Thanks to everyone who has been coming to our shows lately. Over the past week, we’ve played with some really cool bands and enjoyed the company of a lot of awesome people. Our biggest thanks goes out to the folks at Rathaus (RIP) and PhilaMOCA!

TONIGHT: will be no exception to this rule of excellence. We’re really stoked for to play at KungFu Necktie with Ton-Taun and dreambook. 

The Young Summers will be there early to catch dreambook and we seriously suggest you do the same. dreambook is a Philly post-rock-ambient-distorted dream. In their own words, they play, “heavy distorted guitars with swirly lead lines & fuzzed out bass over deeply textured drum beats.”

We’ll be playing T.H.G.W.B.H. bangers and Jake’s new song, Treefort. If you can’t dance to Jake Beers, you have no soul. It’s science.

The headlining band is originally from Lancaster, PA.  Ton-Taun music is an interesting fusion of folk-inspired themes with alt-rock sounds. Their style doesn’t hesitate to bounce around a lot between hooky, modern indie anthems and twangy guitar lines.

Doors 8:00p.m. | $5

We’re super excited to be playing at PhilaMoca this Thursday night with Hammer No More the Fingers and Snoozer. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out the official event page and let us know you’re coming. We can’t wait to hear from both of the other bands so make sure you get there at 8:30 and have a drink with your favorite Summers and catch Snoozer and Hammer No More the Fingers. 

JUNE 28TH 2012 . PHILAMOCA
doors at 8:30p.m. // $7-$10 donation // BYOB
click for official event details

YOUNG SUMMERS with  HAMMER NO MORE THE FINGERS (hook driven pop mudslide from NC) and SNOOZER (fuzz crunch pop from philly).

Photograph friends: email youngsummers.band@gmail.com if you’re planning on taking pictures at the show. 

We decided to drive up to York Thursday night instead of Friday morning for the York College WVYC radio show. Truong’s car broke down at a Sheetz in Ephrata so Ben and Jake came to get us. We packed everything and everyone into Ben’s car and drove the rest of the way to York.

Thursday night was quiet. We grabbed a variety of the cheapest six packs a place called “Quick 6” and proceeded to watch Meet Dave, make Megabeds and drink together.

Ben and Jake’s house has an interesting life to it. The downstairs is marked by the dozens of people who temporarily inhabit it at night. The couches always seem to have that happily worn in slouch to them. The kitchen has two fridges against the back wall and runs a narrower length of the house. The upstairs is a series of rooms that have all different types of music pouring out of them as you walk by. The genre and volume of each door is really indicative of who lives inside of it.

For the weekend, both Ben and Jake’s rooms have been transformed into mini control centers for recording. You can see a lot of Jake’s equipment in his YouTube videos. Ben’s room is on the third floor and is sort of separated from the rest of the house. He rigged up a vocal room in his closet and strategically placed lights underneath the futon and in the closet. Despite how many people we would later cram into the space, the room is comfortable and open and has a vague cinematic quality to it.

We had an early morning on Friday. Ben and Mike woke up first–which is not especially atypical–and started to rally the troops. We dragged all the gear downstairs and played physical Tetris with the trunk space. Around 10 o clock, signs of life were stirring around the house. Pots of coffee were draining over and over again and bass distortions were sneaking underneath the crack under Jake’s door. We listened to Sun is Shining by Bob Marley a few times and walked out the door.

When we got to the College campus, we met with the guys from WVYC. They periodically do artist spotlights with bands that attend the school. Both Ben and Jake attend York College for Music Industry and Recording Technology with minors in Business Administration and are both heavily concentrated on both the creative and production side of the industry.

We started playing at 11:30. The radio hosts at WVYC would stop and ask us a few questions about our music, influences, and etc. Tim Harris met us there and filmed the show for the Seven Knots Productions documentary series, Young Summers: The Video Ledger. He brought Nick Kohut, a film student from Temple, with him for the weekend.

After the show, they followed us back to the house and started setting up cameras in Ben’s room. Matt Braun would be meeting us in York later that day to track trumpet parts for our new single, “New Skins.” Before we settled in a few of us ran to the grocery store to get food for the weekend.

We divvied up meals pretty quickly. Ben and Jake grabbed grill food and an enormous pork shoulder they were intending to smoke for hours prior to eating. Mike and Colleen grabbed fruit, bacon and pancake mix for the next morning. We like to cook in this here band.

While we were gone, the Seven Knots guys and Truong had been set up in Ben’s room. They filmed a takeaway version of “H.Love” with Truong in Ben’s room. All the windows were open and the sunlight had already saturated the room. We moved downstairs and started grilling and drinking outside. Some of the people from the show and DJ Dangerzone from WVYC stopped by.

We ate lunch and started the first of the outdoor takeaway shows we were planning on filming for the day. By this time, Matt made it to York. We went through “Our! Bodies! Are! Young! Offenders!” a few times in the backyard. Tim and Nick filmed from opposites of a circle the band formed with a few lawn chairs and stools. Ben and Jake were letting the pork smoke on the grill and a few stragglers hung out right behind us.

We moved out front to the porch, which was surprising not altogether crowded with seven people standing on it. We decided to try “The Fall” for the second takeaway show with Truong playing the only traditional instrument during the song. Jake overturned an empty, plastic trash can that he leveraged with a few bricks. The result was a healthy, full bass drum. He also perched a recycling bin half-full of cans and plastic bottles on a spare lawn chair that served as a make shift snare. Ben grabbed the tambourine and a few sleigh bells and the two of them made a rhythm section made entirely out of stuff we just happen to have.

