Summerbruise

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Recently I was able to schedule a Zoom call with emo/punk band, Summerbruise, to discuss their slick new single that recently released, called “Never Bothered” and their touring plans. Summerbuise is vocalist/guitarist Mike Newman (he/him), drummer Stanli Fryman (she/her), bassist John Parkison (them/he), and guitarists Mitch Gulish (he/him) and Cora Kunda (she/her). If you’re enjoying this interview, please consider supporting this band here, or check out a show.

So thank you both for your time today. Let’s start with some brief introductions and explain why you guys like playing music together as Summerbruise?

Stanli Fry (She/her): I’ll kick it off. I’m Stanli. I play the drums. I eat a lot of hot dogs, and I love being in Summerbruise because Mike makes me feel like anything is possible.

Mike Newman (He/Him): I’m Mike, and I started the band a long time ago because I wanted to be in a band like my whole life. I had never started a band before, and I like being in it, because I was right about thinking about how great it would be.

Do you guys have any strong memories of when the band was first starting, about either band practices and stuff where your band was really gelling?

MN: Stanli joined as a fill in, before she joined permanently. So this is the longest stretch of touring that I had ever done in my life, up to that point. Especially with Summerbruise. This three month stretch at the end of 2019 where Stanli and I were on tour together between two different bands for about 60 out of 90 days, or something like that. Just on and off, and on and off for chunks of a year. And I think after that was when she officially went from a “fill-in” to a full time member, and we locked in that we were the ones to do it.

That’s awesome. So your new single, called “Never Bothered,” has some really heavy lyrical themes. Can you walk me through some of the writing process for that song?

MN: Some of it had been like, sitting around for a while, and some of it was written on the spot, but I the a lot of like the death themes and Summerbruise songs, and especially on this record or whatever, just sort of revolve around…I lost a friend to suicide, and then my dad died, just like regular dad dying old guy stuff, around the same time. And so a lot of the death songs are kind of just about those two things in general. But then this one is just about the suicide friend. And we have this older song called “Never Lucky,” where basically after my friend died, our friend group really splintered up, and everyone was all mad at each other, and no one knew how to handle it. And so the first song about it was called “Never Lucky,” and it was way more about everybody being mad at me and me being mad at them back. And it wasn’t even really about our friend. And then this one is way more of like a zoomed out look, of where we all kind of went wrong, and it’s not about how we treated each other in the aftermath. But just kind of how I feel like we all sort of failed him, in a way.

And what has been the fan reaction to this type of song? Has anybody said that they really connected with the material, either online or in-person?

MN: Yeah, it’s been really positive. We played it at Faucila, three days after it came out, and everybody was up on stage, singing and stuff, and we saw a lot of positive reactions online too. Yeah, it went over really well. I’m excited for more people to hear it.

It’s very cool that you got to make those connections. So I read from your band’s recent press release that Summebruise has experienced some recent tragedies. If you feel comfortable sharing more about this with your audience, what were some of the circumstances behind these unfortunate events?

MN: As far as what the song is about? That’s pretty much it. This is gonna be kind of silly, but I wrote most of the beginning, in various chunks, where I pulled some stuff from different scraps on my phone, and then wrote some new stuff. But then the whole dog in the hot car thing at the end was written just after Stanli wrote the answer. It just kind of came to me, and then after the fact, I was like this could kind of be about the environment to how it all kind of just…fucking everything up. There’s definitely a political interpretation.

Oh, I’m sure. And I feel like your band sound would be perfect for our audience at Chorus.fm since it blends classic emo and really good lyrical material. So what bands were you both inspired to play music by in the first place?

MN: Stanli’s gonna have a different answer, but for me, I got really into Elliott Smith in high school, which is why I started playing guitar. I started learning Elliott Smith songs and trying to play them and sing them. That was when I decided I’m obviously not a very skilled guitarist, and this is probably not something I would really like to do with my life. This is just like a fun little challenge for me. And I just played guitar by myself in my room for years and then a friend of mine showed me The Front Bottoms for the first time, and I was like, “Oh, shit! I could do that. I didn’t know you could!” And then within a year, I started writing some of my own songs.

SF: The first bands that inspired me to be musical at all would be Dashboard Confessional, Fall Out Boy, Armor For Sleep, just like those mall emo, straight bangs, and going to Hot Topic every day at the mall.

Do you still listen to that type of music and put that back into your material?

SF: Absolutely! The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most by Dashboard Confessional is still one of my favorite records of all time, and Mike Marsh’s drumming on that album is definitely something that I am trying to tap into when writing some of the stuff, especially on “Never Bothered.” There’s a lot of fun stuff that I do, and I’m really stoked on it.

