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[SPEAKER_00]: It's always an honor that you listen to this show, and I hope that you enjoy some of these classic episodes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today's show with Chris Karaba of Dashboard Confessional was originally aired on June 25th, 2021.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that you enjoy this classic episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our guest this week is the perfect example of an artist who didn't have a single connection to the music business when he started out, but who rose through the popular culture based solely on the ferocity with which his own fans evangelized his music.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the early 2000s, if you didn't have a friend pass you a dashboard confessional album, burned to a CDR, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but that means you didn't have very good friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chris Karabba began his musical career in Florida in the band, further seems forever, before striking out on his own with dashboard confessional.
[SPEAKER_00]: He became one of the defining artists of emo music, which was once relegated as an offshoot of hardcore, but which is now a genre that is enjoying something of a renaissance in the sounds of chart-topping artists like Drake, Billy Eilish, and even Taylor Swift.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2002, the video for his song Screaming in Fidelity's took home the top prize at the MTV Music Awards, beating out a host of more well-connected artists.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2004, his song vindicated played over the closing credits of Spider-Man 2, bringing his music to a whole new world of music listeners.
[SPEAKER_00]: His MTV unplugged the album, went platinum, his debut record, Swiss Army romance, and two others have gone gold.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is recorded for vagrant, inner scope, and fueled by ramen records.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's appeared on the late show with David Letterman, Conan, and Jimmy Kimmel live.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rolling Stone has said that his music speaks to a whole generation of love bewildered youths.
[SPEAKER_00]: NPR has said that his debut record was, the Emo of its era distilled to its core purpose, music made to mine and dissect one's own emotions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And none other than the New York Times has anointed him Emo's King of Pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a chance to speak with Chris a few months ago to hear about his musical journey so far.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chris Karabba of Dashboard Confessional, what an honor to have you on the working songwriter podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: You spent your formative years in Florida.
[SPEAKER_00]: For many years, I thought the only musical export from Florida tended to be just death metal, but I'm starting to learn that there's a lot of music in Florida, a lot of passionate music.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you kind of describe what sort of music you grew up around and what were you exposed to musically during those formative years?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, before I moved to Florida, I was exposed to a lot of a punk rock and hardcore that I would come to look, but not in, it didn't have the same relationship to where I lived.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just kind of surprising considering that that part of Connecticut is where some of these lends are legendary hardcore bands are from.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get to gay, shelter those bands, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I felt like where I grew up.
[SPEAKER_01]: the thing that people listen to predominantly and I'd come to appreciate these bands later.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're things like the dead and we're band-like the dead and musicians like Chibi Hendrix.
[SPEAKER_01]: Things that I kind of regarded at the time is like our parents' music.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but I myself sort of felt this curiosity about music that it should be discovered for it to be yours.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I moved down to Florida,
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I had that hunger to find, I really had an attraction to music in, you know, that was just kind of ingrained in me through my household, my mother, listening to music constantly, you know, I say, you know, I was, I didn't really want to listen to my parents' music, but I did like my mother's choices in music as a fan, you know, she's like my favorite band
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but I think the broader truth with that, uh, though I, so she kind of conditioned me to just be a voracious listener, uh, music, but I really wanted to, to discover it for myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was hard back then.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember Joe?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you discover things.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you heard us on, that was, you know, not, that you wouldn't hear in, uh, your normal, like top 40
[SPEAKER_01]: How would you possibly, unless somebody told you who that band was?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you just heard it in a, like for me, I heard almost all the song come, that heard it, it's shot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or, I'm sorry, you find that's how I found it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You broke up a little bit there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You said, for you, how are you finding this stuff?
[SPEAKER_01]: So almost all the bands I was fine at that time when I was newly and most curious about music, I heard in a skate shop, skateboarding shop, because that was my other massive fascination, was skateboarding.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was the first thing I was ever good at in my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was really good at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but it was not a thing that was,
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, it was as counter culture as anything has ever been.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's become part of the culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you, you kind of had to be brave to do that back then.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were scoffed, you'd up, picked on, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: This, this kind of, you know, school problems, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: That kind of amount of nothing, but, you know, it kind of gives you a tribe, a group, an ilk.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I don't know that it does amount to nothing because actually what you were doing at that time is you were making a a conscious choice to be part of a counter culture or at least not part of the dominant culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: So even if that does seem like doing it with training wheels in high school, it would be a choice that you'd later carry on later in the life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I was exposed to counter culture that way, but I don't know that it was by choice.
