Gabe Anderson and Saman Khoujinian aren’t ones to do anything halfway. Whether it’s getting obsessed with a new record, performing together in T. Gold (among many other acts), or building their North Carolina-based label from scratch, they show up and do the work. With Sleepy Cat Records, what started as two friends and musicians figuring out their roles has grown into a label that talented acts call home. (Please tell me you’ve heard of Blue Cactus, Chessa Rich, or DUNUMS.)
That effort has grown to include a festival, Sleepy Fest, now in its fourth year (second at Saxapahaw’s Haw River Ballroom). This year features acts like bluegrass legend Alice Gerrard, Slow Teeth, and Delver on the same bill as drag performer Stormie Daie. All on an October Saturday in Saxapahaw, perfect for toddlers running around the amphitheater and parents taking in everything from electronic beats to traditional folk.
“It’s pretty toddler core out there,” Anderson says about their festival location. He’s not wrong. But that’s exactly what makes Sleepy Cat different. Most of the music industry chases growth at all costs, yet these two have committed to a different path. One centered on staying small enough to care about everyone involved, from who artists work with to the families showing up just to hang by the river.
What have y’all been listening to lately?
Gabe: A lot of Cameron Winter’s record, Heavy Metal. It’s kind of a weirdo album.
Saman: Same here, it’s really one of the only records I’ve been listening to for the last several months. It has just colonized my brain, and I mean that violently. Also, Alabaster DePlume’s recent album [A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole]. The last track is called “That Was My Garden” and one I’ve been enjoying. I’ve also been revisiting that Dougie Poole record, The Rainbow Wheel of Death; that’s a really good one.
What is the first musician that you remember discovering on your own and obsessing over?
Saman: For me, it’s two bands simultaneously, Rancid and The Casualties. The Casualties have since been hard cancelled, but you know, this was decades ago. Dirty Projectors is another one, too. I wish I could remember how I discovered them. My memory of it is one day I didn’t listen to them, and then one day I did.
Gabe: Marcy Playground. I got that CD [Marcy Playground] from my sister and was just obsessed. I re-listened to it recently, and it still hits. Supervillains was one that I stumbled into and then I just listened to a shit ton. Animal Collective was probably the first deep dive that actually stuck.
How has the relationship between the two of you changed since starting the label?
Gabe: It’s been an extension of how we’ve been relating since the beginning. Dreaming, trying new things, negotiating role and scope. And then letting it change and keep on moving forward. In the beginning, it was very 50/50, “everybody does everything,” but we’ve defined our roles and who wants to do what.
The last couple of years, we’ve been playing in bands that aren’t ours a little more, which started with The Chatham Rabbits a few years back. Blue Cactus has brought Saman on for some gigs, so we’re playing honky-tonk with them. It’s totally different than any music we would make for ourselves. That allows us to be more of a fluid unit in the scene that can just do music.
Saman: Dialing in communication has been a big part of running a label together. It’s been different when we’ve been figuring out the business or the admin end of our bands, but the label is in service of other bands. It took me a little bit to integrate the stakes of “I drop the ball or don’t respond to a text for four days, I’m not the only one who’s going to suffer the consequences.” I don’t think the stakes are that high, but the fact that they involve others is meaningful and has helped reorient how I communicate, especially with Gabe, and how we create respectful expectations of each other.
Do people ever make assumptions about what running an indie label is like that’s completely wrong?
Saman: Nothing outlandish, mostly just “I don’t understand what your business is.” And sometimes in a really clarifying way because I kind of don’t either, so it’s helpful to consider.
Gabe: I feel like folks, especially outside of the music scene but within it as well, think we run a recording studio or press records. Which we don’t. We will work with artists and put records out, but we’re not doing it all in-house.
How would you describe Sleepy Fest’s growth from year one to now?
Gabe: It still feels like such a baby that it’s hard to have a growth mindset with it. It’s hard to gauge with us being so close, in terms of how it’s publicly perceived or even known about at all, because we are so invested deeply in it every day. That said, moving to Saxapahaw was big for us. It feels like it reset the counter a little bit for people to understand what it is. Last year was super fun and successful by any metric. We were able to cover expenses and do the thing.
As a team, it feels like we’ve grown and learned how to lead differently. We have good friends taking charge, instead of just me and Saman figuring out our own internal communication and being accountable to artists. So we’re also learning how to guide and trust them to run the event.
It’s been really encouraging that everyone is still on for a fourth year, even with getting meager wages for the labor they’re doing. Learning to trust people’s consent to doing cheap labor for the arts is still weird and difficult, but we’re doing it. We all understand what it is. We collectively feel that there’s a deep value to keep on doing it, and that’s a big growth thing for me this year.
I’m feeling that buy-in from Heather LaGarde at Haw River Ballroom, who’s a huge mentor to us and just has her hands in everything. I can totally relate. But she’s just still smiling and wanting to keep these parties going, putting her energy behind all kinds of causes. Having her support has been really encouraging and feels like a big growth step for us. It’s like the label and the festival are at this level that we looked up to for a decade. Now we’re co-creating with her, and that feels really special.
