Hailing from Dunedin, how did you guys first come together?
Three of us met in school. Jake and Johnny played together for nearly ten years before Adam joined, and we started playing as Summer Thieves.
Tell us about your new single ‘Get Away’. What is the story behind it?
‘Get Away’ came to us through a New Zealand winter. The monotony of winter can give you pretty good insight and time to reflect on what’s going on. If you have a listen to the lyrics, it really speaks for itself.
How would you describe your sound and how did you come to it?
We’ve never been able to describe our sound effectively. We’re always getting told we remind people of Sublime. Probably because we’re a bunch of white boys playing songs with a few skanks. But we did start our career together playing covers; from New-Zealand roots to rock, we really didn’t discriminate and that’s come out in our own music. Songs come out as they do but our newer stuff definitely has more poppy elements.
Tell us a bit more about “Scarfieville”. How did this influence your music, if at all?
“Scarfieville” is less than a 5km square block around the uni where everyone lives, in our hometown of Dunedin. It was pretty un-policed while we were around, and gave us a captive, concentrated audience, that were keen to party whenever. We used to just throw parties wherever we could; sometimes there were a few dozen kids there, sometimes there were upwards of a thousand. Fires, broken and damaged gear, fights, noise control – we saw and dealt with all.
Is there any new music or Summer Thieves news that fans should be keeping an eye out for in the future?
‘Get Away’ is our latest single out and we’ve got a few more in the pipeline ready to go, just waiting till everyone’s ready for them mid-summer.
