Nightly
Getting to Know Nightly
By Kayla Marra
Nashville-based alternative band Nightly is comprised of three incredibly talented musicians- Jonathan Capeci, Nicholas Sainato, and Joseph Beretta. Nightly (it’s an abbreviation for night, love you) got their start in 2016, working on several projects and EPs. They signed with Interscope Records in July of that year, with whom they released their leading single “XO” and debut EP “Honest.”
Nightly then went on tour as the supporting act for Ke$ha, The All-American Rejects, The Struts, NF, and more. In August 2019, the group signed a record deal with BMG, where they released their debut album night, love you.
Nightly is releasing their sophomore album wear your heart out on August 25th, and we had the pleasure of sitting down to chat with them about the story behind the album, their upcoming tour, and more.
Could you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?
Jonny Capeci: For the band Nightly, I sing. My name’s Jonny, and this is Joey. He plays guitar, and then Nick plays drums. We live in Nashville, Tennessee.
If you could explain your sound/vibe in three words to a new listener, which words would you choose?
Jonny Capeci: Are these fun words or what you actually want us to sound like?
Whatever you guys think is most representative of you!
Jonny Capeci: Maybe alternative.
Joey Beretta: I would say new favorite band.
That’s perfect! That’s all you need to know.
Joey Beretta: (laughs) Jonny got one word and I got three!
Nick Sainato: Super vibes.
Joey Beretta: Super vibey?
Super vibes and super vibey, I think both are fitting. Congratulations on the release of your newest single and music video “like i do” Could you tell us a bit about the songwriting process for this track?
Joey Beretta: We had most of the record done. We only had three or more songs left to fill. We knew the vibe that we wanted to go for. I tried to explain this the other day and I did such a bad job, so I’m trying to do a better job. I saw this thing on TikTok. It was a video of Coldplay. They were playing “Clocks” and there's that iconic riff that goes throughout the whole song. So, we wanted a riff like that to base the song on. It started on piano. Actually, Nick was playing piano and came up with this riff. We changed it to a couple of different things. It starts out on synth and there are strings that do it in the outro.
Joey Beretta: The guitar does it. The vocals do it. When you listen to the song in the session itself, you can hear, it's like that through idea of that part. But it changes what is doing it the whole time. It's how it started, but then we got away from that once we got the meat of the song written. We were like, Oh, this is actually super sick.
Jonny Capeci: Yeah. We loved how, after the first chorus, it completely changes to guitar and drums that don't come until after that, and then the bass comes in, in the first chorus. We were trying to change elements as the song evolved. But pretty much once we had that progression, the song came out super-fast. We had the verse and chorus done really quickly. It's definitely one of my favorites on the album, and it was very easy to write, which is always nice.
That’s awesome! What made you choose this as the next single?
Jonny Capeci: We always have a hard time picking what the songs are that come out before the singles. Because I think all of us have songs that we thought could be, and people on our team same thing. This was, I think, the one song that everybody pretty much agreed on at this time. It's just more of an easy decision than other singles.
Rather than creating a traditional music video, you donated to Wags and Walks in Nashville and took three of the adoptable dogs out for the day in Nashville. That’s incredible. How did this idea come up? Walk us through that process.
Jonny Capeci: I'm going to be honest with you. It was actually our manager's idea. We had a few different vibes that we wanted for other songs that we knew. This one we were a little unsure of. So, she came up with the initial idea. We were like, yeah, that's amazing. So, can't take credit for that one. It was a genius idea by our manager.
Jonny, I heard that you actually adopted one of the dogs! Tell us about that experience and decision.
Jonny Capeci: Yeah. I don't know. I wasn't even really thinking about getting a dog, but then hanging out with them that day and just seeing her, I was like, maybe I'll just go meet her, hang out with her. Then I was like, I can't leave her. The other thing, too, is, she's been in the foster system for her entire life, and she's like seven months old. So I was just like man. It sucks because they live in the same place, for, like two weeks at a time and they go back to a pound. She's been in and out of pounds her whole life. I was just like I can't stomach that. I’m not letting her do that again. It was very impulsive. I thought about it for like a few hours, and I was just like, alright. I got to get her.
