Last September, the members of The Summer Set all sat down for a meeting to break up the band.
“We weren’t really sure if anything that we were doing was very good,” vocalist Brian Logan Dales said. “[We] thought maybe this had run its course.”
The members decided to take the material they had and self-produce a record. And in the process of creating their album, the band found their groove once again.
The five-piece pop-rock group formed in 2007 with Jess Bowen on drums, Dales as the lead vocalist, John Gomez on guitar, piano and backing vocals and Stephen Gomez on bass guitar. Guitarist Josh Montgomery joined in 2008.
Their latest album, “Stories for Monday” — released on April 1 — was technically supposed to be a farewell record for their fans.
“[It] was a total silver lining because a lot of us let our guard down, finished the album and realized how good it was — how proud of it we were. That kind of pushed us to realize that maybe this train wasn’t worth getting off yet,” Dales said.
“Stories for Monday” is unlike their previous albums — it’s serious and honest.
It’s a personal record about figuring out who you are in your 20s.
“It’s the first record that truly sounds like a Summer Set record because we made it ourselves,” Dales said.
Now, The Summer Set is on their “Stories for Monday” tour, which started on April 13 in Anaheim, Calif.
The tour runs through the middle of August, and band members said they’re excited to get back on the road.
“We haven’t really been at it in a minute. When we were finishing tour off the last album … we were pretty burned out because we were on the road for so long. Now it feels new and exciting again. We’re just excited to go back out,” Dales said.
The band has played a couple shows in Minneapolis before, and on April 22, they’re set to play at the Garage in Burnsville, Minn.
During some of their stops, the band has had time to hang out in the Cities. When Dales was a vegetarian for six-and-a-half years and a vegan for two years, he said he enjoyed eating Pizza Lucé.
The other four members of the band also became vegetarians — although they caved a lot faster than Dales, whose end to his vegetarianism were buffalo wings.
“We were home, and we were off tour for a long time, and I got bored and got drunk and ate buffalo wings one night,” he said.
The Summer Set
Where The Garage, 75 Civic Center Pkwy, Burnsville
When 6 p.m. Friday
Cost $17-20