[SPEAKER_01]: was longing for self-expression.
[SPEAKER_01]: So those were the things that I was hanging on by a thread.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I found that world, that counterculture world, I wanted to explore it fully.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was this great overlap between music and the skateboarding and surf culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once I moved to Florida, I would add surf culture to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: and we would be amazed in the back of the skate shop maybe on a rainy day when we couldn't skate and we'd be listening we either be you know hearing what would be coming over the radio but the guy who owned it and his kids all had cool music taste and the guy that managed the shop also had cool music taste unusual music taste stuff that I don't think you'd have heard any other way at that time and also
[SPEAKER_01]: We would, he would allow to watch skate videos there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, not in any kind of luxurious way, just like standing in front of the counter where they have the trucks and the wheels and the grip tape and bearings and things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we would hear this, I remember vividly hearing two bands that really kind of shook me and, and just waiting through the, it was the first time I, like, let's find myself like, really not so much focused on the skateboarding.
[SPEAKER_01]: just kind of waiting for it to be over so I could see the credits and I could find out who those bands were.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those bands that I said that I'll never forget were that really changed my life or were fugazi and then kind of by extension, minor threat.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when I went hundreds of little deeper for where they had come from this roots, in their roots, and the other band was Operation Ivy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And those two things led tangentially to kind of an odd
[SPEAKER_01]: of bands that I would love for ever like job box on the one hand through through forgotts, you know, bands like TC bands that you know well, I'm more you this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, like things like bands like Green Day and lag lag and bands that I love and that in that world.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the two styles that you're describing there on the one hand, the jaw boxes and the fugazis are such an attitude, such a percussive, a salt of music.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the green days and operation ivies, there is such an emphasis in melody that I can totally hear that comes through in your music.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I found those two things incredibly appealing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, with regard to
[SPEAKER_01]: The almost, you know, like the poly-rhythmic almost, like Jeff, I guess what I would call like jazz influence, although I would be hard-pressed to know if or to myself to have any like, I don't have deep fruits as a jazz fan.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I can't tell you that those bands, those like DC discord bands, maybe they did or didn't listen to jazz.
[SPEAKER_01]: rule breaking happening in those songs and then like there's almost there's there's there's no dogmatic adherence to a six time signature or a key sent you know a key sent or well maybe a key sent or but not lucky no fixed key within anyone song it can go anywhere and they're very dynamic very very very dynamic now on the other hand like
[SPEAKER_01]: all about being brash and never had it, not really having a lot of space, both of those were incredibly appealing to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And among those bands, on the other hand, like the Green Days and the lag wagons, certainly Operation Army, yeah, melody was king.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what I found for myself was that I, the marriage of those two things was to what I was really on the hunt
[SPEAKER_01]: as a fan, and I guess think later, is it right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I can understand that I think what's interesting about some of your earlier records when the acoustic guitar is mixed so prominently, it's like you were trying to put all of those rhythms in their at once with the acoustic guitar, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, the evolution of how I came to be
[SPEAKER_01]: in dashboard was all the run-up to it was all fans that I was in, of course.
[SPEAKER_01]: It hadn't occurred to me ever that I would do something on myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I did do it, I completely felt the absence of drums, of bass, of the thing, of any counterpoint for rhythm.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, and I didn't have like a, I wouldn't say a, at that time that I was
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I've come to know what percussion is meant to do with the right hand on acoustic guitar with variations of different finger picking technique and sometimes using techniques and slapping techniques.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not really what I was looking for though, now I really love to employ it in a subtle way.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the time, I didn't have those skills, but I had that thinking that they're thinking that, you know, this one, this things all I've got,
[SPEAKER_01]: imply what the drums might do here, and that I think was born out of this, you know, when you aren't schooled at all in music, this is my case for me, when you have no, you know, musical education to speak of, and you're suddenly in a band oftentimes those people have had the education in the background of music,
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they can communicate with each other in a way to get into this language you don't understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have to find some way to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember trying to communicate my verbally communicate my drum ideas or rhythmic ideas.
