Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I love the idea of having a beer with a lot of the musicians I admire.
We've just always felt like we had a product onstage that represented us.
I'm in my early thirties. I live in Los Angeles, California. I'm an artist.
I actually like social media, and I recognize what modern technology serves.
A song like 'Telescope' was about a friend of mine. He doesn't know it's about him.
When you see yourself as the center of things, it deprives you of a certain level of empathy.
Sometimes songwriting can turn into a gossip column, and I try to avoid that as much as I can.
We're thrilled to play an offbeat place. Our music fits with it. I love playing unusual venues.
When we were putting together 'One Of Us,' we were just following our impulses and what felt good.
I love Santa Barbara and have always dreamed of someday having enough money to have a spot up there.
When you go back and listen to 30 years of Tom Petty records, they are pretty consistent. I love that.
I think there are ways a place can sneak its way into a song, or a feeling that you take into the studio.
Unfortunately it's easy to just label us as part of a Laurel Canyon sound. What we try to do is to be unique.
I get the biggest kick out of it, to hear words that I wrote and chords that I wrote being sung by somebody else.
Books look handsome and it's a real singular experience getting to go to a bookstore. I don't want to not do that.
I read actual books. It's cool to read on a Kindle if that's what you want to do, but for me, I like having a bookshelf.
Slash is one of the greatest guitar players I've ever heard, and it's amazing when you hear about all the crazy stuff he's done.
Well, I think at first, songs were sort of the vehicle which allowed me to be on the stage and get to hold a guitar and get to sing.
When we made 'North Hills,' I had never heard Warren Zevon, and I never heard the Grateful Dead. I had never heard of Jackson Browne.
That the longer you can work and stay in people's peripherals, the more likely folks might be to acknowledge you and know that you're there.
For five albums, I would create an image of someone that wasn't true to who they were. I'd be in love with an idea. It's not an uncommon problem.
When we record a song, like 'Bedside Manner,' it's important that the next time I write a somber, mid-tempo song that we don't treat it the same way.
I feel like we're very lucky in the sense that Dawes can be the kind of band that plays with Bright Eyes or M. Ward but that also plays with Bob Dylan.
I was learning guitar as the band was beginning, at least in terms of being a lead guitar player. I could write songs, but I couldn't really play solos.
So, hopefully, us finding ways to constantly work, but always with a different product, will help our band play to more people and continue making music.
Bands speak for us in this inevitable way that you can't get anywhere else because it is this perfect balance of artistic expression and popular culture.
There are times, like with Dire Straits, where you can get as close as you can be to being good at your instrument and not cross over to that tasteless place.
And so to me, I've always thought the kinds of fans that I want is the kind of fan that I am, which is when I subscribe to an artist, I'm yours. I'm on board.
Growing up, even finding all those notes that you write in first grade to your future self of like what you want to be when you grow up - it was always music.
We've always tried to inspire ourselves, so to speak. In the beginning, that could mean just hearing your own songs played back to you for the very first time.
Laurel Canyon and Dawes have become linked in a way that I think is misguided, frankly, to tell a new fan what we sound like. But at one point maybe it wasn't.
That's happened a couple times: Billy Joel. It was just, "You sound like Billy Joel." And I get really upset about that. No offense to that guy, but it's not for me.
If what you do for a living is play drums or bass, then that defines you. You don't want to be some guy missing notes here and there; you want to really speak with it.
I have big plans to read books over again, but I've never re-read anything. The only books I've read over again are the books I didn't pay attention to in high school.
When you see a Bruce Springsteen or Tom Petty or Jackson Browne show, the impression you get is that you'd love to have a beer with them. That's the image they project.
You write a song; you know what you want it to sound like. With a band like ours, it's more about the collective. It's important everyone feels expressed and represented.
When people do, or say, things we don't believe in, forgiveness can feel disgusting. But when you try to think of someone who isn't worthy of it, it's hard to find an example.
All of the people we admire have extensive catalogs, so what's most exciting about people responding well to the band is allowing us to continue making as many records as we can.
I've always been a little more narrative, a little more linear, a little more direct. People instantly want to classify that as something retro. It's just a way of writing songs.
The one thing I worry about with that is whether or not we're edgy enough for the young kids. You know, does a 20-year-old like the fact that he can play it for his dad? Is that cool?
And rather than judging and alienating others, I do think there's an opportunity that no one is taking, myself included, to actually understand why somebody is coming from a certain place.
Dawes is a rock 'n' roll band playing guitars, writing songs, working in a certain tradition. Through our attitude and personality, I hope, you can hear a song and go, 'That's a Dawes song.'
It's easy to look at kids sitting around a campfire looking at their phones and to think, 'What a shame.' But I think they're going to be more advanced in terms of communication than my generation.
I know some bands that don't like touring and are able to make a living producing other bands. There are a lot of ways of carving a living out, but it's become tougher and tougher to figure out what that means.
Our dad was a singer and keyboardist and was in bands throughout his whole life. He was in a band called Sweathog that opened for Black Sabbath and eventually was the lead singer of Tower of Power for a few years.
We've always been fans of groups like Little Feat, Steely Dan, the Eagles, or Dire Straits that have that quality. Bands that sometimes are perceived as not the 'cool' band, because they're so good in a technical sense.
I think it's important to always stay critical. But rather than dwelling on it and wishing I could change something, it's important to just take those lessons learned and those new notes and apply them to the next thing.
I'm hoping that when people hear a live Dawes song on YouTube or at a show and then they get that studio version, hopefully they're excited, rather than saying, "Oh man, I wanted completely new material I've never heard before."
I feel like a lot of artists, when they're on their fourth record, they're perceived as the old guys. At least in this day and age. I like that people perceive us as just getting started because that's how we perceive ourselves.
And that's the case with all of James McMurtry's songs. He never presents these characters for us to judge, but only to sympathize with. He has a capacity for compassion with every sketch that he makes with a person that he is not.