Matt, Mike and Colleen sang back up harmonies. We caught a few front-porch loungers sitting out for the day. As much as we like to create full sounds, it was nice to strip away all of the layers and catch an essence for awhile. The day itself was beautiful. It’s was comfortably warm and the sun was indeed shining.

We returned the front porch to itself and headed upstairs to track trumpet with Matt upstairs. Matt tracked for about two hours which is something that not everyone can really hack. He would pause for a few sections, run through a take and mutter “my chops!” Despite the physical toll of tracking for trumpets, Matt has a very comfortable focus about him. He can run through each take several times and talk in between. His trumpet style is unique to that focus. It’s bright and has a warm, lively quality about it. It unanimously reminds us all of New Orleans style jazz music.

We finish tracking and immediately eat some of the smoked pork and spend the rest of the night enjoying one another’s company–re-watching Meet Dave and playing corn hole. We remade all the Megabeds and settled in for the night.

“It’s not a straight homage to the Muppets Movie.” Tim Harris told me. “It’s more like the idea. It’s about being creative and doing what you want to do…. Seeing the creative side of everything and that’s what I’ve tried to do with my videos.”

He was telling me a little bit about the history of his DIY production company. There’s a scene in the Muppets movie when Gonzo is talked into buying a bunch of balloons for his chicken lady friend. Being that Muppets are not very heavy, when he grabs the balloons, he drifts into the air. Kermit sees him and yells, “Gonzo, what are you doing?!”

“About seven knots!” Gonzo responds.

But all Muppets aside, that quick dialogue is not altogether so outlandish in relation to how Tim seems to view his work in video production. Seven Knots Productions was also born out of a series of inspired moments and the willingness of its recipients to fly along.

Tim graduated from Temple University as a BTMM major (Broadcast, Telecommunications and Mass Media) and has been working in video since high school—including work in Temple’s sketch comedy show, Temple Smash. His background has, until recently, been predominately in television.

“I was listening to music and Adobayondei (Young Summers) came on and I just started getting all of these crazy visuals in my head.” That’s when Tim contacted Matt Bruan about doing a full music video production of “At Dawn.”

The project would quickly become something that grew into its own—scaling very quickly. “I realized how much fun I was having while I was doing it.”

The “At Dawn” video was the result of collaboration by a team of friends and local creatives including Scott McClennen, Elisa Cawley, Prince Schultz, Katy Donadio, Evan Petruzzi and was produced by both Tim and Matt. Tim refers to this time period as an informal turning point. It was validation for all of the plans he had for Seven Knots as well as an early example of his current vision for the project.

“Collaboration is definitely the mission statement right now. I want [Seven Knots] to fuel a feeling of being creative and having fun and at the same time.” He said. Tim lists the friends and creative influences that have shaped his vision for the production company under a collective term, “Friends of Seven Knots.”

The list is more than a few brief paragraphs and links. “Once I’ve worked with this person, even if we never work together again, it’s an important moment in each of our paths—the people in there have something to do with me getting to where I am now.”

“I think that mindset is going to be really important for us going forward.” He continued.

Tim has plans to continue collaborating with other bands, including a full-length documentary with Young Summers, as well as work with wedding and events companies. You can contact him at tim@sevenknotsproductions.com.

This morning, the cold broke a little bit. We settled into Mike’s car, talked about R&B and joked about changing our names again. As we made our way downtown, traffic was light and easy. It was a small, honest and efficient morning.

We’re recording a few tracks at Cedar Street Studios for our newest single, “Young Snakes.” Cedar Street Studios is nestled in a building in Port Richmond off of Allegheny, aptly located on Cedar Street. The bottom floor is scattered with old furniture and framed painting of beautiful women bathing men in some body of water.

The actual studio is on the third floor. The walls are lined with cables, cabs, and five or six different drum sets. There’s an enormous mixing board and the sitting room is lined with space rugs and more study chairs. The windows are covered in an opaque, red fabric that lets the sun come lazily through. There are white candles on long-survived pewter stands—a few pianos and organs, a church pew, and a wall of guitars.

It’s a quiet affair… not sterile or unassuming, but the kind of quiet that comes naturally with creative pause. We meet the staff, they are also quiet in the same sense.

Jake spends some time testing out different snares, tapping the skin and listening for two to three seconds before setting down one and picking up another. Ben is walking around eyeing up the equipment, already mapping out the next hour in his head.

It’s something that we don’t talk about very often, but Ben usually acts as an informal manager of this band. He’s calm, intent and collected at all times. He pauses after each take and speaks to both Jake and to Matt, our producer for the day, and makes suggestions and comments.

Jake is nodding, pacing time. He looks carefully around the room. For someone as creatively free as Jake is, he is also carefully calculated at all times. If you really carefully watch the Seven Knots Production video, “At Dawn,” you might be able to spot an illuminated heart shape on each of Jake’s pieces. It’s a visual statement of that accuracy.

Truong, Mike and Braun talk outside. When they come indoors, they each sit on one of the study chairs and thumb the pages of a few stranded magazines. At the end of each take, they talk about changes to the song, the quality of the take. After seven takes, Mike picks up his guitar.

Tim Harris is here with us today. He’s quickly becoming a staple of our community. He records everything and has a unique sense of the dynamics of a band when he films. When he enters the studio he announces that we’re only 5 views away from breaking 1,000 in a week.

Tim’s new production company, Seven Knots Production, will be releasing a selection of the footage from today at a later day. The title of the song is still tentative.

More to come later today. We’ll be spending a few hours at the Upper Gwynedd Nature Preserve for a photo shoot, led by Matt Braun and Truong. We scouted the place out yesterday for locations and wound up tracking a herd of deer from a patch of trees to the water treatment plant.

If you’re in the area, call one of us and stop by. We’ll be spending the better part of the day together.