Joey Beretta: She’s literally the best dog ever, though.
Jonny Capeci: I did luck out. She’s very well-behaved.
Did anyone else consider getting a dog?
Joey Beretta: Well, what's funny is that my wife made me promise I wouldn't bring home a dog because we had just gotten a puppy, and I actually had his (Jonny’s) dog for the video. The second I met her I was like; I'm going to take this dog home and it's just going to ruin my entire life, but I don't care because she's so perfect. Then he ends up adopting her and she ends up over at my house like five days a week, which is amazing. She and my dog get along.
Jonny Capeci: We work over here at Joe's place, so I just bring her over. The two of them just hang out and play.
Joey Beretta: All three of the dogs from the video did get adopted. They all found a home, which is awesome. We're really, really proud of that.
You guys really made a difference in their lives and I’m sure all of the shelter’s dogs as well.
Jonny Capeci: We’re just really grateful to have fans that give us a platform to be able to do something like that. So, we really have them to thank. We just feel lucky that we get to be able to do something like that.
Do you have a specific writing process for all of your songs? Or do they flow differently?
Joey Beretta: Usually before this album, [it] was all over the place. Jonny would come up with an idea, or we build a track and then write something over it, or a guitar part or something. But I feel like this album, we very intentionally plugged in as many instruments as we could, and we would all just jam, someone would come up with something. Someone would be playing drums or whatever, and then we'd get an idea and then write a song to it, which is why I think the album has a real fluidity to it. Every song is different, but it all makes sense together, which was really exciting for us because we had never really just sat in a studio for two months and just wrote a big body of work.
Nick Sainato: With older songs, sometimes you'll have a song for six months, a year, or it's like half a song and then you'll finish it six months later. This album, we started in January, we finished in March, basically. We had those songs for that period of time. I think you can tell like what Joe saying, it just feels super cohesive. It's not just a random song from two years ago. It's all from this era where we were jamming and all together just making music.
You can really tell when you listen to the tracks that they came naturally, and everything does flow very well and is very cohesive. I can see that. Your new album wear your heart out drops on August 25th, which is the day that this is being released! Could you tell us a bit about the inspirations and story behind this album?
Jonny Capeci: We toured for most of last year. We were on three tours, then we did a bunch of one-off shows. So we were gone the majority of last year, except for maybe a couple of months, and we wrote a bunch of songs in those couple of months. We actually had a Dropbox folder with a bunch of songs. We got through the year of touring. We just came out of the period of COVID and not being able to tour. That’s where our first album was written and was really locked in the house. We had a different perspective on songs, I think, and what we wanted to play live. We threw everything out that we did before, or at least put it to the side. We were feeling this energy that was like, we want to write something that really represents what we want to tour, thinking about it like that. That was a huge inspiration, just like Joe was saying, where we would plug in instruments and jam. Whereas before it'd be like, I have a song idea for this, and it's more starting from a conceptual place. This was less conceptual from the onset. As we were going through, I think we really found that what was just in our subconscious actually did tie together. It's more of a dancey love song album, whereas some of our stuff previously had been a little sadder. That was just what was in our brains and came out. We didn't necessarily sit down and think, we're going to write this type of album, and this is what the theme is. It just came out because I think we had all this built-up energy from the tours that we were really wanting to get out. It was the first time we've done it like that, and also the first time we've written an album in a short time period. Our debut album again happened by accident, where it was like we wrote some songs, we released them, and then COVID hit and all that stuff, and we just kept releasing songs until it became an album. This was our first intentional time period for writing an album.
It sounds like there are very nice, bright, happy vibes in this album, which I’m sure fans are ecstatic to hear. If you could assign one color to wear your heart out which would it be?
Jonny Capeci: I’m just going to say this because we've done it in a lot of branding for the album and it feels like that to me. I’m going to say disco silver. We use the disco ball in a lot of the videos and stuff, and it just feels representative. Because you see a disco ball and it makes you want to dance, makes you think of moody lights and stuff. I’d say that’s mine.
