Juno nominees
Wintersleep thrilled to be nominated for Alternative Album of the Year
Wintersleep, band with member from Stellarton, is up for an award, but they happen to be against stiff competition.
Wintersleep’s Loel Campbell was finding it difficult on Tuesday afternoon to register how it feels to be nominated for a Juno Award in the same category as Gord Downie and Leonard Cohen.
Campbell, who hails from Stellarton and is the drummer for the group, had just come from a press conference in Toronto for the Juno nominations after hearing the band was up for Alternative Album of The Year.
“They’re heroes of mine, heroes of all of ours, heroes of our nation,” said Campbell referring to Downie and Cohen.
Wintersleep is nominated for their latest release The Great Detachment, while Downie, front man for The Tragically Hip who announced last year he has brain cancer, is up for Secret Path, which tells the story of Chanie Wenjack who died trying to run away from a residential school. The project consists of a solo album, a graphic novel by Jeff Lemire and an animated film.
Widely influential singer, songwriter and artist Cohen, who died in November at the age of 82, is nominated for You Want It Darker, while Basia Bulat and Andy Shauf, who were both shortlisted for 2016’s Polaris Music Prize, round out the category with their latest albums.
“That’s as good as it gets,” Campbell said about the company Wintersleep is in for the category.
The band has previously won a Juno for New Group of the Year in 2008 and was nominated for Welcome To The Night Sky in Alternative Album of The Year in the same year.
In response to a question about why Campbell thinks the album stood out for the Junos this year, he said they spent a lot of time working on it.
“We … didn’t rush into making the record. We were very particular about what we ended up putting on it, perhaps more so than previous records.”
He went on to say Amerika was probably their biggest song on the radio in their career, noting that it’s timely with the “craziness happening in the world and in America at the moment.”
They tapped into something, he said.
“We’re happy to be celebrated by the industry in Canada.”
The Juno Awards, in their 46th year of celebrating Canadian musical acts, will be held on April 2 in Ottawa at the Canadian Tire Centre.