photo: Jon Chu

***

Taylor Goldsmith has received Conan clearance. 

It’s a warm, late-July afternoon and the 38-year old, Los Angeles-bred Dawes frontman is sitting on a bench, deep within Fort Adams State Park, on the final day of Rhode Island’s famed Newport Folk Festival. In a few hours, the singer/guitarist and the rest of his group will serve as the house band for Conan O’Brien’s headlining set, helping to close out the 65th annual event. During the hootenanny style revue, they’ll back an impressive and surprisingly eclectic mix of announced and unannounced Newport Folk performers, including Jack White, Mavis Staples, Brittany Howard, Nick Lowe, Langhorne Slim and Nathaniel Rateliff. Goldsmith will also lead his bandmates and O’Brien’s longtime musical director, Jimmy Vivino, through The Allman Brothers Band’s best-selling single, “Ramblin’ Man,” as a tribute to the tune’s author, Dickey Betts.

“When we first started, we idolized the mythology of The Band—no surprise there—and the idea that they backed up Bob Dylan, Ronnie Hawkins and all the people they played with in The Last Waltz was always something that was thrilling to us,” Goldsmith says, adjusting his sunglasses and briefly pausing to greet an industry friend that manages Goose, who he previously jammed with in a festival situation. “We found that with all the bands that we loved—Little Feat backed up so and so on this album, Fleetwood Mac’s rhythm section were on ‘Werewolves of London.’ An early tour for us was opening for M. Ward and part of the deal was that we were gonna be his band. I’ve gotten to play so many of my heroes’ songs shoulder to shoulder with those heroes, and that is a very rare thing for any artist. We’re not the biggest band and there are plenty of better guitar players than me, but I’ve had people in much bigger bands kind of grab me by the shoulders and ask, ‘What’s it like?’ Part of it is luck, but also something about knowing that this means a lot to us also makes us easy to approach.”

Dawes’ critical and commercial ascent during the past decade and half runs parallel to Newport Folk’s own rebirth as a can’t-miss destination for a new generation of indie-folk, Americana and post-jam musicians. Taylor and his bandmates have been a regular presence at the event during that time period and the members of Dawes have participated in some of the festival’s most unique collaborations.

“When we first came here, this community brought us in so warmly, and a series of very special moments in our story happened here,” he says, shifting his body to avoid the warm sun. “Our first time on this stage, we invited our dad to come run down the middle aisle, and every time we play here, I think, ‘Are we still a Newport band or are we gonna show up this year and feel like we’re part of the graduating class of yesteryear?’ And sure enough, every time I get here, it’s like, ‘No, this is still family.’ We were Conor Oberst’s band, we were Jackson Browne’s band, we were Elvis Costello’s band, we were the Bob Dylan band for a 50th-anniversary tribute.”

He pauses and then adds with a laugh, “Come to think of it, I don’t really remember the last time we played any Dawes songs here.”

Goldsmith has long been able to eloquently contextualize his band’s place in the greater folk-rock zeitgeist, but he’s been thinking about Dawes’ own sense of identity a bit more recently as they prepare to roll out their ninth full-length studio effort, the Mike Viola-produced Oh Brother, in October. It’s their first release since 2022’s expansive Misadventures of Doomscroller and, more notably, their first record since founding bassist Wylie Gelber and keyboardist Lee Pardini, who had been with Dawes since 2015, both stepped away from the band last year. The unexpected lineup shift left Taylor and his brother, drummer Griffin Goldsmith, as the only two core members of Dawes.

“I started writing these songs right when we began recording Misadventures of Doomscroller, which we recorded the month after [2020’s] Good Luck with Whatever was released,” he says a few days after Newport, while calling before a gig in Alaska. “So I’ve been putting together the right list of tunes for a good while now.”

It’s something of a monumental moment for Taylor—Alaska was the last of the 50 states he had yet to visit. “I’ve played them all except Hawaii, but I’ve been to Hawaii,” he says proudly.

Taylor was working on his latest batch of songs in 2023 when Gelber and Pardini announced their departures in quick succession. Gelber stepped away first, in large part to focus on building instruments and other behind-the-scenes work, while Pardini left later in the year.

“I still love them both dearly and it totally made sense from their perspective— I’m not gonna say, ‘We wanted them to go,’ because we didn’t, but we definitely understood why it had to be that way,” he says. “We see Wylie almost weekly, or even daily—he’s still very involved with helping us put our studio together and fixing gear and just making our guitars look cool.”

 “Wylie and Lee were a huge part of the band’s sound, incredible musicians and like brothers to us,” Griffin adds. “It had never occurred to us to not have keys on a song because that was the configuration. It was a four-piece band.”

