Dashboard Confessional

It seems Someone forgot to tell Chris Carrabba that he was supposed to be washed up by now, or at the very least, taking water and sinking fast. After all, he was the somewhat unwilling face of this millennium’s first big cultural tidal wave of trendiness, the musical poutfest known as emo. A hastily assembled collection acoustic paeans to heartache and hard-won summer romance that Carrabba, who was then fronting Florida band Further Seems Forever released under the name Dashboard Confessional, immediately struck a chord with legions of teens looking for something other than blasting guitars and testosterone-fueled rock music. And what started out as an underground phenomenon quickly earned Carrabba — who had since transformed Dashboard Confessional from a one-man project to a full four-piece, including guitarist John Lefler, drummer Mike Marsh and bassist Scott Schoenbeck — a place in the pantheon of rock stardom. Dashboard’s live shows, which had become legendary for crowd-singalongs, soon became a stunning spectacle, with hundreds, even thousands of kids singing along to every song with the utmost sincerity.
    This popularity soon incurred the obligatory backlash. Though Dashboard Confessional continued to gain fans, touring behind 2001’s The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most and two subsequent EPs, the band also became a line in the musical sand. It seemed you either loved Dashboard Confessional or you hated them. But the more some hated the man and his music, the more his supporters seemed to love him, and still they came in greater numbers to belt out his songs in unison and buy his records. The idea had indeed became the institution, and Carrabba and band could have put their grandkids through college simply by continuing on course.
    But a funny thing happened with 2003’s A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar. Dashboard Confessional began a slow turn, away from the acoustic, plaintive balladry that had brought them thus far and towards a somewhat nebulous, electrified pop sound. Like Dylan at Newport (only with better hair), Carrabba had gone electric, and there was no turning back. Many assumed that this would spell the end of the band, which had merely been in the right place at the right time, and rode their frontman’s good looks and whining lyricism as far as it would take them. The cultural tides had changed and emo as a genre was receding fast. Many posited that Dashboard Confessional would go with it.
    Three years later, however, Dashboard Confessional are still here, and are poised to be bigger and better than ever. Their long-anticipated new record, Dusk and Summer was co-produced by two of the biggest names in mainstream rock, Daniel Lanois (U2, Dylan) and Don Gilmore (Linkin Park, Good Charlotte). With its straightforward melodicism and lush instrumentation, the album marks a graduation of sorts for Carrabba and Dashboard Confessional: from poster boys of a musical sub-genre, to a band that stands alone on its own musical merit. Though some, he concedes, are probably still holding out for a return to his earlier sound, Carrabba is, it seems, happier than ever with his band, his music and his still die-hard chorus of fans.

I have to say, I’m pretty stoked about the new record.
I’m really glad to hear that. I’m probably more stoked than you are [laughs].

This record seemed like it took awhile to make. I remember hearing, early on, that you started it, then scrapped it. Is that true?
I remember reading that before I started the record, so I don’t know who started that rumor. I may have by accident, because I had told somebody that I was scrapping the demos that I had made and starting over. So the next thing you know, I hear that we had recorded a record and scrapped it. But it was sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy because we recorded the record, and when we were done I realized that I had so much more that I wanted to do, so we continued. There certainly wasn’t a scrapped record. It was just a longer effort.

What do you think was behind that decision to keep going?
I just didn’t close the door when I was done. You know, sometimes you finish and you have to put it to bed; you’re forced to for different reasons, like maybe you only have so much time to record or maybe only so many songs. But we weren’t given a timeline. When the record was done there was one song that the label wanted us to maybe take another swing at. It was a song that I hadn’t recorded but that they had heard and wanted me to try. So I went back in, but while I was in there I said, “Well, listen. If I’m gonna go in and set everything up, can I record a few more songs?” and they said yes. Because the recording process was so productive the first time, because I was so excited about the creative aspect of working with Daniel [Lanois], I just sort of started writing in droves. I’m fairly prolific, in quantity, but with this, the quality matched the quantity, you know? It was like, “Oh, this is really new ground. We need to stay at this.”

