Dawes

Los Angeles four-piece Dawes have just returned with their fourth record, All Your Favourite Bands.The name isn’t a conceited proclamation of Dawes’ history-condensing prowess. Rather, it’s taken from the album’s title track, which has frontman Taylor Goldsmith singing in an earnest tone, “May all your favourite bands stay together”. In the spirit of this sentiment, the BRAG caught up with Taylor’s younger brother and Dawes drummer Griffin Goldsmith to find out about some of his favourite bands.

Dawes’ melodically rich Americana owes a debt to the likes of Neil Young, Gram Parsons, Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and The Band. But that’s a long way from where Goldsmith’s musical fandom began. “Despite being five years younger than my brother, we very much grew up together and in the same environment,” he says. “So we were listening to a lot of the same stuff at the same time. I was listening to Third Eye Blind and Blink-182 and Marcy Playground and bands like that when I was 12.”

From here, Goldsmith’s tastes quickly expanded, and music subsequently shifted from a casual interest into an all-encompassing passion. “I was super impressionable around 13,” he says. “My brother was in a band with a musician, who’s still a good friend of ours, named Blake Mills. I was taking a lot of my cues from them, and they were very into Steely Dan. I don’t necessarily listen to it as avidly as I used to, but that definitely played a big part for me at a pivotal time in my life.”

Goldsmith is now 25 years old and has been playing in Dawes for roughly a third of his life. Being in a successful band can be like living in a bubble, but the drummer’s tenure with Dawes hasn’t constricted his listening habits. In fact, a lot of his musical interests are “drastically different” to Dawes.

“I listen to a lot of jazz and hip hop,” he says. “I guess maybe there are subtle influences of jazz drummers that I like that make their way into my playing. Bill Evans, Roy Haynes, Mos Def, Nas, The Pointer Sisters, lots of different types of world music – the list goes on.”

On the subject of hip hop, Goldsmith was recently won over by the genre’s most conspicuous contemporary trailblazer. “Obviously [Kanye West] is incredibly successful, so people talk about him a lot and I kind of just never got it and wasn’t a big fan,” he says. “Then one night on the tour bus I went to the back lounge and put on Graduation. I’d never really listened to that record front to back, and it blew my mind. Then I went on, in the next few weeks and months, to listen to everything else he’s done and get into a lot of production work he’s done on other people’s records.

“My brother had a similar experience too, but starting with Yeezus,” he adds. “I had listened to Yeezus and I wasn’t stoked on it and then I went back to Graduation and consequently got into Yeezus and Watch The Throne and everything else. But his starting point was Yeezus and then he went back and got into Late Registration and College Dropout and everything else.”

The members of a band are often perceived to share the same taste, but that’s not always the case. While Goldsmith says the four members of Dawes are very accepting of each other’s proclivities, there are some disparities. “My brother, being a songwriter, is much more willing and able to get past poor production if a song is good,” he says. “Whereas I’m able to get past a song that’s not very good if the playing and arrangement’s good and the production’s good. So I totally understand why my brother is super into the new Waterboys record, despite the production not being up our alley. And [he understands] why I listen to Roy Haynes.”

Goldsmith has been a professional musician since the age of 18, so he naturally looks up to musicians who’ve managed to stay afloat in the biz over the course of several decades.

“We’ve crossed paths with many older musicians who are now in their 60s or 70s and they’ve been doing it since they were 15 or younger,” he says. “The few that we’ve become relatively close with in Los Angeles include Benmont Tench from The Heartbreakers – he played on our second record and he’s a very inspiring guy – Jackson Browne’s still doing it, and I’ve more recently become friends with Jim Keltner, who’s extremely prolific. That’s what we aspire to ultimately – to make this a career for the rest of our lives.”