A Conversation with The Summer Set’s Brian Dales – HuffPost 8.12.11

Mike Ragogna: Brian, how are you?

Brian Dales: Great, Mike. Thanks for having me.

MR: You guys are on tour right now supporting your new album, Everything’s Fine.

BD: Yeah, the record came about a week into the tour and we’ve just been supporting it for the last few weeks. We’re really happy to be promoting this album and we’re going to be doing a lot of touring in the next year or two to support this record. Right now, we’re opening for a band called We The Kings. Then we’re going out in the fall on a U.S. tour and then doing some international stuff. Hopefully, sometime within the next year, we’ll do our own headlining Everything’s Fine tour and get to play the whole record and what not.

MR: Would you guys also play some of your older songs?

BD: Of course. Well, on this tour, we’re playing about nine songs a night, so it’s about half new songs and half old ones.

MR: Let’s talk about the new album for a bit. I really enjoyed the song, “About A Girl.” But wouldn’t you say this entire album is about a girl?

BD: Absolutely. I think the whole album, to me, is this 11-song true story of a boy and a girl falling in love with each other for the first time and all of the trials and tribulations that go with that. I feel like it’s kind of a true story for everyone, whether you relate to it on your own or whether you want to just believe the story that we’re trying to tell. I think it’s something that everyone can kind of hold on to and relate to, that was really important when we were putting it together as well. We wrote like thirty-something songs for this record, but we decided that it was really important for us to put out an album that we felt had some consistency lyrically because all of these songs are really just about the hardships of being in a relationship. It may even be about one that I went through in the past couple of years.

MR: So you were the main lyricist for this project.

BD: Myself, John, and Josh do a lot of the writing together, so it’s very collaborative, but I think a lot of the inspiration for this album came from a lot of the stuff that I was going through in the past few years in my relationship. I think our goal was to make this record as honest as possible so that when people are listening to it, they believe every word that I’m singing. That was most important.

MR: I guess an example of that would be the song, “Mona Lisa,” that you play on acoustic guitar.

BD: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was in this relationship that was, quite honestly, one of the first serious relationships I’ve ever been in because I’m only 22 so I’m still very young. But I was in this relationship and we were touring nine months out of the year and that obviously takes a toll because you’re separated a lot. I think that song, to me, came about from seeing all of these beautiful places in the world and realizing that thought they were amazing, none of them had more importance than the person I was in love with. That is, I would think, probably the most honest song on the album, because it is so simple with just me and the acoustic guitar.

MR: Now, even though the title of the album is Everything’s Fine, there are a bunch of upside-down smiley faces on the album cover. Someone’s a wiseguy.

BD: Well, our bass player Stephen and I came up with that. Right when we finished the record, we decided on the name Everything’s Fine because the record itself has a lot of ups and downs lyrically and it’s kind of about having this overall mentality that hopefully everything is going to be fine. The upside-down smiley face was, I guess, our way of showing the yin and yang of a relationship and how there are always going to be ups and downs.

MR: And this is not only the title of the album, it’s the beginning line of the song, “Begin Again.” Fairly optimistic.

BD: Yeah. “Begin Again” was actually almost called, “Everything’s Fine” but we didn’t want that to also be the title of the first song on the record.

MR: You mentioned that you’re only a young man of 22, and yet there is a song on the album called “When We Were Young.” (laughs) Um…

BD: (laughs) I get asked that question quite a lot, actually. Obviously, I’m still very young, but a lot of that song is looking back on times when I was even younger – around 18 or 19 when this story was all first developing. You can either look at that song from the perspective of me saying, “When I was younger,” or when this relationship was young. I think that was just a way for me to kind of look back and recall the fire and passion involved with when you first fall for someone.

MR: Beautiful. Another song that seems to deal with a similar subject on this album is “Back To The Start.”

BD: Well, first, I should say that the track order on this album is very specific to the chronology of a relationship, I think. That particular song comes after, “When I Was Young,” and it kind of signifies the first time that things start to go sour in the relationship. It’s the first sort of ballad on the record and it’s meant to be an honest yearning to go back to the beginning and the songs that are prior to it. It’s about a person’s willingness to stop at nothing to get back to the place that they were before with the person that they care about.

MR: Speaking of going back to the start, how did this scruffy lot become a band?

