Her Campus Point Park had the exclusive opportunity to sit down with some of the talent at the Pittsburgh tour date of Vans Warped Tour 2014, as well as to photograph the acts from the photo pits of the live sets! We got to discuss Brian Logan Dales of The Summer Set’s 3rd time on VWT, where he told us about song sharing, crazed fans in his favorite coffee shop, and how unpredictable the music industry can be:
Photo by Samantha Tarr
HC: Give us a run-down of how The Summer Set was formed!
B: “We started in 2007 when I was 17- it was right before my senior year of high school actually. There are two brothers in my band, John & Stephen Gomez, and our drummer, Jess Bowen. The three of them have been playing together since they were like, 12; they were family friends and kind of learned their instruments together, and them playing in local high school bands that led to us forming The Summer Set in about 2007. Then our guitar player went to high school with a couple of them and we’ve been the same lineup pretty much since we started. John & I were still in high school during our first year together, and once we graduated we went on tour and it’s just been a spiraling effect.”
HC: What was it like to still be in high school as your music career was taking off?
BD: “I had a lot of different groups in high school, so everyone was excited for me! It wasn’t really one of those ‘Oh, now you have a record deal and everyone wants to be friends with you’ type of things.”
Photo by Cassandra Stovash
HC: How is touring with Warped Tour different than touring individually?
B: “The days are a lot longer. With Warped Tour, you load in at 7 in the morning and load out at 11pm so you spend all day here. You also wake up in the morning and don’t know what time you play until around 9:30am because every day it changes. On a regular club tour, we load in at 1 in the afternoon, we sit around for a couple hours, we sound check, and then play at like 9:00, so there’s a lot more of a routine. I like that Warped Tour is more of a summer camp-type vibe than a regular tour.”
HC: Is the reality of tour life different than your expectations of it?
B: “Yes and no, I think if I’d answered that question seven years ago I would have been really caught off guard by not knowing what to expect. When we first started touring we were playing for 50 kids a night, sleeping seven people in a hotel room and driving around in vans. It was not nearly that glamorous, but I was still more excited about it than ever. Now when we tour, we’ve been fortunate enough to tour more comfortably than we used to, and we do a lot of touring internationally which is really exciting too! Touring is all I really know and understand anymore, so yeah, I don’t ever want to not tour.”
Jess Bowen (drummer). Photo by Samantha Tarr
HC: Do you have any secret hobbies or guilty pleasures that would surprise your fans?
B: “It’s crazy in the world of the Internet that we live in, so I’m trying to figure out if there’s anything left that’s still a secret! I like to play golf; I think that’s probably a little unorthodox, but I’m pretty good at it.”
HC: What is the coolest or craziest thing a fan has ever done to get your attention?
B: “I once had three girls corner me in a coffee shop in LA that I didn’t think anyone even knew about. They’d just been walking outside back and forth and then they came inside, asked if I was who I was, and I said yes. Keep in mind it was about 7:30 in the morning and I’d probably slept for about two hours because I had a long night before. These girls just start screaming. That coffee shop is my favorite place- I go in there every single day- and now the waitresses just won’t ever let me hear the end of it.”
HC: If you weren’t a musician, what do you think you’d be doing?
B: “Well, I wanted to be a pro basketball player until I stopped growing! I think my entire life, and I definitely got it from my dad, I always wanted to be a writer. Song writing just kind of happened by accident, second nature to that, so I’d probably still be writing.”
John Gomez (guitar, piano, and back voals). Photo by Cassandra Stovash
HC: What are your feelings on music sharing nowadays with all of the free downloading and music converting that goes on?
B: “It’s kind of hard to fight it at this point… The nature of the beast is that people won’t really buy new music anymore, but you still need to get your music into the hands of as many people so that they’ll come out to your shows and buy your other stuff. I think it’s easier to sell the brand now than it is to sell the music even though I think music is better than it’s ever been and albums are cooler than they’ve ever been, it’s definitely different than it used to be. I’m not mad at file sharing and streaming sites because I use them as much as the next person.”
HC: From a musician’s angle, what advice do you have for the students at Point Park who want to work in the business end of the music industry?
B: “Our manager for example went to Warped Tour once like, 12 years ago just as a fan, and accidentally stumbled backstage into the catering line and was just like, ‘oh cool, free food!’ But he snuck in there and met the woman who managed Taking Back Sunday and ended up getting a job working for her, and then ended up becoming a music manager. With no intention! He actually was trying to produce music videos. So it really can happen any way you want it to, but I think as much as it’s important to learn everything you can learn in school, it’s also getting involved in your local scene. Go out to shows, go out to venues, meet promoters, maybe call a local venue and ask if you can intern or volunteer and just get yourself involved in how that stuff works so while you’re still going to school, you can learn the physical aspects of going to the shows and how they operate. Really, anything can happen is what I’m saying!”
HC: What’s next for The Summer Set once Warped Tour ends?
B: “I think we’re going to try to make a new record in the fall, but that could either take two months or that could take nine. I don’t really like to rush that part!”
Photo by Samantha Tarr
URLS:
- http://thesummersetband.com
- facebook.com/thesummerset
- Twitter & Instagram: @the_summer_set, @brianlogandales