Joey Beretta: I’m very colorblind so this is a hard question for me. What do you mean “colors”? Do you mean color? (laughs) I just always say blue because that’s the best color that I see really well.
Nick Sainato: I want to say red because that’s what we used a bunch but some of it also feels pink. It’s kind of lovely. I’m going to say light pink.
Joey Beretta: Something about disco silver just feels good, you know?
I wasn’t expecting disco silver, but I see the vision.
Joey Beretta: If someone says their favorite color is disco silver, I want to be their friend instantly.
Nick Sainato: It doesn’t compare to disco green.
Joey Beretta: See, I don’t know what that means but I know what disco silver is. This guy’s got colors coming out of everywhere!
Jonny Capeci: Crayola, where you at?
Crayola needs to hire you and sponsor you for the next drop!
Joey Beretta: You just pulled two great colors out of your brain there somewhere.
Which song are you most excited to perform live if you had to choose one?
Joey Beretta: To perform live or favorite song in general?
We can do perform live and also favorite song. Double answer!
Jonny Capeci: I don’t know yet because we haven’t performed any of them. I feel like I have three. I would say “the feeling,” “wear your heart out,” and “shirt.”
Nick Sainato: You can’t take my song! I’m going to say “shirt,” obviously “like i do,” and “dry eyes.” We played that one time at a one-off show, and it felt sick. But I’ll say “shirt.”
Joey Beretta: My favorite song on the album is my “boys.” That's going to be really fun to play. Jonny’s first guitar solo ever recorded on an album is in that song. Very exciting. It took many years to convince him, too, but he's a really great guitar player.
Jonny Capeci: I’m more of a chords guy.
Joey Beretta: He’s more of a virtuoso but he won’t say that. [My favorite song] to play live, I’m more of a sappy guy live, I feel like “radiohead” is going to be awesome live. That's probably the one I'm most excited for. Just for the (sings riff) … Nick's our resident actual music theory knowledge guy. So he'll say things like Major two.
Nick Sainato: You know exactly what I'm talking about.
Joey Beretta: I only know because he taught me. But I don't know them really. I just pretend to.
It's always good to have a guy around like that. You got your color guy, you got your music theory guy, what else do you need? Speaking of performing live, you’re heading out on the wear your heart out tour in October! Which cities are you most pumped to perform in, and are you visiting any cities you haven’t before?
Jonny Capeci: We're playing cities that we've never headlined in, like we’ve only ever opened shows in, which would be Seattle and Portland. We’ve never headlined in those two, so that’ll be really fun as far as to play. New York is super fun, Nashville is always super fun, but I will say we did like a half tour last year, just the east coast. So we haven't headlined on the West Coast for a while, so I'm definitely excited to go back and play Los Angeles and all the stuff on the West Coast that we haven't done in a long time. Salt Lake City, all that.
Joey Beretta: Nashville is always a blast, and Chicago is incredible. Charlotte was great.
Nick Sainato: Every city’s so different.
Jonny Capeci: They’re usually all great.
This tour is obviously going to be great because the album is great. Lastly, do you have anything you’d like to say to the fans coming out to see you on tour?
Jonny Capeci: I think it's maybe a little bit of what I was saying earlier when we were talking about the music video that we did. We just feel grateful that they have given us. Otherwise, we'd still be in our mom's basement, playing music and having to work a job we don't like. So yeah, we're just really grateful. I know myself, as a music fan that goes to shows, what a pain it can be at times to get tickets, get parking figure out, if you're traveling, where you're staying and all that stuff. We're really lucky to have a lot of fans that do travel. We’re just really grateful. I think it's going to be a lot of fun, too. We're going to give our best effort to make it just a super engaging and fun show. Come ready to dance.
Make sure to purchase/stream wear your heart out, out everywhere on August 25th! Click here to see if Nightly is coming to a city near you this fall: https://www.nightloveyou.com/shows/
Copyright ©2023 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: August 25, 2023.
Photos © 2023 Zach Pigg. Courtesy of BMG and Full Coverage Communications. All rights reserved.