Don’t Sleep recently released several excellent singles and videos from their upcoming album See Change, available now on streaming services and physically via End Hits Records. Therefore, I sat down with Dave Smalley (vocals) and Garrett Smith (bass) and spoke about the album, songwriting and recording process, hardcore scene, favorite places to play gigs, musical influences, plans for the future, and all other fun stuff. Enjoy.
Order See Change HERE
Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. How have you been?
Dave: Thx for having us. We’re getting excited to release a really good melodic hardcore record into the musical stratosphere.
Don’t Sleep recently released a new single and video, Dead On The Inside. Can you share the meaning of the song?
Dave: I think unfortunately a lot of us can go through a day or a week or months just feeling pretty beat up inside. Either a health trauma, or a breakup, or something with your job, or the loss of a loved one, or just general stress — it can numb you out and so you’re alive but feeling kind of hurt and broken inside. It’s one of the ways we humans find ourselves living sometimes. Ironically, we all share that emotion sometimes, so it’s a strange kind of humanity unifier, but at the time, you often feel so alone. You just want to close your eyes and be somewhere else, somewhere with no pain. For me, I escape to a repeated vision I have had of soaring over rivers and fields like a bird. Gliding on the wind.
The song announces See Changes, your brand new album. Can you reveal more details and what fans may expect from it?
Garrett: “See Change” is a 9-song record that includes a Tom Petty cover (RIP). The songs are high energy and for sure have the melodic hardcore sound that people associate with Dave Smalley’s career (inspired by Dag Nasty of course). But the record also swerves into other musical lanes – a couple of the songs embrace a heaviness that we haven’t really explored in previous records (we did most of the tracking with Carson Slovak and Grant McFarland, who have recorded extensively with August Burns Red, so that might have influenced us a little). I think in Don’t Sleep we really want to stay true to the traditional hardcore that we know and love, but on every release we have tried to add a little bit of spice to the recipe by throwing in some songs that have different influences.
What songs hold the most personal meaning to you and why?
Dave: I always like to encourage folks to interpret the albums through their own lenses. In that sense, I suppose I am sometimes reluctant to tell folks what a song means or my favorites. Because once it is written, a song belongs to the listener. It’s theirs. It’s yours. And all of these songs are fire; there are no throwaways, truly. But I would say “Outside In” and “Time to Fight” are two that come to mind instantly. They’re both hardcore songs about facing odds, possibly insurmountable, but you face them and take it on. You go out on top, fighting, swinging, trying. In “Time to Fight,” some of my favorite lines are: “As the night approaches/ I might close my eyes/ This battle’s over/ Did I earn the prize?/ This is my final stand/ How I wanted to go/ This is my final brand/ Into the night I go.” That’s kind of where my head and heart are right now.
Can you walk us through your songwriting process?
Garrett: Most of our songs are written in our guitarist Tom’s basement. We get together pretty regularly to jam, and generally Tom shows us some great riff that sets the table for the song, and then we work out the rest of the structure from there. Once the song is pretty well worked out, we share the demo version of it with Dave, and Dave works out the lyrics and vocals. One of the exceptions was “Love is the Suture,” which was written by Dave, and we made some minor tweaks to it in the studio, with some really valuable input from our manager and friend Matt Holmes.
Don’t Sleep consists of veterans of the punk and hardcore scene. How did you folks decide to form a band?
Garrett: We had an indie rock band called Very Americans that basically consisted of all the “musicians” in Don’t Sleep but with a different singer – the incredibly talented Rich Wise. Very Americans was pretty active with recording and playing shows, and we had a show planned for our hometown of Harrisburg, PA – we were looking to add someone to the bill and I had recently seen on social media that Dave was playing solo shows. I reached out to him and asked if he’d like to come to Harrisburg to join the bill and play solo, and I was pleasantly surprised when he said “yes.”
Over the course of the next couple of weeks we were messaging back and forth, and at some point I asked Dave what songs he was planning to play. He mentioned a number of All and DBL songs, but said it was hard for him to play Dag Nasty songs without a full band. Of course a lightbulb went off in my head, as “Can I Say” is one of my favorite albums of all time (not just favorite hardcore albums, but favorite albums of any kind of music), so I shyly asked him if he’d like us to be his backing band for those songs. I was elated but also terrified when he said “sure.” LOL!! I thought we could pull off the Dag songs because our guitarist Tom is really good and I was optimistic he could pull off the incredible Brian Baker leads, so we practiced the songs over and over again, and thankfully didn’t screw it up!
The show went well, and some of the videos from it were shared on social media I guess, because we started to get offers to play as Dave Smalley with full band at different venues in our region. We played a handful of times in NYC, DC, Philadelphia, New Jersey, etc., but after several months of that decided we’d prefer to start writing and playing our own songs. Dave was excited about making new music with us, and Don’t Sleep was born. The first show we played as Don’t Sleep as the Dave Franklin tribute show in Atlantic City, NJ with like 20 huge hardcore bands and there were over 2,000 people there!
With such experienced musicians in the lineup, what do you hope to accomplish with Don’t Sleep?
Garrett: Just to keep writing music that embodies the spirit of the hardcore music that we grew up with and love to this day, and that helps bring people together. Hardcore music has always been about community and friendship to me, and that’s what we’ve always embraced with Don’t Sleep! We are psyched to play shows in a room who love hardcore was much as we do!