As he is thinking about the drama-free— but still impactful—personnel changes that set Oh Brother in motion, Griffin is relaxing at home, a few days after Dawes returned from Alaska. He notes that he has now actually played all 50 states, thanks to a trip to Hawaii he took with musician and pro skateboarder Travis Graves when he was still a teenager.

“We had been traveling with them for 6-10 months, year after year,” the drummer says. “It was a weird feeling for sure, just imagining not touring with a dude I’ve been to 49 states with. But it wasn’t surprising with Wylie in that we could just sense where his head was at. So when it came down to it, it was all in love. With Lee, it was a little different, and I can’t really characterize his reasons, only because they still remain a little unclear to me. That being said, there’s a total understanding, there’s no wrong reason and it’s all good. We just wish him nothing but the best. So there was never any bad blood or anything like that. It was only supportive.”

Though the Goldsmiths spent some time contemplating how their audience would perceive the charge, they remained committed to Dawes as they figured out their next steps.

“If you’re a fan of the band and you’re looking at half of them leaving and the remaining two are the brothers, people might think we’re total assholes,” Griffin admits. “If we had felt like we had lost something that we couldn’t regain, then maybe we would’ve talked about a name change or something. But it definitely felt like, though these guys were such huge, integral parts of the sound, Taylor and I could go forward and still represent this part of the band that people identify with. The essence of Dawes still comes across. It still feels like the band to me, and there’s a certain amount of identity baked into the songs, Taylor’s writing and the relationship that he and I have instrumentally.”

“It’s this fascinating thing because, at first, it knocks the wind out of you,” Taylor adds. “People that you love are needing to do the right thing for them, which, while respected, is still scary. But then we started to realize, ‘Though this is not something we wished for, we can make lemonade out of this. We can make this a cool moment. It can be the injection of life that any creative existence needs. With the Dead, people are like, ‘Are you a Keith person, are you a Brent person or are you a Pigpen person?’ With the Stones, it’s: ‘Are you a Brian Jones person or a Mick Taylor person or a Ronnie Wood person?’ It’s part of the fun of being a fan. It’s an opportunity for us nerd fans to play with our sports cards. We can step into this new phase. Even though it’s record number nine, in some respects, it’s like another record number one.”

photo: Dean Budnick

***

Dawes grew out of Simon Dawes, the LA indie-rock project that Taylor and guitarist Blake Mills started when they were teenagers. Both Griffin and Gelber eventually joined the band—which took its moniker from its founders’ middle names—before Mills stepped away shortly after the release of their only full-length set, 2006’s Carnivore. Mills went on to launch a successful career as a producer and musician, collaborating with everyone from Fiona Apple to Bob Dylan, Beck, Bruce Hornsby, Alabama Shakes, Jack Johnson, Derek Trucks and Laura Marling along the way. And the remaining Simon Dawes members recalibrated and reset as Dawes, a more Americana-leaning act driven by Taylor’s songs. They released their breakthrough debut, the Jonathan Wilson produced North Hills, on ATO in 2009, which turned them into festival favorites and pillars of a new generation of hipster approved folk-rock acts.

For the next decade and a half, Dawes issued a series of solid, well-crafted LPs at a steady clip, dropping a new set every year or two. Their keyboard seat was a bit of a revolving chair for a while, with founding member Tay Strathairn cycling in and out twice and Alex Casnoff adding his touch in between, until Pardini officially signed on almost 10 years ago. Guitarist Duane Betts served as a touring member in 2014 and 2015 as well, but despite those slight shifts, the core of Taylor, Griffin and Gelber remained remarkably sturdy throughout Dawes’ rise. Even the group’s producers felt like extended family members, with Wilson and Mills both sitting at the helm at times.

“Every time we finish a record, with everyone we’ve ever worked with, we always leave the studio being like, ‘We can’t wait to come back and do this again with you in the next 12-18 months,’” Taylor says. “And then life happens and it goes elsewhere. When we made [2015’s] All Your Favorite Bands with Dave Rawlings, we were like, ‘That was maybe the most fun we’ve ever had.’ Then, later, Blake and I were hanging out a lot and it made sense to work with him on [2016]’s We’re All Gonna Die.”

Initially, the members of Dawes were thinking about partnering with Wilson once again for the sessions that eventually surfaced as Oh Brother, but after enduring such significant lineup changes, they decided to switch gears.