[SPEAKER_01]: I should say to the drummer in failing really badly for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as I would do it, I come from Italian background.
[SPEAKER_01]: I speak with my hands anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I realize I started doing it, my hands.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I wanted to do and I just kind of started to employ that with my picking hands as I discussed it with the drummer or based there.
[SPEAKER_01]: What have you so later when I would be writing songs and, you know, not really having a band of my own at that time, I just kind of put that style into the recording for it into the playing as I played it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk briefly about that very start of Dashboard because like you said, you were in a few bands beforehand.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when Dashboard started at the turn of the century, I have a very good friend of mine that saw you play solo acoustic at basically like a youth center in Warsaw, Indiana, like 20 years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he first told me about that, it really made me realize how grassroots,
[SPEAKER_00]: your ascension was with the band.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you kind of talk about how you got things off the ground?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it seems like to me from the outside looking in, it really was you traveling to tertiary markets where people had gotten like a burned CD of yours.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how I first heard it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone passed me a burned CD in high school.
[SPEAKER_00]: How did that get off the ground at the very start?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, when I started writing the songs
[SPEAKER_01]: First record, I was still in furthest use forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we would play these kind of bigger festive, not big, you know, kind of, we're a small festival, but big in the world that we were in, you know, collection of our favorite bands of Bedar, and we'd be lucky enough to maybe get an early day full of state of weekend.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we would route these tours that would just, like essentially amount to gas money
[SPEAKER_01]: and maybe for lucky gas station food, pay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I would, but I would make, you know, you make some new friends one way you're having this adventure in a bare bones youthful way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And oftentimes I would just stay in touch with maybe the person that let us stay at their house, that nightle, or the person that actually booked the bar,
[SPEAKER_01]: We have W Hall that we played.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I was, when I had dashboard, well, I guess what happened was I had finished the Swiss Army romance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I put it out, actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: As we were, as further was finishing our four-legged, I guess we were about to start recording our four-legged.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the band started to follow a part
[SPEAKER_01]: we just started a fraction, we remain the best different than now, our band, again, even though there's two distinctly different line-ups of the band with two different singers and would have you.
[SPEAKER_01]: The check-in case found myself, I'm proud to be a member of one of the versions, so and proud of that other version existing and not having to supplant it just because we want to do those songs again too.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the time, I thought, before it's the banter to kind of fall apart, I thought we'd need to do this one, maybe if I could do one tour with this record that I recorded, then I had no expectation anybody would really hear or like, necessarily it just was thought to be in these, it was my version of doing like a backpacking through Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought I'll just I'll retrace my steps that I did with the band and and maybe there's some kind of journey journey of self discovery because it's kind of It's a big world and to go out there just alone is Something I thought would be all at once, you know, frightening and rewarding I was right about that right on both counts.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in those, so I think I've illustrated like what I thought the world of music was.
[SPEAKER_01]: I make the stroke of a time, but when I got popular enough that people would find out about me with, you know, from more traditional means.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I get on the radio or MTV or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they may have assumed that I played like the coffee house and stuff that you hear about.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're, you know, standard singer song right there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right doing, but I didn't do any of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: not by design necessarily.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just genuinely didn't know that that was a thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know people went to coffee shops and sang with an acoustic guitar because nobody did where I lived anywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: The coffee shop I went to didn't have a singer there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: They just had coffee.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there wasn't like a culture around.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I'm going to get coffee.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shows where their own adventures place.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's where that's where it began.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just
[SPEAKER_01]: part and parcel to the culture I was in.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's where, so as strange as it is, looking at it as to somebody from outside of our scene, I don't think it was that strange to somebody that was in our scene.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it was strange that there was that I only had a, that I didn't have a band, that I sort of had maybe the audacity to just play in acoustic guitar,
[SPEAKER_01]: pretty punk rock, to bucking convention to me is punk rock.
[SPEAKER_01]: So to me, that was a pretty punk statement.
[SPEAKER_01]: And those kind of things were important to me back then.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I understand it's just the thing I loved the most.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really have grown to love that more than any other thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: by themselves are with very limited instrumentation.
