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I aspire to be someone like Gillian Welch. What she does is play part of a group with two acoustic guitars with harmonies. She plays folk. However, there is no one that sounds like Gillian Welch. I aspire to come up with a unique sound like she has.
When I think of bands that have maintained a certain level of success all along - Metallica, or the Red Hot Chili Peppers - no matter what anybody thinks about them, you have to look at them and say, 'Wow, those guys operated under the most pressure.'
I write these songs and I like the idea of letting the band interpret it as they will. This band is like any band; it's not just me. This isn't just a way for me to play my songs. There are four distinct artistic voices, and they deserve to be expressed.
When I discovered Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I could explore the records that inspired me on a different level and that led me to Joni Mitchell, who is maybe my favorite of all time, and Warren Zevon. Those artists that wrote the lyrics that you try for.
I think that there's a singular emotion that goes along with what the bands that we love mean to us. I feel like people feel represented by that in a way that you don't get from saying, 'Oh, I like this book' or 'I went to college here' or 'This is what my job is.'
We let the lyrics be the focus of the song. Which is not what you hear with some of the zeitgeisty bands, like the War on Drugs, who I love, their lyrics are usually buried and The National, one of my favorite bands, Matt Berninger writes in fragments, in a very impressionistic way.
It's not a lot, but we have 8,000 people following us. I get the biggest kick out of it, to hear words that I wrote and chords that I wrote being sung by somebody else. It's a true honor, and it might sound intense, but it's one of the most rewarding parts of the songwriting experience.
I know a lot of bands that will make their first record and get to a certain level, and then when the second record comes out, they can start where they left off as a headlining act playing in front of a certain number of people, or they can go back out and make a lot less money and open for people.
When I hear my favorite songwriters write about things they clearly have not experienced, like "Isis" by Bob Dylan or a lot of Bruce Springsteen songs or something like that, I'm always like, "Man, how do I tap into that?" Every time I tried to do something that wasn't autobiographical I felt pretty phony.
I understand why some bands don't like test new songs, but for us it's been very helpful and it hasn't really backfired. I was nervous that our second record was - you know, you could hear the whole thing on YouTube before the album came out because we played it all live, but it ended up being something that people appreciated.
I think that the oversaturation of music market right now will eventually start taking care of itself, where some bands are like, "We just don't want to do it anymore," and other bands say, "Things just keep getting better." It just depends on where you bring your joy out of it. We're lucky because we are happiest when we're onstage.
Dawes kind of, on purpose, were like, "Let's realize that we're going to make less money, but let's try to get as many fans from as many kind of demographics as we can." And I feel really lucky that our music exists in this world where we can open for artists like M. Ward or Bright Eyes, and then on the same side of that open for Alison Krauss.
I know a lot of bands that will make their first record and get to a certain level, and then when the second record comes out, they can start where they left off as a headlining act playing in front of a certain number of people, or they can go back out and make a lot less money and open for people. I feel like if you go out and just go right back into that headlining stuff, you're playing to the converted.
I was 21, and I was like, "Man, am I really gonna start over and try this whole thing over again? Do I want to start over and be in a rock band again and try to act like a 17-year-old for as long as I can?" Because that was what I was doing with Simon Dawes band. I decided that if I was going to go on playing music, I was going to try and work on it. So I got into Leonard Cohen and Will Oldham, guys that really inspired me not only as songwriters but also through their music as people, and that's kind of what the shift was for me.