Saman: Moving it to Saxapahaw is the obvious answer for me. Higher capacity, more infrastructure, more familiarity, and the comfort of doing it there. Additionally, there are more opportunities to have a diverse showcase, as opposed to two stages where bands play.
Internally, there has been a lot of growth, like Gabe said, just in terms of why we are doing it and who’s involved. To what extent is everybody on the same page in terms of what the possible financial outcome is going to be, both as a business and individually? All that goes back to dialing in effective communication and making sure that even if everything doesn’t go 100% smoothly, everybody is able to talk about it.
When you’re putting together the Sleepy Fest lineup, how do you balance your roles as label owners, musicians, and festival curators? Do those perspectives ever conflict?
Saman: You just do. [laughs] It might be a little bit easier for us than some other folks because, before doing the festival, we’ve been so involved in actually making music with many different people. Gabe and I have been involved in just about every side of that process at one point or another, and with a bunch of folks. Everything from writing the songs to releasing the music, touring the music, and creating merch. That gives us a little more leverage to make these really cool and interesting things that we personally want to see happen.
Part of making Sleepy Fest interesting to people who might not otherwise access it is creating that balance with the rest of the lineup. I never thought that I would be helping to present a family-oriented festival, but that’s what it’s become. Folks on a weekend want to bring their entire families out, park up in a beautiful space, listen to music, and hang out. That ends up being a consideration, too.
Gabe: Saman leads programming each year, and I trust his taste on curation. He really does a great job of considering all those things. But I don’t know, it feels like the lineup kind of writes itself a little bit. No matter how much you cast a net and have an intention, people either say yes or no. And then you have to figure out where to put them and what the vibe is going to be.
Once the final acts come together, the vibe is locked in. Like Alice Gerrard and Hard Drive said yes, so that sets the stage for that scene. We’ve got a drag show with Stormie Daie. We’re expanding the electronic side with Nick Sanborn, which crosses scenes again.
But also, we’re in Saxapahaw, and it’s pretty toddler core out there. The amphitheater lends itself to toddlers, Saturdays in Saxapahaw is built for them. I feel like the infrastructure that’s there is so inherently family-oriented. We have it on our list to lean into more kid zone stuff and make some space for them. All the families that we knew who came last year loved it. There’s always something new to go back and forth between, whether it’s music or the river.
What are your “dream goals/projects” for Sleepy Cat Records/Sleepy Fest?
Saman: One goal that we’ve somewhat achieved, but is something that I’m just interested in pursuing on a more regular basis, is more compilations. Using the label as a platform to be like, “Send us your tracks, or let’s put up X dollars for studio time, and we’ll release them as one-offs. That’s my favorite way of listening to music, whether it’s a compilation, Discover playlist, or whatever. Something with meaningful variety. There’s something special to me about knowing that the different artists are linked to one another in a way, but they have their own distinct sounds and messages.
What makes the North Carolina music scene special to you?
Saman: I can’t really speak to how it relates to other music scenes because my relationship to those scenes is very transient. It’s on tour, in and out, and we meet some people here and there, getting small glimpses of what that scene is like.
Often, especially if you’re touring through a place, the moment in time that you’re there sort of centers around you. “I’m playing this show, my friends are coming to this show, and I’m a guest in this broader culture that they’ve got going on,” which is great. However, I don’t fully understand the emotional function of other scenes until I’ve been immersed in them for years and truly grasped the values and overall atmosphere.
I’ve experienced firsthand that, in our area, I feel generally very welcome among musicians. And I try to be as welcoming as I can to others. Even among different echelons of fame or financial success, I’ve never really felt like a gatedness. I’m not saying that everyone always has access to everything. But creatively, it feels like the opportunity for collaboration is always kind of alive. The change to reach out to somebody whose music you enjoy, or whose vibe you dig, is always present and not guarded.
It ties back to some of the philosophy around the label between me and Gabe, which is this idea of scale. I think that operating within a reasonable and thoughtful scale is a formula for some kind of success. We’re not going to be the next Virgin Records or whatever, but we don’t want to be. At its core ideology, what we do allows the business to flourish inside the community, as opposed to a lot of what I’ve heard around the bigger cities, where scale is everything. You’re always trying to do more, grow, and consume.
Who are some of your favorite local/North Carolina bands?
Saman: The list is gigantic. I really love Libby Rodenbough’s music, even outside of my involvement in it; I’ve always just loved the music that she writes. It’s very inspiring. I love to play, record, and listen to it.
I’ve also really been into Magic Tuber Stringband. I was running sound at this mini fest that Charlie from Night Light was throwing at Jubilee, where our office is. I had heard of the band, but I’d never seen them play. I was just transfixed. It was beautiful.
Andy Stack & Jay Hammond put out a record with us [Inter Personal] that blew my fucking mind when I first heard it. I love a record when I immediately feel jealous. That feeling came and went, and now I am such a huge fan of it. I listen to it all the time.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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