Dawes, Friday, July 30, 6 p.m., Sherman Theater (524 Main St., Stroudsburg). Tickets: $10. Info: 570.420.2808, dawestheband.blogspot.com
Regardless of where Dawes is actually playing music, its listeners are in California.
“(The setting influences us). Very much so. More than I was aware of,” Taylor Goldsmith, songwriter, guitarist, vocalist and co-founder of the California-based folk-rock act said. Dawes current home region of Laurel Canyon, just north of Los Angeles, has long been a community dotted with celebrity residents from the entertainment industry, with a rich musical heritage that includes Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, the Eagles and many more.
“It permeates through the music. It’s this sort of undefinable quality of the Canyon,” Goldsmith, 23, said from New York City the night after Dawes performed a sold-out show at Webster Hall with indie-pop band Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros. “There are a lot of people like Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young whose influences are in our sound. I think their music is a different experience for us. It’s sort of like what I imagine it may be for someone from New Jersey listening to (Bruce) Springsteen. The music speaks to them differently.”
Dawes, named one of Rolling Stone magazine’s “Breaking” bands last fall, performs at the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg on Friday. The show is part of the Pocono venue’s Independent Rock Series. On Saturday, the band will perform at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, an event most often associated with music icon Bob Dylan, one of Dawes’ biggest influences.
Since receiving the Rolling Stone accolade, Dawes has continued to be a band on the verge of greater national recognition. In addition to positive reviews of its debut album “North Hills” in music mags Relix, Filter and Rolling Stone, Spin named the band one of the “30 Must-Hear Artists at Bonnaroo” for 2010. Dawes will also perform at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago in August.
Goldsmith and the other members of Dawes — Taylor’s brother Griffin on drums, bassist Wylie Gelber and pianist and vocalist Alex Casnoff — are not caught up in the momentum those press clippings and appearances may give the band.
“We notice (that we have buzz) in reviews; it’s great for people to say that, but we haven’t seen it turn into more fans or money yet,” Goldsmith said with a laugh.
Though the very young band — Goldsmith is its oldest member — still has time to find a larger audience, Dawes has already taken an artistic stand: Simon Dawes, the band’s earlier incarnation with high school friend Blake Mills, was a rock act whose song material, like the 2006 full-length “Carnivore,” “didn’t matter,” according to Goldsmith. “Back then we were just excited to be on stage in front of people. That was all we cared about,” Goldsmith said.
After Mills left the band, taking his middle name Simon with him, Dawes, so named after the Goldsmiths’ grandfather, made the decision to press on in a different direction, with a stripped-down name and sound.
“When that band was sort of at its end, we decided that the only way we wanted to continue to do it was if we did songs with some meaning.”
The disparate styles and the speed of the switch to the more emergent indie-folk genre — one with critical darlings like Dr. Dog, The Avett Brothers, Wilco and more — has led to the occasional music journalist or fan accusing Dawes of less-than-pure artistic motives.
“Yeah, we get that,” Goldsmith said with a touch of exasperation. “People think we’re jumping on a bandwagon. To which we say, ‘What bandwagon?’ It’s us just aiming to make the music we want to make. We aren’t pretending to do anything.”
Indeed, the oft-poetic songwriting, pitch-perfect harmonies and roots-y arrangements on the songs on “North Hills” sound very authentic, especially on the pretty, hymn-like “Love Is All That I Am,” the splashy, twang-y “When You Call My Name” and the rousing “When My Time Comes,” the song for which the band recently released a video referencing the classic Paul Newman film “Cool Hand Luke.”
“Now, that we can’t take credit for,” Goldsmith said. “That was the director’s (Adam Nee) idea. Having the children play the characters (in the film) puts the themes into a different context.”
As Dawes continues touring, the band is also writing new material for a 2011 follow-up to “North Hills,” Goldsmith said. Though the band’s musical style will not totally change again, the songwriting topics have already been influenced by not being in Laurel Canyon.
“One album was about getting on the road and seeing the world, while the next will be written while we were embedded out there and doing it. We have to trust ourselves.”
w
