Dawes Preview New Album, Talk Dangers of ‘R. Kelly Philosophy’
The four members of Dawes are sitting in the vestibule of Woodland Studios, a stark black building in East Nashville across from an upscale wine store and a car customization shop known for its massive red logo complete with flaming letters. Owned by Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, the place has hosted everyone from Willie Nelson to Elton John for sessions. Today is the last day of recording for Dawes. The Americana rock band recruited Rawlings to produce their still untitled fourth LP, making themselves at home in this neighborhood across the river and on a different metaphorical planet from Music Row. But now, despite all the storied country history, leader Taylor Goldsmith is referencing one controversial and notoriously loquacious rapper.
“It’s the R. Kelly philosophy,” he laughs to Rolling Stone Country in an exclusive chat, talking about the trap he found himself in when making their previous album, Stories Don’t End. The process of recording planned guitar solos started to bum him out — usually, live, he’ll just be led by spontaneous flow, but the act of adding overdubs at the end of tracking started to feel unnatural. A little too safe, maybe. “In Trapped in the Closet, there’s only one video that isn’t a cliffhanger, and R. Kelly says, ‘This isn’t a cliffhanger.’ But your brain is so used to cliffhangers at that point. By creating the comfort zone, I was actually creating an uncomfortable space.”
This time, though, the L.A.-based foursome just decided to let everything go — and that meant playing in the studio exactly how they do live. The record, out June 2nd on their own HUB label, will be loose and free, focused more on capturing what Dawes sounds like during a performance, not a tailored session. There’s even a track that pushes nine minutes in length, and not by design — they just ended up jamming a little longer than planned.
“It’s our most live sounding and most true sounding,” Goldsmith says. He’s seated around a table with his brother, Griffin, bassist Wylie Gelber and Tay Strathairn, keys, all defrosting from the bitter winter cold outside. It’s not exactly what they’re used to back home, and it’s so icy that Strathairn changes out of a pair of snow boots after he arrives. Everyone, save for Goldsmith, is sporting a little extra five o’clock shadow.
“If you go to a Dawes show,” he says, “what you see has always been a little bit beyond what you hear on a record. And for the first time we were like, ‘This is a really great example of what we sound like on stage.'”
The band seems comfortable in Nashville. Gelber, ever-crafting (he has a workshop at home and makes his own bass guitars), has taken to a strange habit of wrapping rope around what looks like a cane (“stress relief”), and everyone settled in at a rental bungalow a few minutes away. They’ve been frequenting local Mexican joint Mas Tacos, eating Italian at City House and singing karaoke at beloved local dive Santa’s Pub (mostly Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”).
They’re no strangers to the town — they’ve headlined the famed Ryman Auditorium before — but this is the first time they’ve recorded an album here. Stories Don’t End was made at Echo Mountain Studio in Asheville, North Carolina, with Jacquire King (Kings of Leon, Modest Mouse), which had them following a similar pattern: rent a house, immerse themselves in work and the local food scene, drown out distractions. But things with King, in more ways than one, were a little more rigid: Their time in Asheville was about laser-focus. Here, they seem more relaxed. They’ve been seeing friends like country eccentric Jonny Fritz, drinking at local bars and playing table hockey.