How has the pandemic affected your plans as a band?
Garrett: The pandemic definitely affected us as a band. Our LP “Turn the Tide” was released in September 2020, so we never really had the opportunity to tour on it or share those songs in a live environment, which was a huge bummer for us. We did music videos and did a stripped down live streamed performance (actually it was broadcasted by ESPN as part of the X Games), but nothing can truly take the place of playing hardcore music in a room full of sweaty lunatics! LOL! So we are looking forward to playing “See Change” songs live!
In your opinion, how has the hardcore and punk rock scene changed since you became part of it?
Garrett: It’s different now, for sure. I started going to hardcore shows in about 1987 or 1988, and things felt really regionalized back then. There was a “DC sound,” a “Chicago Sound,” a “Bay Area Sound,” etc. Other than Dave, we all grew up in Harrisburg, PA, which is just 2 hours from DC and Philadelphia, and 3 hours from New York City, so we always had great bands coming through our town either for weekend shows or on a tour stop. So many great bands played in Harrisburg – Fugazi played here several times, Agnostic Front, Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbox played their first out of town show EVER in Harrisburg, Ignition, Scream, and the list goes on and on – I think what I loved about the scene back then is you would go to a show without knowing anything about the bands that were playing, so you kept an open mind, and often got turned onto them from that live experience. Now, before you see a band live you can watch their videos on YouTube, stream their music, read about them on Wikipedia, whatever, and you have a preconceived opinion about them before you even see them play. It is what it is – the current way of discovering music isn’t better or worse – it just is.
What is your opinion on the current state of the music industry?
Garrett: Specific to the hardcore scene, I think the current state is incredible and probably bigger than ever! So many active hardcore bands are absolutely killing it and keeping the scene fresh and exciting! There are a ton of current bands that get me excited like Praise, Be Well, End It, Scowl, Gel and of course the lifers that sound as good as ever – Terror, Gorilla Biscuits, etc.
What is your favorite aspect of being a musician?
Garrett: My favorite part of being a musician is creating new songs out of thin air! Writing music with close friends that I Iove and trust. Playing live and sharing energy with the crowd. Connecting with people through music – running into lifelong friends at shows and meeting new people.
Dave: Over the years, you’ve been in many excellent bands like DYS, Dag Nasty, ALL, Down By Law, The Bandoleros, The Sharpshooters, and Don’t Sleep. Which one are you most proud of and why?
Dave: That is a good question but one impossible to answer. I would put it this way: I am into the works of Eckart Tolle, including “The Power of Now,” and “A New Earth.” These books include elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam and more. But the central idea is being Present — being in the moment. Too many times we lose our present because we’re still living in the past, or afraid of the future. True Consciousness — being at peace in the moment, good or bad, and thus, closest to the divine, universal oneness that binds all people together — can only come about by being in the moment. Bands are kind of like that. With each one, I have given 100 percent of my energy, karma, dedication and focus at that moment. So I love all of them. There has been so much joy and energy and passion and hopefully inspiration captured by all of those bands, and the incredible musicians in them, in different ways, and I’m grateful to have played in all of them and met so many amazing people over the years.
If you could collaborate with any artist, who would it be and why?
Garrett: I would love to collaborate with Elvis Costello. He’s my favorite musician of all time, is a musical and lyrical genius, and has reinvented himself over and over again. I’d love to write a sick hardcore song with Elvis Costello, complete with breakdowns and gang vocals!!
Dave: I’d agree with that! Additionally, I’d love to have collaborated with Bob Marley. Perhaps in the next cycle of being, we’ll meet and make incredible songs together and put that into the universe.
Who would you say are your biggest musical influences?
Garrett: For me it would be a lot of the Dischord bands – Fugazi, Rites of Spring, Jawbox, Soulside, Dag Nasty (of course), classic Revelation Records bands like Gorilla Biscuits, Side by Side, Youth of Today, and of course the Clash, Buzzcocks, Elvis Costello and the Jam!
Dave: All of those for sure, but for me, I would add in a lot of metal and rock – Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Dio, Ozzy, early Metallica and of course Motorhead and AC/DC. Without those bands, the stories of DYS, Dag Nasty, ALL, Down by Law, the Bandoleros, and Don’t Sleep would likely be very different.
Do you have any favorite venues or cities to perform in?
Garrett: I will jump at any chance to play in NYC, DC or Europe!
Dave: It’s a spiritual thing. Each night is a different spark, and each show is a moment of fire and creation. Each place is magic. Each moment is unrepeatable.
What advice would you give to aspiring musicians in the punk and hardcore scene?
Dave: Believe in yourself. Play music for a reason if you can — try to make yourself and the world better through music. Take care of your friends and be positive and supportive. And, for goodness sake, work hard at becoming a good musician!! You owe that to yourself as a player, and to your audience. Never stop getting better, keep challenging yourself as an artist, try new things, and push the boundaries.
What are the plans for Don’t Sleep and your other bands? Is any European Tour in the works?
Garrett: As far as Don’t Sleep goes, we are working on some European shows in the near future that we hope to be able to announce very soon!
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions. Anything you would like to say to our readers?
Dave: Thank you so much for all the support. Enjoy the new album See Change, and hope to see you in the fall. Love you all — one human family, together.
Thoughts Words Action 