Taylor Goldsmith

“Dawes is a rock 'n' roll band playing guitars, writing songs, working in a certain tradition. Through our attitude and personality, I hope, you can hear a song and go, 'That's a Dawes song.'”

“So, hopefully, us finding ways to constantly work, but always with a different product, will help our band play to more people and continue making music.”

“When I discovered Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I could explore the records that inspired me on a different level and that led me to Joni Mitchell, who is maybe my favorite of all time, and Warren Zevon. Those artists that wrote the lyrics that you try for.”

“We let the lyrics be the focus of the song. Which is not what you hear with some of the zeitgeisty bands, like the War on Drugs, who I love, their lyrics are usually buried and The National, one of my favorite bands, Matt Berninger writes in fragments, in a very impressionistic way.”

“Growing up, even finding all those notes that you write in first grade to your future self of like what you want to be when you grow up - it was always music.”

“All of the people we admire have extensive catalogs, so what's most exciting about people responding well to the band is allowing us to continue making as many records as we can.”

“I get the biggest kick out of it, to hear words that I wrote and chords that I wrote being sung by somebody else.”

“We've just always felt like we had a product onstage that represented us.”

“When you see yourself as the center of things, it deprives you of a certain level of empathy.”

“I feel like a lot of artists, when they're on their fourth record, they're perceived as the old guys. At least in this day and age. I like that people perceive us as just getting started because that's how we perceive ourselves.”

“A song like 'Telescope' was about a friend of mine. He doesn't know it's about him.”

“And that's the case with all of James McMurtry's songs. He never presents these characters for us to judge, but only to sympathize with. He has a capacity for compassion with every sketch that he makes with a person that he is not.”

“I have big plans to read books over again, but I've never re-read anything. The only books I've read over again are the books I didn't pay attention to in high school.”

“I've always been a little more narrative, a little more linear, a little more direct. People instantly want to classify that as something retro. It's just a way of writing songs.”

“That the longer you can work and stay in people's peripherals, the more likely folks might be to acknowledge you and know that you're there.”

“If what you do for a living is play drums or bass, then that defines you. You don't want to be some guy missing notes here and there; you want to really speak with it.”

“Sometimes songwriting can turn into a gossip column, and I try to avoid that as much as I can.”

“We knew what music we liked but not who was from where. As we started to look more into these artists, we started finding out that a lot of the stuff we were most drawn to was made in California.”

“When we were putting together 'One Of Us,' we were just following our impulses and what felt good.”

“For five albums, I would create an image of someone that wasn't true to who they were. I'd be in love with an idea. It's not an uncommon problem.”