5Q

What inspires The Summer Pledge to continue creating music?

First and foremost is friendship. We were all friends before we decided to play together. Now that we realize it works, we keep going. It’s excited to move forward as a unit and push each other musically and creatively. As we are all strong personalities, who are into different things, we all find a common ground in playing music together simply as friends.

Your last release, You are You, was a great success, what’s next?

The writing process for the first record was write an album, record it, release it, tour. Since that has been accomplished we have written and scrapped about 12 new songs. Individually, we are always writing new music and coming up with different approaches. We have no goals for an upcoming full length, ep, 7″, etc… At this point we are just writing. When we do decide to record, it will probably be about 20 tracks to split up among different releases. Aside from the writing process, we have some local shows, a couple festivals and are currently booking a full US tour for July 2010.

Post Rock generates creative (and often lengthy) band and track names, how does The Summer Pledge come up with these?

Being that “You Are You” had a lyrical and visual theme to it, naturally, it came easy to name the tracks in the spirit of the album’s message.

How does The Summer Pledge decide which tracks will be on a release? Testing them at gigs or a different method?

Exactly. We pretty much write a new song and then play it at our next show, instantly! Haha. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, but regardless, we are always eager to play new material live. Sometimes we jump the gun a little. But regardless if other people like the music, that’s great, but we always have the deciding say in the end.

What have you been listening to recently that you would recommend to your fan base?

We got an advanced copy of Ghastly City Sleep’s upcoming record, “M O O N D R I F T S”, and it’s safe to say it hasn’t left our music players since we have received it. Kidcrash’s new record entitled “Snacks”. I picked up the Gull 7″ which is this guy who plays guitar, drums and sings at the same time. Pretty wild!

The obligatory political question: Can politics (whichever side of the road) solve global social problems? Discuss.

If you look at the root of the word “political,” it goes back to ancient Greece and has to do simply with the citizenship of people in one collective city-state. This term has been seen as a dirty word lately and is used as a kind of slanderous assault, from time to time. But if you strip down all the modern usage and think of politics as simply the organization of people with common goals for their city (basic needs like a secure food & water source, personal space & safety, sanitation services, among other things like art and culture), I think this is, indeed, the only way to identify and solve major social issues in our civilization. After all, what are we in these cities other than collections of people trying to make our goals congruent with one another so that we can live productive and enjoyable lives? Without some kind of global consciousness, presumably under some political framework (in the older sense of the word), I think we’re bound to live in a disgraceful imbalance with nature and with one another, which is why we are able to identify so many “global social problems.”

The obligatory digital media question: We all know that digital downloads (legal or not) are changing the music business. Would you say this is a challenge or an opportunity and why?

As the digital music download thing has been ongoing for some time, I think we’ve been able to see it both as a challenge to the music industry and as a great opportunity for the fast proliferation of music. Obviously, the music industry, proper, has been turning on its head over the last decade or so, and the big big labels seem to have no idea what to do any more. They’re not finding the envelope-pushing, ground-breaking new bands out there and pushing them to the fore, challenging everyone else around them while doing so… they’re playing it safe and following the trends. Those “trends,” many times over, are independent bands that have been utilizing the internet to their benefit, allowing them to get their music heard without any label support. That’s why I think the digital download thing is pretty key in this day and age – it’s so easy to get your stuff out there on your own power. It’s a self empowering movement for creative people the world over. Check out our website for living proof of that – you can download /You Are You/ right there in its entirety for free!