Revenge of the Nerd

In the 1950s, when society as a whole seemed to be one big Norman Rockwell painting, disenchanted youths looking for something to latch on to idolized roughs like Marlon Brando and James Dean, the original rebel without a cause. Reagan’s ‘80s saw the evolution of rebellion into punk rock. But the new millennium, with its constant state of tumult and new-found chaos, has bred an entirely new form of rebellion: nerdy-ness. Gone are days of fighting and drunken lewdness; the youths of today rebel by way of in-depth internet discussions fueled by equally introspective music. Kind is the new mean; quiet is the new loud. It was once said that the meek shall inherit the earth, and if the recent rise to fame of Chris Carrabba — the heart and mind behind emotional acoustic rockers Dashboard Confessional, the James Dean of the Donnie Darko generation, a rebel with a cause — is any indication, it should be any day now.
After cutting his teeth in the Florida punk scene — fronting bands like The Vacant Andys and Further Seems Forever — and working as an elementary school administrator, Chris Carrabba decided to set out on his own, both literally and musically. Touring alone with just an acoustic guitar and an impressive set of lungs at his disposal, Carrabba’s solo act, which he dubbed Dashboard Confessional after a line in one of his first songs, “The Sharp Hint of New Tears,” was an unexpected twist on the increasingly tired emotional rock sound. A cult-like underground following soon began to develop, as did a major industry and music press buzz. Two full lengths, two EPs, a few added members and one MTV Unplugged CD / DVD later, Dashboard Confessional is poised to make to the leap from the Buzz Bin to mainstream notoriety. Currently on tour with Beck, Carrabba and his bandmates — drummer Mike Marsh, bassist Scott Schoenbeck and guitarist / pianist Johnny Lefler — are also playing a limited number of solo dates in anticipation of the group’s forthcoming full-length A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar. The Synthesis, after a few missed connections, finally caught up with Carrabba via cell-phone and roused him from his slumbers long enough to get a glimpse into life as the man behind Dashboard Confessional.

How’s it going?
We had one of those driving nights last night where nobody slept. I finally slept when we stopped and I just completely overslept; sorry about that.

No, it’s cool. So how’s the tour so far?
The tour’s been great. Beck’s incredible; not only is he just so incredible to watch play, but he’s just a super, super nice guy, which, when you’re out on the road, it’s cool when the people you’ve looked up to end up being people you should look up to.

What have the crowds been like? Has there been a good mix of Beck fans and Dashboard fans?
Yeah, our fans have been coming out; tickets prices are kind of high though. So it’s mostly Beck fans, but that’s great because the thing that our audiences have in common, I think, is that we both kind of stretch our audience, we push our music as far as our audience will let us. It’s almost boundary-less; we can change our music as much as we want and so can he. In other words, he’s got really open minded fans, so they’re willing to give us a chance.

Have you been playing any of the songs off A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar?
We’ve been playing a lot of the standards, but also usually three or four songs from the new record. But it’s only like and 11-song set, so that’s pretty good.

So for your solo dates, do you think you’ll play a little more of the new material?
I don’t know yet, we haven’t really thought about it. I mean, I imagine that we’ll play more songs overall, so we’ll probably play a few more old songs and a couple more new songs too.

What are the new songs like?
The songs have basically the same root, you know, just more fleshed out. Basically we’ve just employed more musical tactics than before, made the songs sound really rich and really layered, but still using it as a template for telling stories.

Is it still mainly acoustic, or is there a little more electric?
It’s a lot more electric, but it’s not like blaring over your head kind of electric; there’s some rock songs, but there’s a lot of clean guitar tones, pretty guitar sounds. To me, this record was about not making the same record again, but also staying true to the things that I think really did help us connect with our audience, which are staying really honest and not trying to overproduce anything. We didn’t record anything that we couldn’t play live…well, I take that back, we did record one thing that we can’t play live, because Johnny can’t play guitar and play piano at the same time. So there’s one three-second piece that I’m gonna admit to right now; unless we get somebody to play piano for three seconds we can’t play that piece live, but other than that, we didn’t use any studio tricks, and that’s really important to us. We were like “if we’re gonna make a record that is more layered, lets not go overboard.” That’s something I always admired about bands like U2, back in their Joshua Tree era; it was really rich and enjoyable, but you could actually see the band do those songs live. ‘Cause we’re not going to use loop machines, so if we can’t do it with the four guys in the band, then it’s probably not going to get done on the record.

The record comes out August 12th, right?
So they tell me.

Do you think this will be your big breakthrough into the mainstream pop world?
I don’t know, God, that kind of almost sounds scary.

No! I mean that in a good way.
I don’t know…I felt strange being judged on our last record. I don’t mean critiqued, I mean judged. Because I knew that it was a flash, it was a snapshot of where I was at a certain time, a very small period of time. But this album is where I’ve been over the course of the last two years and is a clearer version of the kind of songwriter I am. For instance, when I did the last record, I had just exorcised my rock demons because I had just made the Further [Seems Forever] record, my other band, which was a pretty intricate rock album. But this album is more of every aspect of what I do lumped into one. So do I hope this is going to be our breakthrough album? I can’t say. I can’t say I don’t hope it’ll be successful; of course I hope it’s successful. But at least I’m more comfortable with the idea that if I’m gonna be judged on it, it’s at least a more complete vision of who we are as a band.

I remember reading somewhere that you told a girl at a show who was giving you a hard time about being on MTV that you wanted everyone to have the chance to be into you, not just those people who were already in the know about you. I thought that was pretty remarkable.
It’s something that I came across growing up in the part of Florida where I grew up, which is fairly geographically isolated. When all these bands were coming up, we were all different bands from each other, we all dressed differently and all that stuff, but we didn’t set up any boundaries; we all went to each other’s shows and no one was made to feel like an outcast. So I was very early on given this idea that music is for everybody, so why be elitist? I think that’s the stupidest thing ever. The cooler-than-thou attitude is just stupid. We were kind of joking about it last night on the bus. I mean…we’re nerds.

I doubt that.
No it’s true. We sit around and talk about John Candy movies, we drink water after the show, not get loaded; we’re just kind of geeky. We’re nerds. How are we gonna profess that we’re so cool and that we’ve got to be elitist. We’re just completely normal geeks who play Tetris and go skateboarding and discuss books. We’re just completely normal people. I don’t understand that mentality; never have and never will. I used to try to justify it to my existing fans, like, “you have to let these new people in, you have to give them a chance.” But now I don’t know that I want to do the justifying. If you can’t be accepting, because these people aren’t cool enough, then the inverse is true. If you’re being such a shutout, maybe you’re the one that needs to re-examine.

I think for fans, it’s just a fear of people who maybe aren’t into it as much as they are stealing something that they feel is important.
I can understand that. I think everybody goes through that. I know I did with bands I loved when I was younger that were totally indie bands. Then they got successful — which now that I’m older and I understand what that means, that the band that I love can now support their family and themselves — which is a good thing. But at the time, I think I was more like, “That was mine. You took it from me.” But that’s not really the case at all.

What are your plans for the future?
Probably in the next three weeks, we’re gonna make a video. So that’s the most immediate thing. We’re gonna finish up this tour. Then we’ve got a headlining tour booked with MxPx, Brand New, Rooney and Vendetta Red, so it’s gonna be an amazingly fun late summer for us. But it’s so hard to say. When a record comes out like this, you do all the planning in the world and then you get caught up in the stream of it and it dictates to you what’s happening. We’re just excited. We feel like we’ve been stagnant for so long, and now that we’ve been on this tour, we’re just itching.

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