[SPEAKER_00]: either solo or with a power trio.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, that's the money spot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the money spot, all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we move on though, I just want to dig down a little bit deeper.
[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned that, you know, going on that first tour by yourself, you know, it's this big, it's this big, expansive world out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here you are, one guy with a guitar going up to meet it as a young man, and that it was frightening in some ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you describe what was frightening about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you remember any specific experiences where you were like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there were, I guess one broad strokes thing is that I never had a plan other than there was a few of these shows, maybe a hand, maybe I had a show a week.
[SPEAKER_01]: So one of the hurdles and adventures was that how was it going to get more shows?
[SPEAKER_01]: But the head, one of these shows where I might say, well, I was hoping not a plan to,
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, someone say, well, I have a cousin there, you know, probably put you up, and they have a friend who knows somebody that does shows there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would just go on the, on the, on the, on the, on the advice that there, there might be some one there that might have a place to play.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there was thing, you know, I had, I had no money.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know, guarantee of money.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had no way to make money.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had no savings.
[SPEAKER_01]: All I had was a fan.
[SPEAKER_01]: on acoustic guitar, boxes, EVs, backpack full stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so in a bar soap and a short length of hose that I would use outside of people's homes and unbeknownst to them to shower in middle of the night with how to go with this, I don't know, it's four foot hose, I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: And first I have to roll rock into the backyard and if no dogs can run or no one barked out,
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's called to show that way sometimes, by the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's insane, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like a story from the Simpsons or something, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't say it was like a wise thing, and it was, it was, you know, he's worked perfectly, I can tell you that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, how do you feel it's funny you entered the business at a very strange time when it was we were leaving kind of like the traditional music business to Now we're at streaming in between streaming was that big pirated era and in some ways I could understand if you were to feel bummed out that people at the very start were pirating your stuff, but at the same time it's also like it's pretty cool that you're able to put out an album
[SPEAKER_00]: likes with Army Romance and people just liked it so much that it just spread because people couldn't help but burn it and give it to their damn friends with your name and Sharpie on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it was a really, it seems like a very special time for you to have begun in the business.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel that way?
[SPEAKER_01]: My mire of any that was in a band at that time, but I had no other means of getting a record to someone, I didn't have a PL box, you know, if somebody was sent sent me a, you know, five bucks, I could have mailed it to, but other than that, I didn't have a record label that has just distribution, I didn't have, I didn't have anybody working on I behalf other than the people that were listening to it,
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were really taking it upon themselves to show someone to share it with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they were coming to the show, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They were coming out and they were, they would often buy the CD there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, they would buy like several, a lot of the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to give this to somebody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I felt that the special, because I know what that is, is that music's in, to love a band or love something so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Love someone's music so much that you were like, I need this for myself, but I need to make
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I was really honored by that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they were by T-shirt, they'd by a couple of records.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was by no means was I heard by Napster.
[SPEAKER_01]: I made some money because people's awareness was raised and moreover it was a means by which my band began to be known by people that I couldn't wrangle myself and play the music for.
[SPEAKER_01]: If there was a point, if you had the record from the record,
[SPEAKER_01]: at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you had one of my records, because you bought it for me, I had a mic, my trunk.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's a lot of it, and it was a great experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's not a sustainable thing that gives you career in the long run.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had no other means to get it to people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I realized that was the way people were getting it to each other, I embraced it wholeheartedly.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have a computer at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have to go to the library to do my download.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was there a, is there a specific moment when you can remember thinking to yourself, okay, well, maybe this isn't my version of Backpacking Europe to find myself, maybe this is, uh, maybe this is my career, like when did that mental shift happen for you?
[SPEAKER_01]: no plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the word started to get around to these places before I got there.
[SPEAKER_01]: About my music and I would I would trip to play now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was an on like a flyer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't on a I didn't have a show till the day before or maybe that day.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I realized that I was playing the music and the were kids singing along.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had no lead time.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were just at a show.
[SPEAKER_01]: They went to this place because somebody did shows every Thursday or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was struck record they had that they'd embraced.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember this surprise they would have.
[SPEAKER_01]: And many times at that, in that era of my band, people would say, how did you learn all the results?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would say, no, no, that's, I'm the dude that did that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there would be a moment for both people, not conversation to just kind of like scratch their head.
