Don't Sleep on Sleep House!
Sleep House is a New Jersey-based alternative rock band consisting of members Nicholas Gardyasz (G$), Adam Mink, Evan Marcinko, and Nick Marcinko. The guys began the group back in 2016 during their freshman year of high school at the age of 14, and have never looked back since. Since that time, they have wrote, recorded, and produced two EPs, toured the East Coast, and have amassed over 100k streams on their song Her. Don't You Cry and Pano-319 are their latest singles, and the beginning of a new era for the band. Read an excerpt from our conversation below and scroll down to listen to the full interview, with a fun game of Random Question Generator!
Who are some of your biggest musical influences?
Nick: The Beatles is the foundational one for sure. I’d say in the early 2000’s we were big on The Strokes.
G$: John Mayer
Nick: Me and Evan, we grew up on 80’s Van Halen and hair metal bands.
Adam: Vampire Weekend, especially their new songs. I feel like Don’t You Cry is very Vampire Weekend-y
Tell me a little about Don’t You Cry
G$: Don’t You Cry is pretty much get over it and move forward and grow from it. That was the main message I was trying to get across with those lyrics.
Adam: I think it’s cool because it sounds like you’re talking to someone but it could also be talking to yourself. Don’t you cry, get over it, move on.
Nick: One of my favorite things is when I’ve had some of my friends text me, “don’t you cry” whenever they’ve been in weird slumps. When you look at it it’s kind of sad, but I think you can look at it in a positive way. We’re saying don’t just get stuck in your own sadness and wallow in it. You’ve gotta keep moving forward.
Pano-319 is my absolute favorite. I love this song! Can you tell me more about it.
Nick: We worked on the song for awhile with still no name. The story behind the title 319 is pretty dumb but I love it anyway. I was in a Rite Aid and I ordered something and the clerk said, “The total is $3.19. Well that kinda rolls off the tongue doesn’t it.” I went in my car and I was like “Pano-319.”
Adam: The “Pano” is because the whole song is kind of like a war with yourself and being down on yourself so I was trying to think of something with war. My dad was born in Panama during the war, so I thought Panama… Pano... we were just trying to throw something together and we got Pano-319.
How did you write and record that song?
Adam: I think I had a rough rhythm idea and then we were just playing it together in the studio a lot and it just formed
Nick: I think we were working on Don’t You Cry and we were just feeling ourselves and thought, why don’t we make another one? When Adam started playing the rhythm guitar I immediately knew what drums I was going to play. All of the parts just fell into place. We knew it was different and we were excited to see how people were gonna react to it.
You told me you do all of the mixing yourself?
Nick: I kind of wanted to take a more heads on roll when it comes to mixing. The first EP my dad helped us a lot with. Everything we’ve released except for Run To You, was all completely done by us 100%. Production, mixing and mastering. I wanted to figure out how to get our sound to a more professional level. I spent most of 2019 buying textbooks, going through them, highlighting them, video after video, just meeting people that could mentor me. I wanted to take that part of the band because these guys always come up with great ideas too so I was like well how about you guys focus on those ideas and I’ll worry about blending it and having it sound good together.
Do you have any fan stories?
Nick: One of our really nice fans gave us our first bit of fan art. She waterpainted lyrics to our song Rose on a little canvas and we have that hung up in the studio. It’s a great reminder of that first tour.
Something cool I saw that you guys did was send CD’s to people that subscribed to your mailing list?
Nick: A lot of the people we work with in the Sleep House world are people we know personally and have known for years. My friend Robb owns his own clothing brand and he’s done all of our merch and our last two single covers. We were thinking about something cool just to do it and stop putting limitations of what we think we could do. He drew up a bunch of different CD designs, went out and got the CD’s and cases ourselves. There was no printer it was all handmade by him. We were trying to make something more than just a CD but more like a moment. It came out two weeks before Don’t You Cry came out. We want to do some more fun and similar things like that.
I Hate That I Miss You is a song that sounds upbeat but lyrically isn’t so happy. It does have a nostalgic 80’s feel to it that I love.
G$: That was Adam’s craft with the lyrics and the juxtaposition with the feel and the lyrics.
Adam: It’s pretty straight up, “I hate that I miss you.” We have a lot of songs that are relationship based but that one specifically has a different approach to it. It’s both a breakup song and a love song in a way.
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