we’re in . Before our last show we got there an hour early so we were able to get on some scooters and explore and get coffee. So we might be able to check somethings out before leaving.
MM: What’s been the best part of the tour?
Jon: I honestly can’t say, every show has been great.
Joey: It’s our first headlining tour honestly if one person shows up I’m blown away. Every show we’ve been very fortunate to be able to sell a good amount of tickets, and we never had a room full of people singing our songs before. It’s been a dream of ours for a long time and it still doesn’t feel real at all.
Jon: This is the 1st sold out show of the tour, this might be the highlight so far. Our 1st Atlanta shows is one of my favorites, and we opened up for NF at the Tabernacle. *At the show, he confirmed that this was his favorite show*
MM: The tour is ending in Nashville at the end of March, but if you could go on tour anywhere in the world, where would you want to go?
Jon: We were fortunate enough to do some dates in the UK and Ireland, I would say I want to go back to London. But I feel like I’d just be wasting the wish on somewhere we’ve already been. I think playing a show in Australia would be dope.
Joey: I love Manchester. I fell in love with the city.
Live Review of the show can be found here!
Follow Nightly and their headlining tour: Twitter, Instagram and Facebook
Photos: Angel Escobar
Check out the video for “Who Am I To You” and their new song “No Call, No Reply” now !
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