Interview // Summer Hero – May 1st 2005

MPP: Why the name SummerHero? Is there a special mystery behind it?

SH: Its not really a mystery. When we were coming up with a name we kinda keep throwing names together. Its kind of a match between two names. I won’t get into the long story of what the other names meant because they had a meaning, but the final choice was kind of a mix of two names we liked. As for Summer Hero, everyone know what a summer hero is. When a movie comes out, there is always a summer hero of the year, you know what I mean.

To me, its like, I hate winter. Winter freaking sucks to me, so its my meaning of the name. We can throw as many different reasons why it makes sense.

To me, it means one thing, but I know we had the name before our singer and our other guitarist joined the band

MPP: So at first, there was only 3 members in the band?

SH: At first Mike Smith and me we were like playing, more like drinking and playing in a cover band and having fun. We tried to get the cover band to write stuff and they didn’t want to because they were all in other bands. Right then we said to ourselves: lets find somebody to jam. We knew our drummer from before, like when we were 12. We played together since elementary school. He’s been playing for a long time. He just turned 21 and he’s more than I could ever ask in a drummer.

MPP: Are you guys all about the same age?

SH: No, I’ll be 25. Our drummer is 21. The others are right in the middle at 22-23.

MPP: How did you hook up with Dan (Golfinger’s drummer and Summer Hero’s manager)?

SH: He moved to Canada because he married a Canadian. You know whats funny, we started playing hockey with friends (guys from Not by Choice who are from the same region as us). The first time, it was me, Mike from Not by Choice and Dave “Brownsound” from Sum41 and his wife. We rented an arena and the few of us just skating around the giant arena all by ourselves and it just escalated more and more friends from bands kept coming. It was like once a week punk-rock hockey. Even Darren from Sum41 came and also friends from bands invited their friends from band.

Then one time, we were partying at Dave’s house one night and I brought disks… I was drunk and I was like “Hey Darren, you really got to listen to our CDs please” and then after that he was like “I love you guys and all, but there is just two things I would never do: I’ll never be a manager and I’ll never work in a record label”. We had just fired our old manager and I slipped it in there like “You never thought about managing?”. So he accepted until he could find something/someone better, so he said. So one time, it just clicked that he was having fun and it all went from there.

Darren is honestly the most down to earth, genuine guy, he would do anything for his friends. He’s the best person on the planet. We kind of owe everything we had in the last little while for sure. He and his wife are two of the coolest persons we’ve met. And I think its because he’s been through all the shit and stuff that makes him act the way he does. Its not because he thinks about dollar signs.

MPP: What is, in your opinions, your biggest achievement as a band?

SH: This year is our big achievement. We are on the Purevolume compilation volume 1. We played the Cool House, the big venue in Toronto with Goldfinger. It was insane. We have a bunch of shows lined up with All American Rejects and NOFX in the coming weeks/months. We owe all that to Darren that we can play with NOFX. Its been our most stressful year but our must fulfilling one for sure.

MPP: One year ago, did you picture yourself where you are at right now

SH: Hell no. Not where we are now. I thought at the time that we would have stayed where we were, crashed and burned and hated each other, black eyes and bloody noses. But a year ago, we were writing and having some talks with guys from The Full Blasts about touring with them during the summer. That was it. We had 2 songs recordeds, no vans, no trailers, no merch and not even a CD. We’ve got a 4 songs demo and that’s it. We were just borrowing my mom’s Denali and felt bad when we got at venues in that big (had expansive) truck. So we started to borrow a friend’s van from the band Cautherize.

MPP: Is there a special meaning about those pink lips on your website (and some merch too)?

SH: There is no link between them and our name or band. We have a friend at home that does our design for us. He has been doing shit for free so we don’t like to ask him to do stuff. So when we do, we’ll buy beers, get drunk and go on for hours. We just wanted to have something that was different from our old merch logo and it was supposed to be for one run but its now in its third run. Since we keep getting out of merch, everytime we call back home to get more stuff, we just used the same design. Funny thing is, it wasn’t supposed to be a tshirt. At first, the pink lips were for a button. We wanted a specific design but we couldn’t do it and we were a bit last minute so we took the design of the button and just went like “Fuck it, just print that”. And since black and pink is hot at hell so it’s a good sell.

MPP: Do you guys have any special talents or diplomas of some sort? IF you weren’t playing music, what would you be doing?

SH: Lane, has a talent. Its not school wise but he does landscaping. He’s super talented at that and he would probably still be doing that if it weren’t for the band. He loves it and he’s always asking to help. Sears is just a really smart dude. If we wasn’t playing music, he would probably go to school for music. Me and Leblanc are like… I tried college twice. I was going to college for one year and spent that whole year ditching class to book shows for a friends band. If I wasn’t in this band I’d try to start another one. I’d also like to get into photography but can’t afford a camera since I spent too much money on music gear. I always buy new stuff.

MPP: Last part now, any words of wisdom or any words at all for our readers?

SH: What did we say in our last interview? Party fuckin’ hard ! I wouldn’t say we have words of wisdoms, but yeah, check out our stuff and don’t judge us because we’re in the black and pink phase right now. Don’t be pissed because we’re doing what we love right now. We’ve lucked on everything we have right now. Its timing and a fluke, every band out there it’s timing and a fluke. So I mean all kids can do it. So if you’re looking for words of wisdoms it should be carry a disk of everything you ever written and hand it to any one you can. Hell we’re not even important and we get people handing stuff over to us. Fucking work hard for it. Don’t fucking sit around and wait. It doesn’t fall on your lap. It might use to be like that, but not nowadays