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Lelah Maupin (drums & vocals): When I was growing up, I spent my summers at my best friend's house with a sprinkler, under the trampoline, listening to The Lion King soundtrack. My mom bought me a go-cart for no reason once when I was a kid, too, and we would ride that around.
Emily Nokes (vocals & tambourine): I grew up in Montana so a lot of my summers when I was really little were spent at a cabin, or watching my dad fly-fish. Sometimes my hippie parents would put us in a car for three months, too, and we would drive around the United States. I never knew where we were, but it was still really fun.
Bree McKenna (bass & vocals): I’m from Southern California, so summer was less exciting. It’s always kind of the same there. And I would go to the beach a lot in the summer, but I’d mostly watch Friends reruns and stuff. And Seinfeld.
Eric Randall (guitar & vocals): I played a lot of wiffle ball, I would say. Mostly wiffle ball. A lot of wiffle ball.

Leleh: Oh my God. I’ll go first. So when I was seventh grade, I think… sixth grade or seventh grade. My best friend—same one with the trampoline—her mom met and married a southern pastor in, like, two months and then tried to convert everyone to Christianity. Me included. She sent us to church camp. It was awful. It was like three church services a day and then a bunch of bizarre kids. There were the same kind of social cliques that you get in high school, just with strangers in a weird camp setting, for Christians. And everybody had a pair of Oakley sunglasses. And they took away our Nirvana CD, because it was so… what’s the word? Satanic?
Bree: Secular!
Lelah: Secular, that’s the word.
Bree: I think the worst vacation I had was when I was 18. One of my best friends convinced me to move to Eugene, Oregon, for the summer. She was living in her ex-boyfriend’s house, but then their lease was up, and I think we ended up squatting or something. I was really unclear on the situation. You can’t get jobs in Eugene, because it’s all students. So we got jobs at some data-entry place, and we got fired a week later. Then we made a bunch of money selling cans from parties we were throwing at that house. Then the landlord evicted us for squatting. Then we had to go back home. Photo by Sarah Creighton
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Eric: I have some special cutoffs. They’re really short shorts. They’re very short.
Lelah: I have, like, 20 bathing suits. I love bathing suits. I don’t know why. I wear them, like, two months out of the year. I love them. I also have this really amazing Bongo brand, denim, floral crop top. I’m always feel like I’m pushing it just a little with that one. Maybe I’ll just wear it on the Fourth of July.
Emily: Summer for me is sandals—Saltwater sandals—and toenail art. I have really, really good toenails, because I have really bad fingernails. I take good care of my feet and get pedicures. I really like to show off those babies in the sun—the one month out of the year when you get to show off those beauties.
Lelah: Emily does have beautiful feet.
Bree: I don’t really change that much in summer, but I wear black boots all the time, so I’ll end up wearing a lighter boot. And I call them summer boots. So that’s about it.What are some essential summer jams for you?
Bree: I like this band, the Deadbeat Beat. We met on tour. I’ve been listening to them for summer jams. I also like All Girls Summer Fun Band).
Eric: I listen to the Beach Boys consistently year-round, but it feels better during the summer.
Lelah: Every single summer, I’ve known Eric—at least for the past five years—he’s at some point put on the Screeching Weasel on the first day of summer.
Emily: Last summer, I started a Sun playlist that had all different songs with the word sun in the title. It started with the Sun Rays) they’re a band that sound exactly like the Beach Boys. They’re, uh, maybe not as important as the Beach Boys, but, a lot of fun about sun… There was also “Walking on the Sun” on that mix. You know, that sort of thing.Was there a festival in your hometown every summer that everyone went out to?
Eric: Lelah and I are from Longview, it wasn’t like a festival, every Fourth of July there’s a really trashy flea market that was, like, mandated.
Lelah: Go Fourth!
Eric: Yeah. Go Fourth Festival.
Lelah: It was the three, four days surrounding the Fourth of July.
Eric: That’s where you get like your racist bumper stickers, or any other horrible, trashy thing you can imagine.
Lelah: Pro-gun bumper stickers, Cat in the Hat hats…
Eric: A cool knife.
Lelah: An elephant ear.
Emily: I’m from the same town that Evel Knievel is from. So every year there is the best-slash-worst festival you’ve ever seen in your life called Evel Knievel Days. A bunch of people get wasted outdoors, and Evel Knievel’s little sidekick—Spanky Spangler—usually jumps out of the tallest building in Butte, which is not that tall, but still vaguely impressive.
Bree: Southern California has nothing on these festivals.Have any of you ever entered a competitive eating contest? Did you win? If you haven’t entered one, have you attended one?
Eric: We’ve played at PizzaFest in Seattle a couple of times. I don’t think any of us have ever entered, but I’ve thought about it. I think I could win. I think I’m gonna win it this year.
Emily: The first girl won last year. She was amazing. She was visiting from England, and I can’t remember what her name was. Do you remember her name, Bree?
Bree: No.
EMILY: But she was incredible! She whacked everybody.
BREE: She was really impressive.
EMILY: Didn’t we work at an egg-rolling competition? I know I was working. I had to work coat check at an egg-rolling competition.
BREE: The lady at PizzaFest that won last year was amazing. She was talking a lot of shit all night. She had a British accent and was like, “You know, that pizza-eating contest? I’m gonna fucking win it!” She didn’t even know people, and she was saying that. It was awesome. She was incredible.@TacocaTs@Irrelevant_view
