James caught up with Brian Dales from The Summer Set to talk about their latest album 'Legendary', being on a new record label, touring the UK and America and much more.

You've been a band now for about 6 years, so can you give people a brief history of The Summer Set?
Brian: The Summer Set started in 2007 in Shaun and Stephen Gomez's parent's guest room, while I was still a senior in high school and one thing lead to another, we signed to a little indie label, then we put all our stuff in a van and started touring America, the gigs started to get bigger and better then we put out our debut album in 2009, then our 2nd in 2011 and things kept getting better and better then this year we released 3rd album 'Legendary' and it's our proudest one to date, that's what lead us to come to the UK, I think this is our 6th time over here in the last two years, which is great.

You released your third studio album 'Legendary' back in April how has the album gone down with your fans and the press?
Brian: Now it's been out long enough and the weight is off my shoulders, I don't have to worry about whether people like it or not, I'm very excited as the response has been amazing, the new songs have gone down better at shows than all our previous material, and it's also the quickest selling which is really exciting. We've had a really good run in the last 6 months since the albums been out.

Do you account that to being on a bigger label? Or putting more effort in?
Brian: A little bit, all the pieces are in place, we've got a great team behind the album and it's also the best album we've made in 6 years, due to the fact we know who we are and who we want to be, and that we're a lot better song writers now than we used to be.

What made you call the album 'Legendary'?
Brian: The title track of the album, is a little auto biographical song for me, which was the first song I wrote for the album, which kind of sketched out where we wanted the album to be, and the endline and the chorus is "we all want to be legendary to somebody" which really resonated for a lot of people. We played the song once acoustic before we had come close to finishing the album, and we didn't have a name yet, and the song really went down well with the fans on YouTube, I think we knew then that it's what we wanted to call the album, as it's really a thesis to our fans to inspire them to be the person they want to be.

How did you find the whole writing and recording procedure this time around compared to your previous albums?
Brian: This was my favourite writing and recording album to date and I want to do more like this, we had no rush, no 5-6 weeks in the studio and going on tour, we took some time off and this took about 9 months in total to write, as we wanted every song to be perfect, we spent a lot of time collaborating with friends and making demo's which turned into the main tracks on the album. For instance, the track 'Maybe Tonight' on the album is no different from the demo, which is great as we spent so many times on our previous records, kinda, destroying the magic that happens when you write the song and demo it the way it is, you kinda just want to say "It's just the demo we can do this and this" which waters down the song, and on this album the magic was just there, we didn't mess with it which was cool. We worked with several different producers which was fun, and made a record which has a lot of synthetic elements and just collaborated with a lot of friends that was cool, we worked on this record with each other and a lot of people we love which was fun.

What would you say your favourite tracks from 'Legendary' are and why?
Brian: It's hard, I've said this before, but on the previous albums I knew which were my favourites but on this album it changes which is cool, as it makes me proud of the album as a whole. My favourite rotates every time I listen to the album or play a new song on tour, we've been playing 'Lighting In A Bottle' on this tour which has gone over amazing live, and others like 'Rescue' and 'Maybe Tonight', which I love and the song 'Legendary' itself which holds a lot of weight with me personally as it started everything.

You are right at the end of your UK tour supporting Sleeping With Sirens how have you found the tour and what have been the highlights?
Brian: Umm. I had a good time on this tour as it's different for us than we're used to, obviously we're definitely not as heavy as the other bands on this tour; but we met Sleeping With Sirens on Warped Tour and they were very adamant about us doing this tour. There have been some serious highlights like playing cities we've never been to in Germany, Switzerland and Ireland and to play some rooms over here in the UK like Brixton Academy, that was a massive opportunity for us to play in front of new people, which was cool. We love testing ourselves as this year we've gone from a headline tour to the Warped Tour, to a couple of shows with Sheryl Crow and the Backstreet Boys to I Heart Radio Festival with some of our idols like Queen and Katy Perry to now with Sleeping with Sirens, and it's important to us and to a lot of people to show that you can play shows with anybody and it's pushed us to play some of the best shows we've done on this tour.

After tonight you are heading back to America for a lengthy tour, how much are you looking forward to this?
Brian: Very excited for this one, we haven't done a theatre tour support in the US for quite a while, and we love 3OH3! who were on the tour with, and another artist on this tour is Wallpaper, who's put out one of my favourite albums of the year, so I'm excited to watch. Again that tour is so different from this tour, as this is more Hip Hop and production based artists which will be cool to try our hand at a tour like that. We did a tour collaboration with 3OH3! and Wallpaper on one of 3OH3!'s songs which we'll be performing every night, which is great as there's already that comradeary there.

You did your own headline tour and played the wonderful Slam Dunk Festival early this year, how did you find it and do you have plans to come back and do another headline tour?
We love headlining, we have 3 albums out so we love doing long sets, and these 30 minute sets on this tour are killing me, it's crazy as some bands get into a funk where they're always supporting, and we didn't want to do that. We hope to be coming back at the beginning of next year, and Slam Dunk was amazing, we played the main stage on all 3 festivals and it was great.

Where do you hope to see The Summer Set in a year's time?
Brian: Playing these rooms and headlining them, it couldn't get any better than that. I mean getting a song on the radio over here would be awesome, we had some luck this year in the US and we'd love to test that over hear.

One last random question that we ask every band, if you could be an animal out of a zebra or Giraffe which one would you be and why?
Brian: I have to choose between the two?

Yup
Brian: Zebra, as giraffes freak me the fuck out. Pardon my language, giraffes are really weird and I don't trust them.

Thanks for your time is there a message for your fans reading this?
Brian: You guys have been incredible to us this year, if you haven't picked up our new album Legendary, then please pick it up and we hope to be back soon, next year.

Interview by James Daly