[SPEAKER_01]: for different reasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was one of the contributing factors to that moment, that epiphanyist moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other one was on a few of the shows that I got, they were like three in a row that I had had booked beforehand.
[SPEAKER_01]: One was in Virginia, one was in West Virginia, no, actually part of me, one was in
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember it well, that I was playing with a bunch of hard core bands, that was kind of my sweet spot, and they said that I was going to be playing last, which is like the death note, you know, that's not like headlining a show, that's playing after most people leave, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: have a place to stay so I wasn't entirely bummed in plus I got to see some bands play I remember hopes fall was one of the bands they're band I really liked and I felt like oh wow they never from the floor to show up be able to tell my friends I got to see them and and they they said stick around you know they were kind they said stick around for the first dashboard and that's what I saw that's the reason I thought
[SPEAKER_01]: until I started playing, I mean, because everyone stayed, until I started playing, and they just erupted, and that was a moment, they erupted into the single one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I'm from a scene where like singing along was part of the musical fan culture, but it's like any other probably sub-sector of genre of music, or you sing along to the hokey
[SPEAKER_01]: But they didn't do that, they just sang every single word.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they did that for the entire set.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when I realized, all right, this is a whole different thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't then, and maybe I can't all the way now, put my finger on the thing that happened internally that made me say, all right, of all the things I want to chase, which were, there were a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was the one that was the most, I was most certain of.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Chris talks about choosing music, he's quick to mention that it was one choice among many.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were many paths that interested him, but he had to make a choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had to let some things go.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had to limit himself in some respects so that he could become unlimited in another.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's important for artists to choose what their losses will be because losing nothing is not an option.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you'd rather make the decision yourself rather than having it made for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: In that sense, loss always doesn't have to be a negative.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a work by the poet Donald Hall that turns that idea of loss upon its head in a similar way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's entitled Affirmation.
[SPEAKER_00]: To grow old is to lose everything, aging, everybody knows it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes and not our heads when a grandfather dies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we row for years on the mid-Summer pond, ignorant and content.
[SPEAKER_00]: but a marriage that began without harm scatters into debris on the shore, and a friend from school drops cold on a rocky strand.
[SPEAKER_00]: If a new love carries us past middle age, our wife will die at her strongest and most beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: New women come and go.
[SPEAKER_00]: all go.
[SPEAKER_00]: The pretty lover who announces that she is temporary is temporary.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bold woman middle age against our old age sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another friend of decades is strangers himself in words that pollute 30 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let us stifle under mud at the Ponds
[SPEAKER_00]: At that point from that point in your career, things really start to take off.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have screaming in fiddellities, wins an MTV award when you were up against a establishment axe, like the roots, the strokes, and nor Jones, and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then also one of your songs becomes, it plays over the credits of a huge blockbuster one of the spider-man movies.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems to me like at that point your fan base probably changed dramatically all at once.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was that the case and if it was, was that a difficult thing to navigate going from everyone's best kept secret to being something of more of a more of the headline or that everyone was paying attention to from the start?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there was an evolution of people coming, the numbers of people coming.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was an increase that was steady.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, I've got to say that the things you just described the MTV Music Award and the single for Spiderman, these things, they would pay off in fan numbers and new kind of maybe kinds of fans, people that couldn't otherwise listen to my music.
[SPEAKER_01]: or maybe otherwise then exposed to my music.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that didn't happen right away.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't in the time that those things happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just a little bit of a buffer back and that doesn't exist quite, and quite exist anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the time that was happening, I think what it felt like was that to me, and I think for anyone that was a fan, was that the fans, this was a victory lot for the fans.
[SPEAKER_01]: to so many of their own friends that it was now like it was now like in the door like like they had they had manhandled the thing you know it was there was no machinery at work there was there was no traditional avenues for success so everything that happened happened
[SPEAKER_01]: that Napsterie was used to do somebody wanted to share it with somebody else.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this was just sort of the watershed of that moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really felt this feeling among the my fan base at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it wasn't unilateral.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people didn't care for the fact that we've gotten popular.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they moved on to somebody else.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for the most part, it really felt like they felt, yes, we're there doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was their success.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how it felt to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt there was their success.
