We had a nice chat with Night Shop following the release of new single ‘Forever Night’
Justin Sullivan, better known these days as Night Shop, is an artist who has spent the last 20 years as a touring drummer for various punk bands, before releasing the debut EP from his own songwriting project, 2017’s self titled Night Shop.
Since stepping out from behind the kit, the artist and his unfiltered vision and sound have gone on to build a following and establish Night Shop as project to keep an eye out on. With our good friends at CloseUp, we had a chat with Night Shop and found out some more about the project and the new single ‘Forever Night’.
Night Shop! It’s great to have a chat. We love your music as you well know. Tell us a bit more about the world of Night Shop?
Thank you! Things are good here. Grateful for each day. Working on new songs, appreciating the kindness people are showing the new music.
What part of the musical process do you enjoy most, and why? is it performing live, creating your tracks, or..?
That’s a good question; in a way it’s like a meal and all the parts make up the experience. So in many ways, I love the coffee after the meal the most but it wouldn’t taste as good without all that came before. That’s like playing live for me. It’s the best but it’s only made sweet by all the other elements that came before to get there. I will say, the feeling of first finishing a song and driving around with a home recording of it and hearing it the way someone else will hear it for the first time in months or years down the road is the magic, time traveling aspect of music that I think I cherish the most.
The last 18 months and the pandemic have been crazy for musicians, how much has it had an affect on your music?
I think, and this is just speaking about the way it affected the music and not its effect on my life, I would say it was the same micro effect that all life has on your art; the places you walk, the books you read, the people you get closer with. All of those were different than they would have been and all of those things make their way into the songs. A song like “Forever Night” is definitely a product of a yearning feeling, for instance. And of course, I really missed going to shows and playing live. To me, that’s where all of this gets nurtured and replenished.
If you could create a ‘Night Shop Festival’, which 3 artists would you have headlining? (Fri, Sat, Sun) p.s, can we come?
Well, I’ll limit it to living performing artists to not lose myself in a rabbit hole of this answer.
Night One: Nas
Night Two: Waxahatchee
Night Three: Hailu Mergia
Your new single ‘Forever Night’ is out now, give us some context behind the track and why you felt now was the perfect time to unleash it to the world??
To me, it’s a yearning song and also a celebration of the city, for all its flaws and issues. It was a way of summoning a feeling I was missing.