BD: Well, John and Stephen Gomez, who is our bass player, are brothers, and those guys, along with our drummer, Jess Bowen, have been playing together in bands since they were about 11 or 12 years old. So, they grew up learning to play together, and I think they were in garage band after garage band before we got together when I was about 17. Then, we found Josh, our other guitar player, who went to high school with them and we started The Summer Set. It was like this breath of fresh air for us. We built a really quick following in our hometown and started gradually developing ourselves regionally. We started touring, and the rest led up to what you see now.

MR: What was the catalyst that made you realize that music is what you had to do with your life?

BD: For me, that pretty much goes back to the first time I sang in my life…I was about 16 years old and played an acoustic set at my high school. I had never sung before and there was a kind of whirlwind of positive responses that was kind of overwhelming. Then we started The Summer Set, and it was amazing watching our fan base gradually grow every time we went out on tour. Now, after we’ve finally started to get a foothold in the industry and after putting so much effort and nine months of our lives into this record, we are really enjoying seeing the positive feedback that we’re getting back from all of this. All of that has kind of helped me determine that I want to do this as long as I can.

MR: The Summer Set released about three EPs before this record, right?

BD: Technically, yes. We had a self-titled EP that we made when I was still in high school, then we signed an early record deal with a company called The Militia Group and released an EP called In Color, which had some new versions of songs from our original EP and some new songs. Somewhere along the road, we released a Christmas EP that was pretty much a cover song, a Christmas song, and one new song that ended up being on our next album.

MR: Next came the album Love Like This, which, correct me if I’m wrong, you re-released under the title Love Like Swift and changed the album to include five Taylor Swift songs.

BD: (laughs) Well, let me tell you how that came about. In 2009, we released Love Like This, and in May 2010, we played a festival called Bamboozle in New Jersey. Something that they do at this festival is take 10 artists and do a smaller concert called Hoodwinked where each band chosen does a small cover set of songs by a different artist. So, for our cover songs, we chose Taylor Swift songs and did like a 30-minute set of her songs. We just wanted to do something really fun that people knew the words to. I’ve always been a big fan of hers because I feel that she’s such an honest singer and songwriter. What we didn’t know was that they did a live recording of the set that we did that day and when we listened to it, it sounded a lot better than we expected. (laughs) We had no idea what we were going to do with these live mixed songs, but as it turned out last year, we had the opportunity to release Love Like This in a deluxe edition where we did an exclusive sale through Wal-Mart. They told us they wanted some extra material, so we ended up using the live recordings of those songs.

MR: In the last several years, we’ve seen the toll that fame in the music industry can have on a young artist, especially when they become famous in their teens. How have you guys avoided that so far?

BD: Well, I think for anyone of that age growing up in the entertainment world, whether as a musician or actor or what not, you’re growing up and going through the most vulnerable time of your life in the spotlight. I think, therefore, that it’s very easy in that situation to make a bad decision, and I’ve seen it happen to a lot of people. I feel like we’ve pretty much avoided those situations. Granted, our spotlight for the first few years of our career was considerably smaller than some. But we seem to be five people that have good heads on our shoulders. I mean, we’ve made our mistakes, but we’ve stayed out of trouble pretty well.

MR: Nice. You occasionally do cover songs, so how do you choose them?

BD: I actually don’t really enjoy recording cover songs that much because I feel like after a band does that, they become a little bit attached to and known for that song because that stuff spreads. When we did the cover of the Usher song, “Love In This Club,” it was our first summer tour ever and we played a show at home where we covered that song kind of jokingly because the song was really popular at the time. It actually ended up going over really well, and we ended up playing it on tour for a while. (laughs) It was fun to play live for a bit, and I thought we were going to drop it and play other stuff. But we ended up getting the opportunity to record it, so we did. Well, as it turns out, we ended up kind of being known for that cover, so we wound up playing this cover for like a year and a half. I mean, we don’t do it anymore. But later, we were approached by Fearless Records to be on their Punk Disc Classic Rock compilation, which was pretty big for us. So, they gave us a list of the songs that they might like to be on the record, and we wanted to do something fun so we chose KISS’ “Rock And Roll All Nite,” and it wound up being a lot more challenging than we thought. (laughs) If you’re not Kiss, you might not want to do their songs because KISS is KISS for a reason. (laughs) I don’t think we really realized what we were getting ourselves into when we chose that one.