[SPEAKER_01]: I credited them more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then I would any professional who's job it was to see us have success.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those people would, those people that I mentioned, they would have, they would put in a lot of work later and they would have their own kind of, I would have my own version of success that was theirs.
[SPEAKER_01]: There, you know, that they, they were a direct help with.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would credit that to my families, and then to my families, including just one or two people that had the job of picking this up, that was important.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's funny is what you just described, many of our younger listeners will recognize that model as pretty common nowadays for people to start following some on social media or following them on Spotify and then helping it become a bigger thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think what younger listeners might not realize is what you're describing right now, which is common, now that didn't really happen back then.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have a good way to describe it to those folks who've only had it that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really don't, but it was radical.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there wasn't infrastructure for such a thing to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: The closest you'd get was college radio, I think, that would take a chance on a band.
[SPEAKER_01]: And those few outlier radio stations, like, okay, rock or something like that, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: champion of band irrespective of you know maybe a label doing all that work that they do on a band.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have any of those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: All I have was these fans who were telling each other, hey, have you heard this song by La Dashboard and suggesting like
[SPEAKER_01]: We should try to go see them if they're coming then at the time it's just me to see them if the ever comes around.
[SPEAKER_01]: And not should, no, not should.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we are going to, we will.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was this, this determination.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it wasn't pastor.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I noticed the same thing from the outside looking in.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the while this kind of phenomenon is happening, you are continuing to write, be very creative, release a lot of albums.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you talk a little bit about what your creative life looked like at that time?
[SPEAKER_00]: And was it any different than what your creative life looks like?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, how are you actually writing and producing the music at the very start?
[SPEAKER_01]: My creative life now reflects what it was in those earliest days, more so than ever, in between, more so than any time in between.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the thing was, it was concentrated in the early days.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really released two full length and three EPs and wrote the third full length in a period of about
[SPEAKER_01]: And there was an absence of any, I don't know, interferences too strong of a work interest from any like machine.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there was no label saying, you should do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need you to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That would come.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was not an, that was not something I feel I navigated with.
[SPEAKER_01]: great success though I do feel like I learned and it wasn't like just an object less than oh I shouldn't do that again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I learned a lot from kind of chasing other people's suggestion about maybe how a record should be approached or what kind of songs make for a good career.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did learn a lot and joyed that chase.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I did lose.
[SPEAKER_01]: I lose that I lost the past a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not proud of it, but I'm happy I did do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that at all it's that statement, but itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish I'd, I wish kind of that I'd understood more of the power that I had over my own songs by just having a single singular intention.
[SPEAKER_01]: um, later it just, well, this is how it, this is, this is what I felt like it did right how this, um, at the time, uh, in those early days what I, what I really did right was, uh, I, I really enjoyed, like the granular moments of life, this is, this is what I enjoyed exploring as, um, as a writer, you know that, sometimes you,
[SPEAKER_01]: Life is defined by these huge, huge moments, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it seems, but to me, it's really like the fine details of those big moments that kind of carve out who you are and who you are changes.
[SPEAKER_01]: It changes in the changes back and it changes again.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not stasis, by any means.