“Taylor’s writing pretty consistently, so we get familiar with the new songs as a band on stage during soundcheck,” Griffin says. “Sometimes it can be a year or 18 months before we actually go to record them. So a lot of these tunes were in the periphery but not being worked on. When Wylie decided to leave the band and then, when Lee left shortly thereafter, Taylor and I were like, ‘We need to reevaluate here. How do we wanna make this record?’ We decided on Mike Viola because he’s like an uncle to us.”

Though the producer—whose credits include Panic! at the Disco, Andrew Bird, Watkins Family Hour and Jenny Lewis— had never recorded a proper Dawes album before, he had worked closely with Taylor’s wife, singer and actress Mandy Moore, who utilized the members of Dawes on her two most recent, Viola-produced releases.

“His solo records, the way that his production sounds, the work he did on Inside Problems for Andrew Bird, we’ve always loved him in a strictly professional sense,” Taylor says. “But also he’s very much family. My kids were born with his music playing in the background. This was a very vulnerable and raw period. And not that Jonathan and Blake aren’t beloved people in our lives, but Mike was just kind of right there. We said, ‘The pressure can be off; let’s just see what happens.’ Plus, Mike understands the difference between what makes a good song for Mike and what makes a good song for Dawes.”

The Goldsmiths were also drawn to Viola’s home studio, looking to rebuild their band in a garage-like space around their primary instruments. Taylor notes that Mills currently works at Sound City and Wilson is out in Topanga, Calif., while Viola is more of a neighbor.

“There was something kind of casual and comforting about stepping into this next phase in that environment,” he says. “We preferred that to walking into some state-of-the-art studio where people were clocking in.”

The brothers largely cut their parts live on the floor and then added in other instruments as needed. Guitarist Trevor Menear, a touring member of the band since 2016, tracked a few parts live, and Viola added some bass, yet the Goldsmiths’ contributions are the bones of what became Oh Brother.

“We felt like this was a good time and space for Taylor and I to be front and center on this record and get in a room with Mike,” Griffin says, noting that his lead vocal tune, “Enough Already,” was the rare track that turned out to be a little more of a piecemeal effort. “We’ve worked with him in several different capacities and really wanted to take our time hashing out these arrangements.”

“We’ve always dreamed of making a record like Animals, Love Over Gold, a lot of these jazz records or a lot of the Zappa stuff, where it’s like, ‘Let’s sit in these songs. Maybe the tracklist is shorter, but the album length won’t be any shorter. Let’s see how long we can explore them,’” Taylor says. “So we did that with Misadventures—that’s always been a part of our show and we wanted to bring that to the record. We felt like that was such a perfect opportunity to do that. Every album is a reaction to whatever you just did. Some artists will say, ‘Fuck those first few records; they suck,’ but I don’t feel antagonistic toward any of our music. But I do feel like there’s different corners of our identity that our records touch on. These songs were based in more of the country, singer-songwriter, traditional language, with these two ingredients.”

They revisited old riffs, rebuilt tunes like “Mister Los Angeles” and stripped away extra parts. The LP’s title is a nod to fact that Dawes now solely consists of two siblings as well as to the challenges they’ve faced both in and out of the band in recent years. 

“I thought a lot about Brothers in Arms while making this album because Dire Straits started out as a quartet, then it was a trio and, by Brothers in Arms, the only original members were the bassist and Mark Knopfler. Yet it still retains the essence of what Mark was about, and what his playing and songs could do,” Taylor says. “That was a guiding light.”

***

One outside force that has continued to shape Dawes’ ethos, if not their sound, in recent years is their association with the Grateful Dead. The Goldsmiths have long shared an appreciation for the Dead and a love and understanding of the classic-rock catalog in general—Taylor even hyped them to Aquarium Drunkard at a time when the Dead were far less celebrated in indie circles. But Dawes remained on the “adjacent” side of jam-adjacent scene for many years.

Wilson, an outspoken fan of the Dead who has backed its surviving members, pointed them in the right direction while making North Hill, but Dawes’ true indoctrination began through their friendship with Jason Crosby—a longtime pillar of the jamband community who has worked closely with Bob Weir and Phil Lesh. Griffin met Crosby when they were both part of a North California session for a Tim Bluhm album. Then, when Crosby was in LA, Griffin invited him to take part in a local wine-bar gig on a night Jackson Browne was scheduled to be in attendance. Griffin knew that Browne was looking for a “Lindley-esque violinist/keyboardist” and used the jam session to help Crosby low key audition for the spot. (Crosby ended up getting the gig with Browne, beginning his own next act.)

Crosby, in turn, recommended Griffin and the other members of Dawes to Lesh, beginning a fruitful partnership that continues to this day. The musicians have participated in numerous Phil & Friends lineups around the country and were even slated to take part in Lesh’s big birthday shows at Port Chester, N.Y.’s Capitol Theatre in March of 2020 before those dates were postponed due to COVID.

