Joining Audacy host Morgan Freed this week on Emo Nite is singer and songwriter Brian Logan Dales of the Arizona band The Summer Set, a longtime friend, and someone Morgan had no reason to prepare an interview for.
Brian however, is here to talk about his band for the first time in almost six years -- so perhaps he should have been the one who prepared!
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"The wonderful silver lining, of the last 18 months if there is one, I was fortunate enough to be able to take the time to really reset and recalibrate, slow my life down, and rethink how I wanted to live in the world we're living in," Brian says. "I went back to Arizona right in the beginning of all the lockdowns in L.A., and I stayed for way longer than I planned on. One thing led to another, that led to me reconnecting with Stephen [Gomez] our bass player who moved back to Arizona. Stephen set up a studio... and from there it just kind of happened organic. We started reconnecting in each other's lives; Stephen and I discussed, 'what would it be like to make music together just for fun?' -- with no pressure, no stakes, just to see what happens."
"I had a version of this song that just came out, called 'Street Lightning,' that I had kind of been sitting with," Brian adds, "and it just felt like the right thing to get started. Stephen brought it to life. We were like, 'this feels right, the timing feels great."
While Dales has been writing plenty of music since the band took an indefinite hiatus in 2017, being back home was the guiding light in making something new for The Summer Set. "What it was, was me being in Arizona in my teenage bedroom in my parents' house, and I picked up a guitar like I was a teenager and just didn't think twice about it. It was the most freeing writing experience, I was like, 'this is a Summer Set song!'"
Fellow Arizona rockers The Maine are a large part of the band's current timeline, as The Summer Set began to ramp things back up, they were invited to perform at the 8123 fest in 2022 -- kicking things into much higher gears. "That was the last show we ever played as a band in 2017," Brian says, "so it just felt like the right story, for the first show for us to play again. It bumped our timeline up from maybe putting something out next spring to... let's just go! The fact that we kind of haven't had a second to stop and think about what we're doing for the last month has been a blessing in disguise."
The fan response to their new music, Brian admits, has been "unbelievable, and I'm more grateful for it than I ever used to be. I got to spend the last year zooming out as far as I can and just being grateful for everything we did, and also kind of watching the state of music culture gravitate back toward the nostalgia of bands like ours."
Listen to the new single and full interview with The Summer Set's Brian Logan Dales above, and stay tuned for even more exclusive conversations with your favorite artists right here on Audacy.
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