You also did some jam sessions with Conor Oberst, Benmont Tench and Chris Robinson. Was that before you recorded North Hills ?

Yeah, it was right before we started recording, and a little bit during and a little bit after. [Jonathan Wilson] had some jams and stuff after we finished. He and Conor are extremely close friends, and that’s how we met him. It was a really great experience for us, because everyone at Johnny’s house were such good players and it forced us to step up our game. We would always take pride in how we played, but then we had to check in with ourselves; it was a humbling experience, like, “Oh, this is how true dedication pays off,” and we really have a long way to go.

Do you think those sessions pushed the sound in any particular direction?

I think so. I mean, Jonathan is such a professional musician that, when we were in there it was important for me, if I was gonna do the guitar solo in front of him or the guitar track in front of him, to do it right immediately. I didn’t want to be that amateur where we’re eventually on take number 30 and I’m still not clear on where I’m going, especially in front of Jonathan. It was sort of a point of pride for me that I didn’t let that happen, so he definitely forced us to step up our game.

Was there a reason for the analog recording of North Hills ?

At first, some said, “It will make your recording sound warmer, it’s all for the sake of the sound” which I couldn’t make heads or tails with, because a lot of people would also tell me, “You can just run it through tape afterwards,” or “It really doesn’t make a difference because digital recording is so advanced at this point.” Hearing it on tape definitely made a difference, hearing it on reverb from a spring reverb in the other room that is massive, or when your slapback delay is from an actual slapback take machine—it really makes all the difference. It feels so good using real reverb that you just want to keep turning it up and up and up. It’s pretty crazy how strong that is. Then also—the main thing if you like—it forced us to realize that editing wasn’t gonna be easy, as it would have been digitally, and so it forced us to play as well as we could. For us to really commit to doing a good performance from the beginning was effective for the rest of the performances. Not only did it help us to not mess up, but it forced us to have intention behind every single note.

What is Dawes’ songwriting process like?

I write the songs by myself: the chords and the lyrics. But in terms of how we play it and how we arrange it, it’s much more of a collaborative experience. I leave it up to [the other members] to do what they think. In terms of the song itself, it’s just me with a guitar and vocals, sometimes piano and vocals.

And what are your main influences on your songwriting? Is it mainly first-hand experience?

Yeah, for now. I mean, there are songwriters who are able to create worlds and stories that they don’t have any immediate experience with, but I don’t have enough confidence or experience yet to feel like it’s genuine when I try to talk about something I don’t have any personal experience with. So, for now, I just write about my own life and my own experiences.

You played at Pier 41 in New York on Thursday, July 8, and performed some new songs, like “How Far We’ve Come” and “If I wanted Someone.” They sound bigger with more elaborate arrangements, especially “Fire Away.” What are your thoughts on the newer compositions?

It’s trying to do two things at once. We’re trying to just be Dawes, you know, to just give Dawes fans more Dawes. We don’t want to be that band that totally just throws a curve ball and bums everybody out because they were looking forward to a certain kind of thing. So we definitely want to stay the course and be the band that we’ve always been. But at the same time, when we made North Hills, we had never been on tour, and so it’s a bit of a mellower record. It’s indicative of where we were at, at the time. And now we’ve toured pretty consistently for over a year and a half, and we want the record to show for that and we want to kick it up a notch. We like to think that the songwriting has moved forward a little bit and is a little bit more ambitious. And yeah, we want to ride that line, somewhere in between being the band that we’ve always been, but at the same time pushing the envelope and showing hard examples of growth.

So are you currently planning on recording a follow-up to North Hills ?

Yeah, I think we might do it in the fall, when we finish this tour. After three months of touring hard I think we’ll be comfortable enough with the material.

We talked about the sessions with musicians at Jonathan’s house, but you’ve also been playing with Matthew Vasquez (of Delta Spirit) and John McCauley (of Deer Tick). What’s the status of MG&V?

I don’t know. We made the record. John kind of facilitated the whole thing. John was like, “You wanna make an album?” and I was like, “Sure.” And then when I was down there—he met Matt but he didn’t know Matt— when I was down there I was like, “Hey, my buddy might wanna come down, would that be cool, and [John] said, Yeah, sure.” And Matt came so it became the three-guy thing. And it was funny because we just said, “Let’s do this,” and we did it; we’re really happy with it. And we did it really fast, wrote a bunch of songs and we’re excited about the material. But as of now, there is no release plan.

I feel like with most bands that do something else for a second, like Monsters of Folk or Justin Vernon doing Gayngs or something like that, they can afford it because they’re the biggest acts around. And everyone’s gonna wait for their next material—they are very established artists. Whereas I feel like Dawes and Deer Tick and Delta Spirit, especially Dawes, are not yet established enough for us to take time off and focus our energy towards side projects. So we really want to make sure that we are putting all our attention and work towards Dawes, and the other guys feel that way about their bands too. It was fun, and we want to make sure that put it out there and release it in the most supportive way to our main priorities as possible and by no means let that overshadow any of what we do otherwise.

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