PREMIERE The Summerlands, "Sellwood Bridge Blues"
Grant Simmons of The Summerlands reading in the rustic rays of the golden hour; photographed by Dayne Allen.
The perfect ideals of places we once knew that occupy the spaces in our hearts and consciousnesses no longer exist. Our hometowns are not the same worlds we inhabited in our naïve youth, any facsimiles that resemble what once was are often superficial fronts and flats that have now been bought and sold by new corporate real estate overlords, and investment groups that thrive on the opportunist views that everything arrives at a bottom base price to be purloined from working class plebs. These romantic and sentimental views of fond vintage remembrances become obfuscated and rudely awakened by the sobering realities of worlds that are reshaped by robber barons, war mongers, regressive civic/social policy makers, and the ravages of disasters - both natural or perpetrated by gross human errors.
These cold fact reckonings provide some of the conceptual framework for The Summerlands’ debut album Bonfante Gardens Forever. The vision of PDX by way of Santa Cruz artist Grant Simmons (fka Grant Summerland), the title of the album makes reference to what is now the Gilroy Gardens Family Theme Park in a record that grapples with changes that impact our memories, hopes, dreams, goals, and everything that is out of reach and out of our control. The combined powers of predatory capital interests, techsploitation, NIMBY politics, gentrification, to the extensive damages caused by the CZU Lightning Fires that loom large in Simmon’s mind; Grant gathers all of this and more into the mediations on the states of modern-mania on "Sellwood Bridge Blues”.
Inspired by time spent beside the Willamette River whilst gazing at the arches of the titular steel structure; The Summerlands venture down the wind streams of collected consciousness passageways. “Sellwood Bridge Blues” explodes the anxiety and angst about the obstacles that plague our own perceptions and thoughts on progress (not to mention the perceived obstacles of our own processes). It is an ode to where we arrive to, the places we came from, but can’t return to in the same ways of how we once remembered it being.
“Blues” is about dealing with everything is beyond you, and everything that affects you in many manners. Summerlands chronicles the disruptions that impact our world, how we react to them, and the responses we wish would reshape things to the way they once were. “Sellwood” sails on the ideas that there is no time machine, life moves forward through all of its missteps, woeful wrongs, weirdness, triumphant tyranny, radical repressiveness, and mundane triviality. The Summerlands send out a statement that seeks a transformative transcendence, despite the persistent seismic shifts that mixes up a peculiar panacea of cope and hope in the delicate dance of actualized subsistence.
Cover art for the single “Sellwood Bridge Blues”; courtesy of the artist.
Grant Simmons shared the following thoughts on the new single and upcoming album Bonfante Gardens Forever:
“Sellwood Bridge Blues” is the thesis statement of this entire album. While writing this record, I spent a lot of time biking to the Sellwood Riverfront in Portland, sitting by the water and staring at that massive bridge (featured on the single cover). For some reason, it loomed even larger in my mind than in reality, eventually creeping into my dreams. The Sellwood Bridge felt like the boundary edge of Portland—and, by extension, my entire world at the time.
The Summerlands’ Grant Simmons taking calls in the fields that stand at the intersection between yesterday and forever; photographed by Dayne Allen.
”A More Perfect Union” by Titus Andronicus and its direct inspiration, “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen, have always been my north stars for songwriting. To me, they are emblematic of what rock music can achieve. With this track, I wanted to try my hand at writing my own version of those anthems tailored to my specific corner of the map and updated for the world of 2026.
The Summerlands’ Grant Simmons sorting it all out; photographed by Dayne Allen.
The Summerlands’ new single “Sellwood Bridge Blues” arrives everywhere May 7 with the upcoming album Bonfante Gardens Forever available soon.