From The Road: Summer Salt and the Lomo'Instant Automat

Indie trop-pop band Summer Salt recently wrapped up their spring North American tour supporting Mom Jeans, and as the first installment of our ongoing From The Road series with The Luna Collective, they're joining us to fill us in on the experience!

With a Lomo'Instant Automat camera in hand, tour manager Risa Tapanes followed the band around everywhere, documenting them in their moments of togetherness both on and off stage. Today we're speaking to her and Matt Terry, lead singer of the band, to reflect back on these instant photos.

Hey Summer Salt, welcome to Lomography Magazine! Matt, can you tell us a bit about yourselves and your music?

MATT: Hello! First off, thank you for this opportunity! We’re long term friends from high school who all grew up in the North Texas area. Eugene and I started the band back in the day through discovering we had a similar interest in heavy melody-based music with pop sensibilities. I feel as though these interests and years of playing with each other evolved our music into trop-pop with an oldies/standard twist, and making music with real life topics through fun playful energetic composition.

We moved to Austin ten years ago and developed a fan base there that seemed to grow outward after releasing our first EP, Driving to Hawaii. We started booking tours ourselves and eventually grew to do full US tours. We then added current members Winston (bass) as well as Anthony (guitar). Anthony is my cousin and Winston is a friend we met while touring on the road.

You just wrapped up a Spring North American tour. How was it?

The tour was very smooth and a lot of fun. It was a blast trying to create a high energy set as an opener for Mom Jeans. It was just a good time, playing somewhat of a shorter set than usual with fast-paced energetic songs. It's always nice touring with bands that you don’t know, and coming to realize you have much in common, musically and in life, rediscovering why we do music in the first place. To relate to old fans and new, as well as fellow musicians, and of course living a life through song.

Risa, can you tell us about your experience shooting with the Lomo’Instant Automat ?

RISA: I have used a few different instant cameras, but the Lomo’Instant Automat's versatility is perfect for on-the-road. The easy zone-focusing allowed for every kind of photo from up-close band portraits to sneaky candids from afar. I especially loved the exposure compensation control. In venues, the lighting varies so much, especially once the show starts, so that feature was incredibly helpful to get the shots we wanted.

Did you have any experience with analogue photography prior to shooting with this instant camera?

Not a lot! I have used other instant cameras and disposable cameras. I have recently been interested in more analogue photography but am admittedly a little intimidated. The Lomo’Instant Automat was a cool way to level-up from the instant cameras we've been using to have more creative and technical control, without making the jump to a fully analogue 35 mm film camera.

Any memories that stand out when shooting with the Automat?

I used the Sundae Kids Edition camera. Anytime we brought it out, the colorful design caught everyone's eye, making them want to take a photo themselves!

These photos feature a good mix of on-stage shots and BTS photos. Matt, what do you and the band like to do for fun in your down-time on tour?

MATT: Outside of Euji juking it on the drums, he also jukes it on the basketball court. He loves playing the game and spends a lot of outside time at the park in San Francisco with his partner and his dog. Euji also loves to fish, crab, and cook. Both of us have a huge love for anime, collectibles, and RPG-based video games.

I love running, cooking, and spending time with my family and three-year-old son. Winston constantly works on his own music, through Winston Taylor. He also spends time outdoors and does graphic design – he’s quite talented! Anthony is a viber, he spending time with his friends, planning snowboarding trips and hanging out at the lake here in Texas.

What kind of energy or vibe do you hope to give people when they listen to your music?

We want something that they can relate to. Like I stated above, we love writing music that has real life topics but through fun and playful music. I think our mantra when writing is trying to be tongue and cheek, while writing about topics that are completely honest to our lives or the lives of others who we know personally. Everything we write about is directly related to our real life experiences and feelings. We try to counter that with fun lighthearted engaging kind of music. With that being said, we hope that people get some kind of catharsis from our music, relate to it, and feel light, free, welcomed, and understood.

Do you have any projects or tours coming up that you'd like to share with our community?

We just got a new LP, Electrolytes, mastered and are set to release that in July, following a couple of singles. We also have a tour in the fall starting in September to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of our first EP, Driving to Hawaii. Other than that we are constantly thinking of the future and having fun making music, so always more to come. We love it here!

Anything else you'd like to share?

Thanks for sharing the camera with us and allowing us to have fun capturing memories on the road!

Thanks to Matt, Risa and the rest of the band for joining us and shooting with the Automat! If you'd like to tune into their music & whereabouts, you can find Summer Salt on Spotify and Instagram.

Check out the band's "From The Road" feature with The Luna Collective here!

written by alexa_alexiades on 2024-05-13 #people #band #instant #gear #tour