Simon Rushworth
Arizona pop rockers The Summer Set continue to forge a reputation as one of the finest live acts on the touring circuit.
And with forthcoming album Legendary set for release this spring – preceding the UK leg of the Wake Up & Be Awesome tour – 2013 promises to be another big year for the band.
RUSHONROCK‘s Russell Hughes caught up with The Summer Set’s Brian Dales to find out more.
rushonrock: Is it true that you got your name from randomly pointing at Somerset on a map?
Brian Dales: Pretty much yeah, 2007 we were booked to play our first show and we didn’t have a name. Time was pressing, and Steven and John just kinda saw Somerset New Jersey on an atlas and rearranged the spelling, and it stuck. Nothing to great unfortunately, I wish we had a good story – I should make one up.
rushonrock: You’ve got a headline tour coming up later in the year, what are your expectations?
BD: Um, I’m just excited. The All Time Low shows we just did were the biggest we’ve ever played so I’m hoping we can piggy back off that and hope people will come back and see us on our own. We’ll play a much longer set and we’ll have a new record out. I’ve got a good feeling about it.
rushonrock: You’ve done tours with We Are The In Crowd before – what made you want to tour with them again?
BD: We came over here last year and supported them, and now they are supporting us in the US – it’s really nice to trade off like that. They do really well over here and we’ve always wanted to tour with them in the US. We’ll see, we love those guys….. and girl.
rushonrock: We heard that you had a bit of an incident once in Newcastle with We Are The In Crowd, can you explain that?
BD: WATIC were on our side -there was a club night after one of the shows- Josh from our band, he got into a tiff with some guy who thought Josh hit on his girlfriend. Then he hit Josh and our merch guy, because he had an English accent, went up to the guys and pretended, he was like: “Oh did you hit that American guy that’s hilarious”. He figured out it was them, and Mike from WATIC went up and hit them! But I stayed out of the whole thing. America 1, Newcastle 0!
rushonrock: Your album is coming out soon – what can fans expect from that?
BD: We’re shooting for April. We’re excited though. We had a really amazing response to Fuck U Over, and we have two more news songs coming out in the next month or so. We got to spend a lot more time making this record than normal – we spent seven or eight months working on this one song at a time. It’s our third record as well so we’ve kinda pulled the best things from Love Like This and the best things from Everything’s Fine, while keeping in mind we were going into it with the mind-set that we were brand new band with a brand new label, and I think third time’s a charm. We’ve really figured out what record we wanted to make and I am the proudest I’ve ever been over some of these songs.
rushonrock: So why did you want to approach it from the perspective of being a new band?
BD: I mean, I as a listener don’t like bands who put out the same stuff all the time, so I feel it would be dishonest of me to make a record that sounds the same. I like kinda having the same elements but I like growing creatively and experimentally. I think the energy is still there, the song writing and the lyrical content is some of the best it’s been. If Fuck U Over sets precedent to the reaction we’re going to get then I’ll be really excited. I think out fans are really going to like this.
rushonrock: What has the reception been to Fuck U Over in the live shows?
BD: It’s become one of the strongest songs on our set. We open with it on our tour because it’s been that good, I would never have expected it to do so well so quickly.