[SPEAKER_01]: you're going to be, who you want to be, you just become who you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I, I, I, I was, I enjoyed and think I, and I think I was successful as writer in, I enjoyed writing about about that to this smaller, smaller details and just blowing them up with the importance of the grander thing, like focusing down on the granular details.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I also feel like I had,
[SPEAKER_01]: at the time, it's like very unaware of a lot of the rules of songwriting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I broke them out of instinct.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was uniqueness to my songs that as I became a better musician, a better player, and more aware of music theory and what happened more and more of a deeper understanding of music theory.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I would come to be able to break those rules and kind of with intention when I knew what to do, but in that period where I found out what the rules were, a state a little bit too far inside them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, we had some pop success, but we were never, I was never meant to be a pop songwriter.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it which is really, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are people that, you know, listen to my songs and they get that, then there are people that really think, I mean, I was going to cover a lot of magazines and stuff, so I can't blame them for this, but they think I was only ever a pop star, and I think I was barely, barely ever popular and kind of, kind of, kind of glad about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are, so you say now that you've kind of returned back to this sort of original mode of creating and creativity, I want to talk about that middle period for a little bit in a moment, but can you speak right now to how you returned back to that original kind of ethos?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think one of the factors is that I've really deeply formed back in love with the
[SPEAKER_01]: home.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess, you know, brother by which I'm going to steer the ship here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not to say I won't play electric guitar, I won't have them on a recording of them, but when I sit down to write.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just like, well, this is a, it's, in a for people say this before it's got to work on acoustic or it's not really a song.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's, that's, that's,
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll fair and get, but when you're writing with it, without you, I don't think that it's supposed to be an acoustic guitar song ever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want my songs to, maybe there's a version of them that, I guess I want my definitive versions to be on acoustic guitar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if they never get released, right, I want the most definitive version for me to be with the acoustic guitar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just find it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, just find it so powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: which I like is a look fan.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so easy to dress up or recording and amp it up and use it during the writing process.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that, but to me, there's a there's a rawness that limitation brings.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I also find that more like the better I get, you know, here's the interesting thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was in this pretty bad accident this year, this past year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I lost the ability to play guitar.
[SPEAKER_01]: I lost all muscle memory in my arms.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had to start taking guitar lessons, which I've never had done before.
[SPEAKER_01]: I took a few, but it was exploratory.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've already had to access the decision.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just felt like I better do this, but this time I wanted to do it, well, no, this time I had to.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had to.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had to learn how to play, you know, just like anybody who plays an instrument remembers what it's like in the early days when it's hard to bend your fingers in a certain way, articulate a position of your wrist or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what I was dealing with only, I had this time I had all the knowledge of what
[SPEAKER_01]: And so now I've kind of fallen in love again with the instrument because as I stand here talking to you today, I'm better than I was before the accident because I've been taking lessons.
[SPEAKER_01]: And but I'm also able to direct where I want the lessons to take me more so than I would have if I had taken these lessons as a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm able to just invest into this instrument, but it's like this,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like this disproportionate return on investment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I honestly just still play six hours, eight hours a day.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not unusual for me to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I get out of the guitar is just this wealth of possibility.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'd love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that answers your question about.
[SPEAKER_00]: how I've come back to writing no it does and that had to be terrifying though to to have lost that muscle memory after your your bike accident I mean can you kind of speak to the mental space you are in where your your hands in arms weren't doing what you're mentally telling them to do that had to be really terrifying you know it was terrifying
[SPEAKER_01]: but it was not scarier than the rest of what I was going through if that makes any sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think in and of itself, if that had been the only repercussion of this motorcycle accident, that would be really very, very scary.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I also had to figure out how to, like, I don't know, brush my own teeth and lift the fork and things like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I was less, that seemed like something I could worry about at some point.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I, what, what did happen, though, that I had just, I was like, love-loin for, for, I was like longing, like, like you are when you're like a young, love-loin person.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I was longing for, which, with the guitar, obviously, I had that kind of intensity that you kind of lose in adulthood.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I had gained back.
[SPEAKER_01]: But interestingly, I had written a, I had actually made a record before the accident.