That’s awesome. Yeah, I can kind of see some of those similarities now that you mentioned. I understand Summerbruise were signed to SideOneDummy Records, a legendary indie label. So, congratulations! What does it mean to be added to this great roster of bands?

MN: It’s a fucking dream come true. I really think if I could have just picked a name out of a hat when we started the band thinking what would be so cool to do? It would have been SideOneDummy. And so, Carpool signed with them a few years ago, and our friends in World’s Greatest Dad signed with them a little more recently. So we had friends on the label, and I just thought that was so fucking cool. And Carpool got us introduced to Phil at SideOne, who’s just like the best dude. And then it became like, no matter what label this was, we met this guy, Phil, and now I would work if this label was called a “shitty asshole records for dumbasses” <Laughter>…I would still want to be working with Phil, because he’s so great. So the fact that, like, we get this little childhood bucket list and it’s with a really awesome record label to actually be working with is fucking sick.

SF: I just want to take a second to truly say thank you, Phil, for literally everything. Especially the rattlesnake hot dogs that we ate when we were in LA. And the Tony Hawk DVD from like Tony Hawk 2 sessions, and it’s like the making of the Tony Hawk series. And I don’t know what SideOneDummy has to do with it, but the Dummy logo is like on the back of that DVD too. So, we’re label mates with the Tony Hawk “brand”. This is everything to me!

Maybe you’ll be on the next Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack, or something like that?!?

SF: That’d be awesome!

What are some of the unique merchandise designs you guys put in for either merch for your shows, CDs, records, and stuff like that? How much input do you guys put into that?

MN: Currently, all of it. I know with SideOneDummy, there’s a deal where they’re gonna have exclusive T-shirts. But other than that, the merch we all handle ourselves, but we outsource some of the designs. Basically the rule of thumb with Summerbruise merch is, if it’s got cool art on it, we commissioned it from an artist, and if it’s some sort of stupid joke, then I made it. <Laughter> So, right now we have the two shirts on our merch table are a man overboard defend pop-punk parody. But instead of a machine gun, it’s the minion fart blaster, which is me. And then we have this really cool picture of a kangaroo punching a guy in the face on a pink shirt. It just says Summerbruise, and that was an artist friend of ours, Joe.

That’s awesome! <Laughter> How could you live without those shirts? It sells itself!

MN: I like writing lyrics, and I like all of the silly stuff that goes into being in a band. But, I put more thought into our merch designs than I do into practicing guitar seven days a week. I love all the silly stuff.

Everybody’s got their niche, right? So what does the rest of 2025 look like for the band I saw you guys are touring soon, but anything else in the works?

MN: Yeah, we just started our tour with Equipment yesterday. We’re rolling out the album the rest of the summer, and then we are currently working on a tour for November that’ll hopefully be announced in the next month or two… but we’ll be on the road at least one more time before the end of the year.

Sweet! And are there any upcoming recording plans in the works?

MN: No, I don’t think so. I’m starting to get a little eager to try to write again. I think it’s really cool when bands just turn <stuff> around, and the last writing process went so well, and we’ve never written as a band together before, and now that we have… I’m just really here to do it again. So hopefully it’s not another three years in between albums like it usually is.

How would you describe a typical Summerbruise concert, Stanli?

SF: If you like to giggle, you’re gonna really enjoy a Summerbruise concert. There are parts, there are farts, and I’ll say sometimes say something funny into the microphone. A lot of the times, Michael will say something funny into the microphone.

MN: My measure of a successful set is…we’re really lucky and it is pretty rare that we play a set where nobody cares, nobody sings along, etc.. I will count at least a couple people in the audience fucking with it. So my, my new measure of did that set go well or not? Is genuinely how many laughs we get. If people laugh, I know we did a good job.

Hopefully not laughing at you, but laughing with you, right? <Laughter> So if you were to give a quick pitch for other music fans to check out Summerbruise, how would you win them over enough to check out your band’s music in the first place?

MN: If you really, really love Modern Baseball, but feel like you kind of outgrew them, there’s a 30 year old guy who still is making similar music. We’re Modern Baseball for grown ups.

There’s your headline right there!

SF: If you want a band that doesn’t remind you of Miranda Cosgrove hit album, Sparks Fly, but you wish they did. We’re here for you.

There you go! Any last words for your fans?

MN: Just check out the song. See for yourself. There’s lots of great shows and merch. I don’t want to give anyone the hard sell, but the Summerbruise “sell” is just coming, showing up, hat in hand, and trying to make people smile.

There you go. Enjoy the rest of your day, Mike and Stanli!

Summerbruise: Thanks, Adam!

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