Interview: Dawes

Pretty good, pretty good. My house in Venice, California.

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Well the next album, we’re still in the middle of writing it. It’s about like eight or nine songs done so by the time we’re done recording and it comes out we’ve still got a while so it just seemed like a good time to go out and do the final city pushes on Nothing Is Wrong. And headlining tour’s the most fun anyways so it’s good to kind of save ’em ’til the end to really enjoy it to the fullest, you know?
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(Samuel Wolf Monkarsh)

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Oh yeah, definitely. There’ll probably be about three or four new ones that’ll be in rotation in the set. Finally we had some time off so we could get into rehearsals again and start arranging all the songs, which is what takes the longest. So we got about four of ’em ready to go that sound probably the way they’re going to on the record and we’ll definitely be playing those. I mean, that’s a fun time–we get to break in the songs and see what works and what doesn’t so when we go in to record it’ll be nice and tight, you know?

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No, I mean at this point it’s just like a bunch of brothers and because we are just always around each other all the time, we get along super well. There’s never any tension or anything like that. It’s just nice. When you live life on the road all the time and stuff is so sporadic and it’s kind of hard to explain the different places you’ve seen in a short time, it’s nice to have, like, six guys around you that all do the exact same thing, you know what I mean? It’s like someone else understands.

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Well me and Taylor were in a van for like, over six years straight like all the time. It was the same van for Simon Dawes we took over with Dawes and we put over 300,000 miles on it and we bought it new. It was insane, I mean that’s like some of the biggest blur of my entire life, just like, the van for 17 hours a day just driving, getting to a show, playing, getting back in the van, going at it again. But it was good. We just started touring with a bus for the first time so it’s going to be like, very cool. I’m stoked to be in it but only because we were in the van for so long.

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Thank you.

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No, I mean I don’t miss it. It was interesting to play when we were all younger and kind of forming the musicians we were going to end up being so we all kind of ended up naturally straying away from that and having no desire to play it again but it’s definitely good. I’m sure it still definitely influences the way we play our songs even if they’re mellow or anything like that; that’s what we grew up playing.

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Yeah I mean all those classifications are always so hard, I mean people used to always call Simon Dawes a post-punk band and we would always be like, “We don’t even know what post-punk music is” and now everyone’s like, “Dawes, man, it’s super like Laurel Canyon.” We’ve never lived in Laurel Canyon so far. (Laughs) People ask me what kind of music we play all the time and I’m just like, “Rock and roll music I guess?” I don’t know…

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Yeah, kind of. I kind of just like to let people just figure it out. I’ll say rock and roll but not like, hard rock and roll and with heavy harmonies and all that stuff because none of those are really genres. Or soft rock with harmonies but not soft rock. (Laughs) Yeah, it’s tough.

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Yeah, definitely. He actually passed away on my birthday.

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Yeah. It was a big bummer. It was a really sad, sad day. Two of my really close friends–I’m never on the Internet or anything so I never hear things like that–and two of them texted me. He was 70 and apparently passed in his sleep so it really couldn’t go any better. Yeah, it was definitely sad. He was one of the last–in my opinion there’s only a few, like three other living bass players of that stature and that era…

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For many, many years you could easily say–and I probably still would–that he was one of my favorites, if not my favorite bass player ever. So I grew up listening to all of his jazz records and all the records he played on and he was always just so good at making sure that the bass stayed super soulful but not getting like, cheesy and not getting out of place; wasn’t like, too funky of a bass line. There was always a balance. He was really good at playing for a song but still making the bass parts so amazing every time, you know what I mean?

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Yeah, totally.

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Not too specifically. More that it would obviously be the dream to have people still looking back on your band 30, 40 years afterward and being like, “They played their fucking hearts out and they went until they died” or whatever. And just made a bunch of records and just kept putting out material that was quality and that’s all that matters. The rest will all just happen, you know?

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HctNdDxXa-A

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We’re definitely trying to deviate from the norm; that’s the conversation we’ve been having a lot recently. We just want to make sure that what we’re putting out records that keep people on their toes in a good way and aren’t too far-fetched from what they’re expecting but we don’t want to make another record that just sounds like our last two but just a batch of different songs. But the tape thing we’ll continue with. In my opinion, they used to make every kind of music on tape; you record classical, you record heavy metal on tape. The tape just happens to sound better with millions and millions of routes. So it’ll be on tape but hopefully it’ll be like a breath of fresh air into the sound that’ll expand the catalogue of the band.

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We don’t take that long to record. If we can get, like, a month in the studio we could make it happen for sure. But that’ll probably happen hopefully in the next five or six months or something, maybe even less, and then however long it takes for them to put a record out after that. I mean it’ll probably happen hopefully less than a year from now, it’ll be out.

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(Samuel Wolf Monkarsh)

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I mean, it’s kind of like the easiest way to make sure you don’t get bored with the material. Not bored with the material but for it not to get stale and to keep doing new stuff. And I mean recording is one of our favorite things to do; we like to do it really fast so as soon as we’re done we like to go out and play. We just really love to play music as much as possible. It’s our only job any of us have ever had, really. We really enjoy it. And that’s why we end up being so busy all the time I guess. We told all the people we work with when we first met ’em, like, “Bring it at us.” But I think it’s going to mellow out a little bit on touring. But we’ve been touring outside of the states a bit more so even when we think we’re gonna be home we just end up going to Australia or England or Europe.

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A few things have backfired. Generally I feel like I’m fixing or repairing something on tour every single day. Most of the time it works out pretty good. Occasionally it has backfired but then I just fix it again or something like that. I’ve been building Griff a lot of percussion recently and I’m in the middle of building a bass for myself. I mean, every piece of our gear onstage I’ve done something to, I guarantee it. (Laughs)

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(Laughs) Yeah.

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The whole thing is, back when we first started going on tour, I’d bring a super small toolkit with just a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. Anything else I would just have to use pens and stuff like that to make it work and now I go on tour and I bring three really giant toolkits–my days of super janky repairs are arguably done but I still have to do it occasionally. I mean I’d probably bring a dremel–that’s a great tool that I use a lot–and then probably a couple screwdrivers and a knife, I guess. That’d be about it.

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I think I’d have a good shot. I don’t know if I’d get off but I’d do all right, I think. After a while.

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Yeah, I mean the main thing we get whenever we play stuff with Jackson–or we played with John Fogerty recently, we recorded a song with him–and the best thing I’ve learned from all those guys, they don’t even have to say it, the ones that are still here that are still present and are just as in love with making music and recording and listening to music and talking about music–those are the ones that are the most alert and thrive and still sound amazing and that’s the most inspiring thing. Don’t fuck it up. Just don’t, you know what I mean? It just sounds like the greatest lifestyle of all time; you’re just playing music and you’re surrounded by music and you’re successful and that’s all you ever had to do is play music and listen to it. That’s the main thing seeing all those guys, and they choose bands like us to play with and it’s so sweet. These people have an eye for another group of people that share the similar interest of music on the brain all the time.

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“Most of the Time” is one of my favorites off of Oh Mercy during the ’90s. It’s a great song. I like the ’90s Dylan where it starts getting kind of out there. I mean obviously I love the classic Dylan as well but anything off New Morning, one of my favorites, and Nashville Skyline is obviously amazing.

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Oh, The Band… maybe “Whispering Pines”…?

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Mine might be “The Pretender” or “Your Bright Baby Blues,” I might say.

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Yeah, no problem! Thanks a lot.