Do you think people will be able to hear the difference between the Don Gilmore tracks and the Daniel Lanois tracks, or do they both kind of flow together?
Hopefully, as a listener, you couldn’t tell. A lot of what took so much time was making sure that, sort of on an elemental, individual level, that we were applying both schools of sounds and song sensibility to each group of songs.

There definitely does seem to be a lot more going on, sonically speaking, on this record — a lot more going on with the bass, drum loops and stuff like that. Was there a conscious effort to do more of that sort of thing?
I’ll tell you what the initial step for all that was, like how that began. When I wrote the other couple records, I only had an acoustic guitar. I had an acoustic and an electric, and that was my arsenal. But now I’ve got drums and drum machines, I’ve got bass guitars, so I’ve started writing with bass, or like, there’s one song—it’d be the one that you would never guess — I actually wrote the drum part of the song before the rest of the song, and it’s one of the most tender songs there.



Which song is that?
It’s a song called “Stolen,” and you would never believe that unless I told you, I think, because it’s not a rock song. It’s really rooted in melody. It’s just a roundabout record. I gave up rules a long time ago, and it’s really served me well. People wanted me to fulfill expectations, and I started thinking the quickest path to not fulfilling expectations is by trying to fulfill expectations. So I said to myself, “Just give it up man, do what you do, keep yourself challenged.” And because of that, I don’t have to sit down with an acoustic guitar to write a whole song. But then when I do, it’s almost a homecoming to me as a songwriter. Like when I wrote the song “Dusk and Summer,” I just sat down and it came out with such relative ease. Actually, it wasn’t even relative ease, it was unprecedented ease. It was within minutes. And then there are other songs that can take weeks or months.

“Dusk and Summer” is the only song on the album that is sort of a throwback to the old idea of Dashboard Confessional. Do you think there are people out there who will be disappointed that this record isn’t more of just you with an acoustic guitar?
Yeah, because there were people who were fans of that and that alone. And I can’t blame them if they don’t like what I’ve done since then, because it is a little different. But it’s not so drastically different that it’s off-putting in my opinion, and it’s not their opinion. But I kind of believe…look, I don’t have a crystal ball, but I know how things go, and I know what I enjoy. And I just have this assumption that it’s a cyclical road, that I’ll find my way back to that stuff, and then I’ll find my way away from that stuff again, just me and a guitar. I mean, it’s never gone away, I play probably 40 shows a year just by myself. It’s something I desire, so I know what they need, because I need it too. But I feel that this is where my heart is as a writer and as a performer. You can’t make yourself — well, I guess you could, maybe some people could — but I can’t compromise myself just to be back where I was. But luckily, I think what I’ve done is better than anything I’ve ever done, including those records. I think for those kids that didn’t like the last record because it was electric, this is the time for them to give me another chance, and I think they’ll be satisfied. And if not, one day there will be another acoustic record, down the road.

Do you think that you’ve finally earned the right to do whatever you want, musically?  
That’s a funny way to put it, “have I earned the right?” I don’t know. You’re kind of right, you’re sort of at the will of these people, because they’ve been gracious to me and you don’t want to leave anybody burned. But I think what they’ve connected to is this sort of honesty that I portray. The songs come from an honest place, so I can’t drive them to a dishonest place just to make them sound like some songs I used to write. But I don’t feel like, in a cocksure way, like [assumes mean tone], “I’ve earned the right do this my way!” I just think that I have to do it my way, or I’m doing a disservice to anyone who’s ever liked me.

You always used to hear about Dashboard shows being crazy because the audience would all sing along, to every word. Has that changed at all, with time or with the new sound at all?
It’s only magnified. It’s gone nowhere. You’d think that, sometimes we have electric guitars now, and that we’d just drown them out. But it’s impossible.



You’ve tried?
[Laughs] Well, I haven’t tried but my front-of-house guy, you know the guy who mixes what the audience hears, says to me, “I can never get any PA louder than the crowd. It’s just impossible. The louder I go, the louder they go.”

How does that feel, to still get that sort of reception after all this time?
That’s when you realize that you’ve sort of been blessed with something, because you’ve been given license to do what you love, and do it for a living, and not only that but you get to change the way you do it, and for the most part it continues to be embraced. Well, that’s kind of the dream, and who knows how long that lasts?

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