“If I don’t wake up tomorrow,
I’ll pay back all the time I borrowed”
...sings vocalist Troy Waterman on Sleepwlkrs’ brand new single “Wake Up.”
Not only did “the good people” over at Sleepwlkrs grant “the good people” here at Indiecore Memphis the opportunity to exclusively release this new track, frontman Troy took time out of his busy schedule between sleeping and wlking to breakdown the lyrical relevance of the chorus above.
“We’re all in the same situation,” Waterman said. “And some day we won’t wake up.”
According to Waterman when the anthemic “Wake Up” was first brought up at rehearsal it’s lyrics reflected “going through the cycle of life,” but upon further review the band decided to focus on the idea of dissociation- “being very separated from everything around you as you grow older and you learn about the world around you.”
“I’ve talked to a lot of people who have these same kind of problems and I thought that it was something that needed to be out there,” Waterman said. “It’s kinda like this juxtaposition between the fact that someday there’s gonna be a point where we will never wake up again, but at the same time all we want is to wake up to the world around us. It’s a contrast between the two uses of the term.”
The young woman’s voice cutting in and out of the recording is meant to reflect those contrasts.
“It’s supposed to be kind of like a girl either talking to a therapist or confiding in a friend about her problems with dissociation,” Waterman said. “At the very end of the song as everything is fading out you can hear her say in the background ‘I just wanna wake up.”
Some might say Sleepwlkrs’ new single was released at a very pertinent time. The ethos behind the track might even beg the listener to consider recent world events. “Waking up” in a world consumed with the threat of terrorism is difficult according to Waterman, especially when “you can’t unlearn what you know now.”
“It’s hard to just forget about those things and go live your life,” Waterman said. “If you let it, it’ll just eat away at you and it will create this fear-based way of looking at the world.”
Memphis musician Troy Waterman continued.
“It just drains you of love that you can experience in your life,” Waterman said. “What it takes to really wake up to what’s around you ...is completely letting go.”
Letting go of one’s fears is the key to finding that first grain of positivity, according to Sleepwlkr Troy.
“Everybody does it in their own way or tries to,” Waterman said. “Some people just become cynical and never end up seeing the world for what it is and how beautiful it is.”
But in a beautiful world, beautiful plans are made. The boys in Sleepwlkrs are inviting Memphis to “wake up” December at Yung Spotty for -drum roll please- a Weezer tribute show.
“We’ve never been a cover band,” Waterman said. “We’ve never been interested in being seen as a cover band, but we thought this’d be really fun so we should do that once and advertise it like a cover show.”
The band’s entire set will consist of nothing but classic Weezer tunes.
“I know basically the songs that everybody knows from Weezer plus all the songs from Maledroit, but I don’t know a lot else,” Waterman said. “Blue album and Maledroit basically is what I know, but I’m still super pumped for it.”
We, the good people at Indiecore Memphis, are also pumped for the future of Sleepwlkrs.
