Dawes
A Take Toward Lonesomeness And Wrinkles, Sun Ensues
May 6, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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When My Time Comes
original version appears on North Hills
Writing songs being a younger man, I often get confronted with how to write despite the lack of life experience. Rather than trying to convey how I'd react to things I haven't lived through, this song deals with that frustration of not having the insight or wisdom that hopefully age will bring.
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That Western Skyline
original version appears on North Hills
This is about a girl from Alabama that I have always been pretty taken with. She moved out to Los Angeles, where I live, to cut a record with her band and after three months or so, started to realize that she didn't like LA very much. In that judgment she was forming, I ended up sort of feeling grouped in there. I began to see her side of things; how where we come from shapes us and our values. And as much as I would love to understand that world that she came from and as much as I wanted her to understand mine, there seems like there'll always be that wall between us. I'm sure tons of people can work through that sort of thing, but I guess we couldn't. So I wrote this song about it.
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Love Is All I Am
original version appears on North Hills
Since this song was written, I don't think there has been a Dawes show hasn't had it in the set. It's always ended up as one of the more popular ones among crowds and is sort of becoming one of the most definitive of the music we make. I guess as time goes on, songs get less and less expressive of where one is currently at in their life, but for one reason or another, I feel just as expressed by this song as I did the day I wrote it.
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If You Let Me Be Your Anchor
original version appears on North Hills
We didn't know if we should play this one or a song of ours called 'Peace in the Valley,' but since there's a version of that already in http://www.daytrotter.com/dt/delta-spirit-concert/20030473-110636.html, we decided to get as much material on the site as we could squeeze. Normally, this song is played with the full band so we thought it'd be fun to try a different take on it.
It's said a lot because it's so accurate: You're not going to find a more helpless creature than a human baby. When we all come out of the womb, we're nothing. We can't do a thing for ourselves, for the longest of times. We're just a bunch of drooly fakers, resigned to have our heads propped wisely and our pants changed every few hours because nothing comes out when it's supposed to. Meanwhile, little deer fawns are wobbly, but already mobile. Most other creatures are able to function on some minor level - feeding themselves and being able to support their own body weight. It's a pity that we start so helpless and weak, but then again, one could claim that we don't make as much rapid improvement as we might think we do. You could even go so far as to suggest that we all remain entirely dependent upon the kindness, assistance and companionship of others for our own healthy welfare for all of our lives. It never goes away. It might not be completely necessary, but there's a reason that break-ups (some of them) are impossible to get over, being alone drives us into a shade of madness and when people we love pass away, we're destroyed by it for a much longer period of time than any other animal would be. It's not at all a negligible insistence that we only cosmetically shed the tags of those needing round-the-clock love and affection or we take to loneliness as if we'd always been attracted to it, but had just now fallen out of another relationship and it was suddenly okay to follow the attraction into another room. North Hills, California, band Dawes (featuring members of an old Record Collection group that went by the name Simon Dawes) has made what is hand's down one of the finest records of 2009 and it is blooming with all kinds of reflections and bafflingly intelligent shreds of wisdom that could only come from four people so taken with the idea that we're only as strong as the company we keep, the person we go home to at night, every night and the family that we treasure regardless of any of its flaws. The songs that Taylor Goldsmith writes are ravaged by scars and bandages and the kind of golden and ripe sunshine that somehow manages to cancel out the scars and the bandages when the light is just right. He writes such sensational poetry that you find yourself getting caught up entirely in his wordsmith talents and the group's devilishly perfect harmonies that emboldens it all that it's absolutely enthralling. He makes a person want to quote an entire song, to live by it. His words change your breathing habits. Take for instance these two lines from "When My Time Comes." "And now the only piece of advice that continues to help is anyone that's making anything new only breaks something else," he sings with an era's worth of sorrow and dreadful depression in his throat, just before some sort of rejoicing flare of optimism comes onto the stage. Then he takes some of that same cynicism and makes it prettier still when he sings, "You can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks. Yeah, you can stare into the abyss, but it's staring right back," and there's not been lonesomeness or solidarity expressed so well. And we're talking ever. Futility is our plight, every one of our plights, or more so the railing against it - against meaninglessness and insignificance. It's our plight to be shaky as long as we're blinking and as long as we've got a beating heart. Dawes - which also consists of expert players Griffin Goldsmith, Wylie Gelber and Tay Strathaim -- is a perfect band and the ideal one to remind us that there lies in us all great capacity, but making it into something takes love and a lark.
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