Dashboard Confessional
We catch up with Chris Carrabba backstage in Brighton, for a in-depth chat about all things Dashboard...
Rocklouder caught up with Dashboard Confessional last month on the last night of their UK tour supporting Maroon 5.
We nipped backstage to catch the band finishing up their dinner and, declining their generous offer of a brownie, snuck off with Chris Carrabba for an in-depth chat...
Rocklouder: So this is your last night in the UK, how've you found it?
Chris: Yup, sadly. I've loved it as I always do.
RL: We've heard Dashboard Confessional are going to come back and tour here in the Spring?
C: That's a rumour, but I think I'm also going to come back in January, just very, very small, by myself with a guitar or something.
Did you enjoy the show tonight?
C: I had some technical difficulties onstage here. Yeah, yeah, you try to play it off but anyone that knows bands well knows when it's happening I think, if you're in a band, or you've been in a band, you can always tell, it's like, "do you hear this? Is it - is that really happening, or is it my imagination?"
RL: You cut your cover of Wheatus' Teenage Dirtbag slightly short...
C: Well that's all I know!
RL: Ah! We were looking forward to the girly-falsetto bit!
C: Well I don't know the words to that bit yet, but next time I come over I'll play that half and leave off the first bit!! We actually did it with Brandon in New Jersey recently, he came and visited with us and we had forgotten that it went that far! Actually, the way that came to be was that we played it when some gear fritzed, a long time ago, and we'd never played it as a band or practised it, I wasn't sure if anybody else knew it. I was just going to play it, and our drummer thought it ended there, so we just stopped and after that we just kept stopping it there.
RL: We hear that you've already written a lot of material for the next record?
C: Erm, I think I've written a record, but I keep writing new songs so it's a little hard to say. I'm hesitant to say it's done, I mean just the other day I wrote a few songs.
RL: Rich Eden (Dashboard manager and president of Vagrant Records) has said the next album will be out in 8-10 months, is that still the case?
C: Yeah.
RL: If you've got a lot of the material you may as well get it out, yeah?
C: I mean, what is the point, in this era of music where you can record it quickly and you can release it quickly, of waiting? I let them wait for it when I don't have it! You know, when I haven't written it. If I've got it I might as well get it done, right?
RL: So, you've really embraced the Internet culture... you've been blogging and, for your latest video, you had an Internet competition... So what do you think of bands like Metallica, who've said that everyone who downloads their material should get sued?
C: They're not wrong to have that opinion. They're entitled to it. I'm of another generation where the reality is people don't pay for music. So I have two options now: rant against it as Metallica did, which is their right as it is their copyrighted material and people are stealing it from them, or I can just accept it and say, 'what are the benefits of this?' Cos you can't change it. Oh here's a benefit, you can share music quickly, and you can spread the word across the ocean if you care to.
RL: Yeah, didn't something like a million people download Thick As Thieves when you put it up for the music video contest?
C: Yeah in like a day! That's the reality... and that's it, why wait? In a day a million people hear this new song and they want to! Why make them wait when they want to hear something?
RL: Dashboard Confessional has a fixed line-up now, compared to when you started the group. How has that affected the song-writing process?
C: There's three ways it goes. There's when I've just written the bones of a song and we'll take it in a room and we'll discuss it and listen to the demo I've made with just me and the guitar and we'll discuss. Because we know each other so well now it's come to this, instead of having to show somebody the idea you say, 'here's a few keywords it hits', you know. We mostly talk about the drum arrangement and everything else falls right in line because we play, as bands do, we play so much it ends up 'that' is the communication just keywords. So that's one way, there's no particular order or prevalence, that's just one-way. Another way is that I get obsessed while doing the project and I play everything, which inevitably means that I get attached to all of the pieces and I sort of insist that it goes the way they're played, that's seldom the best way because these guys are better at their instruments than I am, at their individual instruments. It takes a year for their personality to get into my parts and then I'll say, 'I wish I'd've done it that way,' and then there's the way where I record everything but I'm wise enough to know that I've developed a frame for it and I say, "you guys just take this to the place you think it should go". It's usually pretty close to what I've done, cos, well I'm sure I've influenced it, their ideas have been influenced because I've already done something, so their idea probably keeps on going back to that place. I know that happens for me when I'm in other bands. If somebody presents an idea fully formed and says, 'take it wherever you want,' you're always working around that original frame because it's in your mind.
RL: I suppose once the identity of a band has been cemented everything falls into place more easily.
C: It really does and that's what's the best part about having - finally having - a real fixed line up. You know maybe the last five years, about half of the tenure of the band, I've had the same guys, which is nice. It's nearly a decade now. Can you believe that? We're on the eve of it, next year it will have been a decade.
RL: With Dusk and Summer what happened with the Daniel Lanois production?
