Dawes at The Royale, 9/22/2015

On Tuesday, September 22nd, Dawes played The Royale in Boston for the second time in their career. It sold well the first time, but the second time it sold out. We had the opportunity to meet with Taylor Goldsmith, guitarist and lead vocalist for the band, on his tour bus prior to the show.

Dawes are touring to support their 4th album, All Your Favorite Bands, which was released on June 2nd of this year.  Goldsmith said that on previous tours he would often be approached after shows and given the comment of, "I didn't know you could play guitar like that, or I didn't know Griffin [Goldsmith] could play drums like that" which he took as a compliment but still had to think "obviously we aren't doing this right". A unique, passionate live show is a necessity for the band, "no one wants to talk about a band and say 'oh the show was great, but you've really gotta go home and listen to the CD you bought for ten bucks'". So he and drummer (and brother) Griffin got an acoustic guitar and headed down to Nashville to meet with David Rawlings with the hopes of making an album that captured the feel of their live shows.

After the writing of All Your Favorite Bands was complete Dawes took the tracks on a mini-tour of California as a means of pre-production. They played to tiny rooms with Rawlings standing in the back serving as their coach, reading the way the audience reacted and relaying the information to the guys at the end of the night. In the studio Rawlings encouraged the guys not to listen back to tracks for the first three or for takes. He would then edit the songs and it would be the edits that the band heard.Goldsmith said, "We were a tool for him the way he was for us. We were there for performances and we were fresh ears for him when he played us his edits."

A typical Dawes audience tends to have a wide age range from late teenagers to the compatriots of their parents. The crowd at The Royale was no different, and meshed seamlessly, all affected by the music in the same way. Tay Strathairn, keyboardist, was unfortunately absent from the stage as his appendix burst a little over a week ago. (We'll give him a free pass for that one.) And Duane Betts, who recently joined up as an official member of the touring band proved yet again that he is an invaluable addition to the lineup complementing Goldmsith on guitar rather than competing. The set included two thirds of All Your Favorite Bands--only "Waiting For Your Call", "Don't Send Me Away" and "To Be Completely Honest" were left out--among older favorites such as "When My Time Comes", "If I Wanted Someone", "A Little Bit of Everything", "Time Spent In Los Angeles" and more. The show was billed as "An Evening With Dawes", forgoing an opener in favor of an eighteen-song career-spanning set. A quarter of the way through, Goldsmith even commented that had they had an opener they would only be getting started at that point. Similarly, when it was time to call it a night, they chose to stay on stage rather than exiting and returning for an encore. And, of course, they closed out the set with "All Your Favorite Bands".

-Kendall Stewart