Don’t think the multiple wins in the Best of Music poll will go to Wintersleep’s collective head. Until they get a tour bus, that is. “What keeps us humble? Crawling over our gear to get into our 15-year-old mini-van that has 350,000 kilometres on it and drive it from gig to gig,” says bassist Jud Haynes. “That keeps us really humble. We travel in absolute squalor.”
The band just got back from an Ontario tour to support its recently released second album and has two more lined up in May and July. A tour of Europe is on the radar later this year as well as the release of the first video, “Danse Macabre,” from the new album, which features the band playing in a hospital surrounded by break-dancing skeletons (seriously). It’s safe to say that 2005 is the year of Wintersleep.
“It’s been interesting because it’s started to happen everywhere,” Haynes says. “First it was a Halifax thing, then it was a Maritimes thing and just in the last six months or so, it started happening in other cities. We’re playing Toronto and Hamilton and pretty much selling out clubs there with audiences singing along. That’s kind of like, ‘Wow.’”
Runners-up: Joel Plaskett Emergency, Jimmy Swift Band