MR: (laughs) Let’s talk about your song “Chelsea” that played on Dancing With The Starswhen Chelsea Kane and Mark Ballas performed. Can you tell us about how that song and its placement came about?

BD: Well, the song “Chelsea” was actually written back in 2008. She went to middle school with Josh from the band and they were really good friends. The song itself is kind of the story of how I first met her at one of our L.A. Showcases and was pretty crazy about her from the first time I saw her. The song is really about this guy who is falling for a girl who he thinks is way out of his league. After we recorded the song, I let her listen to it and we ended up dating for a while. We’re still great friends. So, when she was asked to pick a song that was personal to her to dance to on the show, she picked that one because it was written about her. (laughs) I’m beyond proud of her, and she’s had a lot of success with Jonas, so it’s really great.

MR: You guys have also had some pretty good success in the past year, and you did the Warped Tour 2010.

BD: Yeah, we did that last summer and then a couple of months ago, we did the Dirty Work Tour with All Time Low and Yellowcard.

MR: You also recently were on the cover of Alternative Press Magazine where you were named one of the Top 100 artists to watch, right?

BD: Yeah. That happened in the Spring 2010 and I was on the cover with the singers of all of the other bands.

MR: How does it feel to have success this early in your career?

BD: Well, I’m beyond excited that our second record has been released because I feel like it will open more doors for us. Our first album was very “Pop-Funky,” I guess, and this time, we wanted to make something that was still really fun but could also have a wider audience, so there was the potential for us to tour with lots of different bands. This, I think, is the most exciting time for us because we are all really proud of this record and could really be prouder of where it’s going. It’s also exciting because we’ve developed a very avid touring fan base, but I think we’re still young enough as a band to keep growing. I’m just excited to see where it goes.

MR: You guys worked with John Field on this record, who has also worked with Jimmy Eat World and others, right?

BD: Yeah, he worked on this album with us. He’s worked on some of my favorite albums recently from Switchfoot to Jimmy Eat World. Working with him was the best experience ever because he was kind of the dream producer that we wanted to do this record with. We got some of our early demos in his hands and he was really passionate about working with us. It was really exciting for us to find a producer who was as passionate about the project as we were. We had the best experience with him…I’d work with him all the time if I could. I’m very proud of the way this record turned out and we couldn’t have done it without him. He really pushed us to experiment with new sounds and have a willingness to try everything. It’s funny because I’m pretty sure he had never heard our first record, he just listened to our demos and he didn’t want to listen to it because he didn’t want to have any preconceived notions of who we were as a band. He just wanted to make the best record with us that he could. I think that was admirable, I really liked that.

MR: Although you’re a young artist yourself, do you have any advice for other artists trying to make their way in this industry?

BD: I would say that this is a very internet savvy world, so you have to put yourself out there. The internet, to me, is the best and worst thing that’s happened to the music industry because now it’s the easiest and best way to get yourself out there. But it’s also the easiest and best way for people with no talent to be doing the same thing. (laughs) So, I think it’s very easy to get oversaturated. But, honestly, I would say take advantage of it and get some things recorded and get yourself out there. Once you get out on the internet, there are tons of social networking sites that you can use to push yourself and your music. Then try playing some gigs locally and develop a good local then regional fan base because once word spreads, you can start playing in different regions all over the country. A gradual growth in this circumstance is a very healthy growth. So, I think in today’s world with the internet and word of mouth combined, you can get pretty far.

MR: Where do you see The Summer Set in the next five years?

BD: Well, that would be between now and when I’m 27 and that’s still pretty young! (laughs) I joke a lot about me acting and seeming older than I am, but honestly, between now and then, we’ll do a lot of national and international touring, then probably a third record and keep doing the same thing. I think these next five years will be a cycle of touring and recording alternately. What’s great about doing this at my age is the fact that I feel like we have the endurance and stamina to keep up the incessant touring schedule and hopefully we’ll survive and keep doing that for the next five years. I would just love to see us grow gradually and have a little more success with every tour.

MR: Well, all the best of luck to you with that, Brian.

BD: Thanks Mike, it was great being here.

Transcribed by Evan Tyrone Martin