We recently connected with Ury Summers and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ury, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I started writing music back in high school, inspired by some bands I loved, the typical “I started playing guitar because I love this band and I wanna be like them”. I quickly formed a band, but after a few breakups and new projects, I took a step back around 2015. Music never left me, though. Eventually, I realized that if I wanted to keep creating without being in a band, I could go solo. So in 2024, I began releasing my own music. Sure, it would’ve been great to start earlier, but every experience teaches you something; and here we are, right!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

When I decided that I was going to release music as a solo artist, at first it felt weird because this is not the style of music where you see solo artists; it’s pretty much bands only. Then, after the 2020s pop-punk rebirth, most of the new artists were actually solo acts. Wow! Artists that I didn’t know then started to become mainstream pop-punk, like MGK, Yungblud, MOD SUN, etc. All this happened while I was recording some of the songs back in Nebraska when I was still thinking nobody was going to take seriously a guy without a band making rock or pop-punk music. So soon it went from weird to almost being the norm; things can change fast! After that, I moved to LA, and now I’m trying to put my foot in the door in this massive industry, which is going to be my new and biggest challenge to date.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Again, I did quit my last band and kind of stepped back from music—well, at least in a public sense. I think the main reason I decided to jump back into it and share my art with the world is that I finally realized I could get a laptop and some other gear to record music right from home. Duh, I knew this was possible, but what really surprised me was how good the sound quality can be, not extremely far from an actual recording studio, when I always thought you could only work on crappy demos from home. If I’d figured this out sooner, I definitely would have started recording earlier.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I’m really into biographies because I love learning about the lives of people who’ve achieved impossible things. The last ones I read are I read Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, Elon Musk’s, and Jim Morrison’s. Now, I can’t wait to dive into “Walking Disaster” by Deryck Whibley from Sum 41! Besides that, I enjoy books on investing and economics like “One Up On Wall Street” or “Economics in One Lesson.” I also like reading Osho, music industry insights, coaching techniques, and physiology. Funny—I hated school but love learning.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://urysummers.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urysummers/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm5GrSWSlKtzlpMnjUZdddg

Image Credits

Barry King.