C: Well... much of it made its way to the record and much of it didn't. The process of that record was really enlightening and I learnt so much over the course of it. It was a little soon for me to be taken away from my band, which was his idea. I had just found my way of having this real synergy with the band and his first idea was to get me away from that... and that's a great idea for somebody that's always with the same people but I had found that I'd been working towards that for so long and that I had begun and mined it already. It's not a new thing to be on my own as you might do with, say the singer of U2 going off and trying his own solo thing, it would be a new dynamic, with such a band, but I'd already done that so much. That was the first thing, and then it ended up sounding to me a lot like everything I'd done, whereas I wanted to go someplace new. So I found myself searching instead of knowing where I should be. Daniel had a fixed amount of time that we could work together because he had a new record coming out. We reached that time and that's when I found myself arriving at the place I wanted to be, unfortunately. So it was kind of an issue of timing. All the music we made, I listen to it now and it makes a lot of sense and it makes a bold impression. It was a successful endeavour. I never thought it wasn't, but I wasn't where I wanted to be by the time we had to be finished. It was only about me, not about a combination of things. It was probably my best memory of making a record and it's a record that not a lot of people have heard, but I'm sure they will. I'm sure they will at one point.
RL: Have you thought about who you might like to make the next record with yet? Are you thinking about working with Don Gilmore again?
C: Of course we're thinking of Don cos that's just well... we know it works. We've done our big single Vindicated with him, we did a whole record with him and we did a whole other, we did The Shade of Poison Trees with him... it's kind of a matter of trying to figure out what this next record will be and what the songs are.
RL: Our good friends The Automatic are about to record their second album with Don, any advice on how to handle him? What is he like to work with?
C: He's not a cheerleader, so you have to know that going in. That's the weird thing about Don; with everyone else I've worked with I know how they motivate me. It's clear to me, because there's a physicality involved and exuberance. If you've done your worst take of the session he'll say to you, "lets get that one again." If you've done your best take of your life he'd probably say, "I think we got it." That's it! That's all you get. Meanwhile we've come up working with like Dan Lanois and Gil Norton who both do, like, cartwheels and turn the studio inside out if they love what's going on or if they hate it, you know, there's paper flying around!
RL: So what's on your I-Pod at the moment, or the bus stereo?
C: I've been listening to the Manchester Orchestra a lot and I've found myself listening to this friend of mine, John Ralston, he's a fabulous singer-songwriter.
RL: Didn't he open for you on your last tour?
C: Yeah, sure, and after that tour I can't stop listening to his record. There's also a band called Single File, they're a California pop-punk band and I can't remember finding that interesting since I was, you know, younger. They've kind of lit a fire under it. But you know as a band we've found our way now, we just listen to Fugazi! (laughs)
RL: What do you think of the term 'emo'?
C: I don't think much about it, it's not something we'll escape or anything like that, but I never have thought it really defined us. It was previous to my band, and it seemed like 5, 10, 15 years before my band it had already had its moment. We were the first band to be called that by the mass media and I just think it's because the people that came to have the jobs in the mass media are people that years before heard music that sounded like ours, a little, and that's what it's called, that's what I called it too, you know like Sunny Day Real Estate, and all of those bands, well... they kind of needed a word, you know, and that was it. You know they don't call Pearl Jam grunge any more, and in the States they no longer call us emo anymore because it's been so long that it's kind of 'been'.
RL: Who do you think are your compatriots in the business?
C: Well My Chem', and that... these are bands we've been touring with in basements, you know? It's amazing to look around and see these bands that are hugely famous are all the same kids that we used to travel with. We used to share vans and travel the country together. My Chemical Romance, Thrice, New Found Glory... it's a really long list of bands. From this group of bands I can't believe how many of us have gone on to filling arenas, it's really strange! I've always been the oddball because I wasn't necessarily interested in playing as loud as I could. So I don't know who else was my directly obvious peer at the time, but these are the bands, you know, Taking Back Sunday and Brand New, there's a lot of us now.
RL: You're known for your collaborations, especially as the band formed together out of initially disparate musicians, and we saw you've been playing live shows with Adam from Counting Crows...
C: It's funny 'cos those people are starting to become our peers as well, from having been our heroes, just from playing music together: R*E*M, The Counting Crows, and who knows who'll come down the line.
RL: Is there anyone you'd really like to play with that you haven't yet?
C: Yeah, I think Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor; I'd be really interested in playing with them. Regina Spektor is kind of otherworldly to me. She's on another level.
RL: How did you find touring with U2?
C: It was incredible because, well, just the whole process, like they say. You know, you get a phone call and it's like, "hey Bono's heard your new record that you're working on." I mean, how did he hear it? Obviously this guy has his fingers everywhere, you know. You're in the studio making it and he's hearing it!
RL: You can imagine there must be little Bono agents wandering around!
C: Exactly. "Bono's heard your record and he really likes what he hears and wants you guys to open up the Canadian and US shows." "Yeah, sounds great!!" Then it's, "ok, yeah, see you Thursday." So it's, "pack it up fellas! We're going have to put the studio on hold," and it was great, you know. They took us out drinking, they looked after us and all of the things you'd think that they wouldn't do. They've got that mentality, I think, of underdogs, almost. "We're in it together," you know, which I have, and I can relate to no matter how big we've gotten I can always look at it from the angle of the underdog. But then we're certainly not the biggest band in the world, and they are and that's how they see it, and it's great!
RL: One last thing we wanted to ask, is which bands would you like to see break big next year?
C: Yeah I think... well, there's a band called Yacht I'd keep an eye on and I'm not sure beyond real deep music fans like us people will have heard of Manchester Orchestra yet, that's a band I'd keep your eye on.
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