[SPEAKER_01]: that is closer to, that is in the vein of that who I, how I approach songs, when I was a younger person, when I was new to this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'd already gotten there, but this has gotten me to place where I think that I can stay there for longer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's exciting.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a rule, I never really know what my fan base would want from me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess as a rule, I've tried not to think about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: With the exception being that I know that I was aware of them and I'm aware now that my career would have been bigger.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would have been more successful if I had delivered another place as you've come to fear
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's a place as a songwriter that you get into that it's hard to get pulled out if I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's certainly easier to get pulled out of it and it is hard and it's equally hard to stay there somehow.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not really a comfortable place to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a really rewarding place to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're faced with some success, I think I looked at it like, well, I'm enjoying these songs that exist now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I can just let them be their own thing and chase you know, other aspects of songwriting.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I wish I stayed uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Will you dig in for me just a little bit more about what you mean when you say that's an uncomfortable place to be creatively?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that it's no secret right that I write these pretty emotional songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm the blood of a lot of jokes, I get it and I don't mind it because it's easy to make light up.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really, really hard to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to do because of a few things and not least among them is you got to be really, really honest with people who don't know and people who you do know, which can be
[SPEAKER_01]: But how you feel about stuff, you have to do it in short form prose, and you have to pack it with all like the emotional wallup that encompasses an entire thing experientially.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what I mean by that is, say you've lost a level under something, something colourable,
[SPEAKER_01]: in love, and it's the right person, and you're going to stay with that person.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are investing the totality of that emotional experience into this, like into, I mean, I'm pretty verbose, but there's still very few words in a song, comparatively speaking.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you're just supercharging everything and kind of living out on the edge of
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very easy to be judgmental of.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to, it's kept me humble to understand that to be good at that is to open yourself up to great criticism.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't love criticism, Joe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't love being like, I'm not,
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish I was like this, superially enlightened individual that can tell you, I don't, I don't need the accolades and the sling of the narrows never bothered me, but I need both of those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great, it's a great fortune to be told, hey, the thing you did is special.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a wonderful thing, most people don't have that in their work world and
[SPEAKER_01]: Or in their art world, and to happen in both, is encirclement to be told or made to be made to feel like you're a joke or the bud of a joke.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, it's when you're at the joke.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a little harder.
[SPEAKER_01]: from after a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you slowly put up these laws of protection from them until you're so thoroughly behind it that you forget to stand up for the thing in the first place.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's what happened to me as a writer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got more and more vague.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got less and
[SPEAKER_01]: I had my moments, thankfully every record just had its moments, where I got to be the old guy for a bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I discovered, I think that I missed that feeling of getting a song right in the way that I personally really like to get songs right.
[SPEAKER_01]: not being, I guess, stabbed or picked, what's the right word?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, picked on.
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds reductive because it's more than that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it kind of is like, this isn't a bit like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So having to admit some things that got to yourself are necessary to getting back to that place.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, OK, you know, hey, look I'm a fallible person, I'm an emotional person.
[SPEAKER_01]: the stuff bothers me because because I want to be thought of well and then and also I have to learn to be okay with not being thought of well if I'm going to be embraced to the way I've enjoyed you know that's what it's that's also a wonderful thing right so yeah I'm not like
[SPEAKER_01]: Not personally when I when all the things that were kind of said about me or my band or even broader more broadly my scene that I'm from right I was personally affected by these things and I think that the evidence is in not as in not the middle era records.
[SPEAKER_00]: But where you've arrived at now, which is you're kind of describing a full circle return to where you were at the start, but you did mention that you took some positive elements out of that middle period where you were maybe listening to what others were having to input creatively or maybe you said also that you were just kind of learning more about.
[SPEAKER_00]: like a music structure, a music theory where you had just been self taught before.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think you took from that middle period that was positive that you've now added to that original spark?
[SPEAKER_01]: So there were a lot of things, there were a lot of positive things that I took away from that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I guess that's paramount among them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hold on a second.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to edit that out, I don't know, I think it should work out at that, I lost my earpiece with that talking to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll start that answer again, so you hopefully make it easier for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: There were lots of lessons to be learned in that period that I'm less connected with of my work that period of my work and less connected with.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the ones that I think were most informative,
[SPEAKER_01]: had to do with kind of understanding in a pop song way, the structure, you know, the tried and true structure by which songs should kind of fit into.
[SPEAKER_01]: That stuff never ever occurred to me to think about before that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it appeals to me less as a fan and a writer, frankly, I'm so quite honest, but to understand that they exist and to figure out how to be most expressive within those parameters was one of the things that I enjoyed taking learning from that experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: Though, I'd like it less than songs that are just a little weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, well, I can't tell you what a thrill this has been for me to have you on the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a privilege to pick your brain, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a huge fan, thank you so much for coming on the working songwriter podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, Joe, appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: This week's show is brought to you by Bandzougl.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Use promo code TWS, the initials of our podcast, TWS, to get 15% off the first year of any subscription.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tickets are on sale now for Dashboard Confessionals Massive Unpluged Tour, available at store.dashboardconfessionals.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: If before we meet again, you sit down to write, please remember, an expensive drug habit is not a song, a compelling Instagram account is not a song, and most importantly, reverb is not a song.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let all that take care of itself and for you just keep your eye on the song.