How did you become a band?
Wesley: “We got our instruments for Christmas. Branson got a drum set, I got a guitar and Jared got a keyboard. We all wanted to be a rap band because that’s what we were listening to at that time. We wanted to call it Skittle instead of Eminem, ya know. But, that didn’t totally work out because we couldn’t come up with any set beats.”
Branson: “Or funky rhymes.”
Wesley: “So we joined a Rock School Program at a local music store and started playing Poison and AC/DC.”
Branson: “Our first song was ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ by Green Day.”
Wesley: “We had a band, The Trouble With Boys, but three years later, we decided we wanted to be a brothers band so we took off seven months to learn to read music and take vocal lessons.”
Branson: “We started out The Summers as an alternative rock band, but we played some classic rock from our old band.”
Wesley: “We played country clubs and baseball stadiums. The classic stuff was what they wanted to hear. We were crowd pleasers, but now it’s more of us trying to make it with our own music and we don’t want to be known as that little band that plays classic rock. We’re starting to write a lot more and trying to record a little bit.”
Jared: “We’re still learning some punk covers, like we just learned ‘All Down Hill From Here,’ by New Found Glory..”
Wesley: “We’ve gone from listening to AC/DC to listening to 30 seconds to Mars, Jars of Clay, just all these weird…”
Branson: “Dude, Jars of Clay? I haven’t heard them for a year.”
Wesley: “I love those guys.”
Jared: “The Used, The Used, and The Used.”
Wesley and Branson together: “Jared’s obsessed with The Used.”
Who does most of the song writing?
Wesley: “I write the songs, and Jared writes too.”
Jared: “I’ve written, like, two.”
Branson: “ I just play the drums.”
Wesley: “Yeah, he doesn’t even really count as a musician.”
Branson: “I might write a line or maybe put in a word or two here or there.”
Wesley: “He’s usually just sleeping and beating things.”
Branson: “And eating things, I like to eat.”
How often do you practice?
Branson: “We practice pretty much everyday.”
Jared: “We’ve been taking a break lately because I have a sprained wrist.”
Branson: “Yeah, he was skateboarding. I don’t skate.”
Wesley: “He couldn’t skate for his life.”
Jared: “We were watching football once and the Colts were playing the Patriots, I think, and Branson was like, ‘Are those the Braves?’”
Branson: “What? When was that, that must have been years ago.”
Jared: “A couple months ago.”
Branson: “I don’t think so.”
Jared: “Then we changed the channel and some reggae band was on that we’d never heard of and Branson was all like… ‘That dude is awesome, his drummer is awesome and he lives here… and he was born here…’”
Branson: “You guys don’t know crap about music…”
Wesley: “No, we don’t know crap about drummers and/or musicians.”
Wesley: “We all three went the Gibson Showcase and Jared and I were playing acoustic guitars and Branson was in the back on his cell phone. We took a picture and it showed Jared and I playing guitar together. We were gonna photoshop it and point arrows at Jared and I saying, ‘musicians’ and an arrow just saying, ‘drummer’ pointing at Branson.”
Who is the leader of the band?
Branson: “It depends on kind of what mood we’re in.”
Wesley: “When we’re writing songs, I’m more of the leader because I kind of like produce the songs and I kind of know how it is.”
Jared: “Not really, I’m kind of good at producing.”
Wesley: (ignoring him) “I’ve got an image of it in my head and Jared and Branson are just clueless.”
Jared: “No, no, no, no, no.”
Branson: “I’m more of the leader during band practice. I try to keep everyone focused because Wesley and Jared, and sometimes, I do too, they just go off and do their own thing and we just start messing around on our instruments and forget we’re in practice.”
Do you have any interesting stories from singing/playing, funny things or cool things, or just anything you want to tell?
Branson: Well, one time was when we were playing at the Salem Speedway and it was real windy and the banner behind me blew down on top of me. Poles and all, and I didn’t stop playing.
Wesley: “I jumped up in the air (on a couple of occasions) and fell on my back on stage, but got back up and made it look casual. Also, I swung my guitar around my neck and my wireless system flew across the pavement. I’ve tripped over guitar cables. I’ve actually gotten shocked from the mike because I licked my lips while singing in the wind.”
Jared: “When I got a fur coat for $3 at Goodwill and wore it in the dead heat of the summer in Memphis to go on stage and play Jimi Hendrix. It was kick a**! At the time we were playing like Poison and stuff like that, it was cool for the classic rock thing, but you wouldn’t see the lead singer of Green Day wearing a fur coat, I mean if it’s like Snoop Dog or something like that, then maybe but…”
Branson: “Not Sum 41, they wouldn’t wear a fur coat. "
What is it like being a twin?
Wesley: “Twins are okay, being a twin kinda stinks. I mean it’s cool and stuff, but people always get us mixed up. I hate it when people come up to me with this really serious face and are all like, ‘hey, what’s up, Jared.’ so like really sure that I’m Jared, but I’m not Jared. They totally believe it, they believe that I’m Jared, and they don’t know that I’m not Jared, but they think that I’m Jared, it’s just, I don’t know.”
Branson: “So, Wesley has a freckle under his nose and when you tell people that, they sometimes come up and study Wesley like he’s a science project.”
Wesley: “Whenever people come up to me they like, look at me, they just come up and stare at me for a second, looking for it, studying me and stuff and are like, “Dude, you’re Wesley.”
When you are performing, do you take it seriously, or just have fun?
Wesley: “We take it really seriously, like we play jokes and stuff sometimes whenever we don’t have a crowd and there’s only a couple of people there we just kinda mess around, I mean we still take it seriously because who knows if there might be one person out there that’s really like…”
Branson: “Important in the world.”
Wesley: “NO, important in MUSIC. But um, yeah, so we kinda just mess around with our ‘not’ crowd.”
Jared: “And Jared uses sarcasm a lot.”
Wesley: “And Jared uses sarcasm a lot. I mean funny sarcasm, not smart alecky type of sarcasm.”
Jared: “Branson is so monotone sometimes. He’s like, (in a robotic voice,) ‘What.are.you.guys.doing.today.because.I’d.really.like.to.go.golfing.’”
Branson: (laughing) “Not really. Sometimes when I say one word it might sound monotone, but I don’t really speak in a monotone voice… all the time.”
Do you get along?
(They all laugh.)
Branson: “We might make it through a practice here or there without yelling at the other ones.”
Jared: “We’re not yelling.”
Wesley: “Or some other type of base physical abuse.”
Jared: “Well, verbal abuse is used sometimes, too.”
Branson: “It would be really helpful if we had a place to practice that wasn’t attached to the house so our parents couldn’t hear us fight. In our old house it was in the basement, and here it’s in the garage, which is somewhat better, but still, you still hear it.”
What do you want to happen in the future?
Jared: “I want to take our music everywhere.”
Wesley: “I want to sell Albums. I want to get Grammys and awards for the songwriting, and to be known and respected as a good songwriter.”
Branson: “My biggest goal is to be internationally known.”
Jared: “Amen.”