Griffin says that he had been familiar with “the obvious stuff—Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty and Europe ‘72,” pretty early on, but began to appreciate their music on a deeper level when Dawes found themselves sharing a bill with Lesh as part of Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival.

“I heard those records, and it was definitely like, ‘This is trippy music,’ but I didn’t fully get it because I was 19 or whatever,” he says. “I would listen to the live stuff and be like, ‘This sounds either really good or really bad to me,’ and I could never buy it wholesale. It’s the most quintessential, dumb, cliché story. I got stoned one night on Willie’s weed and walked out and watched Phil’s set and was just like, ‘Oh, my god, this is insane, I get it!’ It sounds stupid to say, but this is music conceived on drugs, and being in that headspace, even a little bit, it just starts to come together. I’ve had a few experiences like that with the music since, and now, when I listen to it, it’s almost like the further out they go in the wrong direction, the more I like it.”

The music itself also started rubbing off on Dawes’ sound, most specifically on Misadventures of Doomscroller, which features three numbers that hover around the nine-minute mark and some adventurous, suite-like musical passages. The band promoted the sessions on CBS Saturday Morning, playing the longest continuous song in the program’s history.

“Jason knew I was a huge fan, and I went and jammed with Phil. I was actually scheduled to go play a show with him in Mount Tam before Dawes got involved that got pulled. We eventually got the call, and playing with Phil opened some musical pathways for us,” Griffin says. “He thrives on taking the band to pretty wild places that could be uncomfortable, and that was something I was really vibing on. On a graph of quality night per night, I hope that we’re riding a little bit above average, but it’s pretty consistent—some small dips and small peaks. Whereas with Phil, there are deep valleys and high highs, and there’s something in that space between there which is all encompassing. That’s what brings people in. It’s almost like what makes that music for the everyman is that it gets super nerdy and musical. And the songs are great.”

“We try to maintain a very clear sense of self in what we do and try to be true to that, but at the same time, I learn from everybody we play with,” Taylor says. “Phil will not let anyone play the same thing twice, and he won’t let anyone stop playing. He’s like, ‘Even when there’s a vocal, just keep going,’ so everything is so free and so thready and so multidimensional. That definitely left an impression on us and showed us when that can work for a band like us.  Some of these songs don’t have any instrumental parts, like ‘That Western Skyline’ or ‘House Parties,’ but they are still living, breathing songs even though there’s no solo section. There’s an identity on the stage that feels very alive. Phil taught us that, even though Oh Brother doesn’t sound like a Grateful Dead album. And to people who might have gotten on board with Misadventures and might be wondering where that went, I would say, ‘The Dead followed up Terrapin Station with Shakedown Street, and they are both incredible albums’”

Dawes has also become more visible on the jam-pop circuit, collaborating with Goose and The Revivalists. In addition to sharing the stage with the latter group, Taylor helped polish up one of their older originals into a new track they plan to release.

“I love going on tour with other people and just getting a sense of how their universe operates, how their own community functions and, with The Revivalists, watching the embrace of those fans and their commitment to these, in some cases, fuckin’ hits,” he says. “But they would also stretch, they would really celebrate themselves as musicians. That doesn’t always happen when someone is rolling with hits. And I mean that as a compliment to them and anyone else in that lane. They are able to do both things in a really cool way, and their fans seem to be on board that train.”

Looking ahead, the Goldsmiths have already laid out a marathon tour in support of Oh Brother that will stretch deep into 2025. At recent concerts, they have been fleshing out the band with a mix of friends, like Frank LoCrasto, Z Lynch, Ian Bush and Dylan Meek. Taylor, who now has two young sons, is also feeling good about the space that the band currently occupies in his life. 

“Before fatherhood, the roles that I would play in different lanes of my life would bleed together,” he says. “I was Taylor the husband when I was also Taylor the musician, I was Taylor the musician when I was also Taylor the friend. Being a father, in a really healthy way, helped me delineate between those roles and helped me understand that I need to be certain things in certain moments of my life. I can kind of adopt qualities of those roles and employ them but that doesn’t mean I have to subscribe to them 100% of my day. So now it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m a dad right now and that means I need to put the phone away, I need to shed the ego, I need to get over whatever the hell I was thinking about [in terms of] a future show or tour because that is not important right now, and I need to be present with my kids.’”

And, more than ever, Dawes is now a family band. 

“Last year was hard—there was a lot of love, tears and positive vibes,” Taylor says. “I’m leaning on Griffin more than ever, and he’s leaning on me more than ever.”