How to GET A LIFE with Goodnight Sunrise
The indie rock band opens up about making their new album
I know lots of people in bands, but I know very few bands who actually make albums and tour — except for Goodnight Sunrise. The indie rock band consists of just two people, Vanessa Vakharia and David Kochberg, who are also two of my favourite people. And they just released their fourth album, Get a Life.
I wanted to talk to Vanessa and David about how they consistently put out music and go on tour, the process of making Get a Life and what it’s like to be an indie band in Canada. Below, you’ll find a condensed and edited version of our 50-minute conversation.
Before/while/after you read, go listen to Get a Life! It’s my favourite Goodnight Sunrise album. I especially love the songs “Jealous (Of My Friends)” and “Get Worse,” which loop in my head for days.
We begin the conversation by discussing a Creative BC grant that Goodnight Sunrise won in September 2023, kickstarting the album-making process. This gave the Toronto-based band some of the money to record their album with a B.C.-based producer, Ryan Worsley, who they wanted to work with for a long time.
Sabina: If you hadn’t gotten the Creative BC grant, would you have made the album?
Pregnant pause.
David and Vanessa [in unison]: No.
Sabina: Wow.
Vanessa: Maybe we would have made the album in some other way, or — probably not.
David: I don't think we were motivated to make a full album, just financially. Like if we didn't have funding, then we probably instead would have just picked a few songs from the batch that we wrote. And we probably just would have recorded those as singles to then put out over the course of a few months.
The only opportunity we have really for building a fanbase is by pumping out singles and just hoping that one of them gets some traction on some streaming service, or that one of them gets a bit of radio play, but that's almost impossible these days. It's just so hard to get a full album listened to.
Vanessa: Yeah, like, our album is 23 minutes, and it's still hard to get someone to listen to it.
Sabina: So how much does it cost to make an album?
Vanessa: Let’s just say tens of thousands of dollars — multiple tens of thousands.
David: Definitely in the five digits.
Sabina: How much was the Creative BC grant?
Vanessa: The grant gives you half of the funding and you have to match it.
Sabina gasps.
Vanessa: That’s how most of the grants work.
Vanessa then disclosed to Sabina off-the-record how much money Goodnight Sunrise received from the Creative BC grant, and how much money they put in themselves.
Sabina [shocked at how much it costs to make an album]: That’s fucking crazy.
Everybody laughs awkwardly, but not in a weird way, just in a haha-yeah-it-sucks way.
Sabina: I feel like you have to have a whole financial plan in your personal life to be like, “I'm going to put aside X amount of money every month so I can make an album.”
Vanessa: We work very hard, but also we are fortunate that we have jobs that allow us to match that grant.
Sabina: It’s kind of depressing to hear this. Do you ever find it hard to keep going, knowing all this about the industry?
David chuckles.
Vanessa: Yes, but in the same breath, there's never been once in the past 13 years that we've considered giving up — honestly. We've been like, “This is so hard.” We've been depressed. We’ve felt defeated. We’ve felt hopeless. We've cried. We’ve fought. We've…
David: Broken up.
Vanessa laughs.
Vanessa: As a couple, not a band!
Sabina laughs.
Vanessa: Yeah, it's been hard, but we've never once been like, “Alright, let's give up.” Mainly because it is our greatest source of joy and there are so many moments of hope and magic and reward.
My heart goes out to all the artists out there that this is their source of income — okay, sorry, I don't want to speak for other artists. I guess what I'm saying is: thankfully our finances aren't tied to this. In fact, this is where we spend all of our money that we earn at our jobs.
David: We wanted it to be [our jobs], for a long time. I think that's the thing that we've given up on for the last year or two. We have long worked towards the potential goal that we could have the band as a job because we would love to do it full-time.
Sabina: How would you ideally want to be engaging with people with your music?
Vanessa: Playing live.
A lot of [being in] a band right now is so detached from connection because it's all online. It's so expensive to tour and to even play shows, so we are playing less. I think most bands are playing less than they ever have in their careers, which means the entire connection with your fans is online, which means that then you feel like all of your work has to be in content creation and creating online — which is actually, for many artists, the least creative form of their art.
David: That's literally what I've been so stressed about this whole day. I'm like, “It's release day, the only way I can feel like our album is successful on its release is if we make some great content and people like it enough and comment on it” — like, that's the way that I'm now wired to evaluate our success, which is just very disorienting.
Vanessa: Because of that, you get so detached from the real reason so many of us make music: that sense of community and connection and catharsis. And the second you play live, that all comes back. Your music, you're engaging, you're sharing your music in these moments with real people, and you feel that all coming back.
But those moments seem fewer and farther between, largely because of financial reasons.
David: Our biggest venue for community is playing live, and the only way that we can do that is by having our music or our social presence be more successful, which is crazy. Vanessa’s our booking agent and she's been able to get us some pretty awesome things for this summer, but not as much as we would like.
Vanessa: We have gotten some good support from Spotify, Apple and Amazon throughout this album. We've gotten added to major playlists, almost every single song. This album being added to these playlists is what has gotten us — for this album cycle — all of our new fans. It's the first time we've consistently had that support and it's made a huge difference.
David: And it has made us some money. Every month from our distributor, we do get, like, $100 or $200. And every time an email comes in, Vanessa's like, “Why did they send us money?” And I'm like, “It’s for our music.”
If you haven’t seen Goodnight Sunrise live, you’re missing out on the confetti-filled time of your life (I’m serious, they have a confetti cannon). You can see their tour dates here to go attend a show in Ontario, Alberta or Saskatchewan. If you’re in Toronto on May 23, I strongly recommend you go to their album release party, which will have oracle readings and a place to get rid of anything that doesn’t serve you anymore.
Hope you enjoyed this conversation! Rock on!
Xo
Sabina