Live at the Belly Up: Dawes. (Belly Up Tavern, San Diego State University, PBS, 2022)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Two nights ago my husband Charles and I watched a Live at the Belly Up episode featuring a band called Dawes. I hadn’t realized that they’ve been around for about a decade, and they stemmed from an earlier band called Simon Dawes featuring a lead guitarist and co-songwriter named Blake Mills. When Mills bailed from the band in the early 2010’s the remaining members, singer/guitarist Taylor Goldsmith and his brother Griffin Goldsmith on drums, reorganized as Dawes and abandoned the earlier incarnation’s punk sound for what the official publicity describes as “ the Laurel Canyon sound with their Americana, folk and rock sounds” – though I hear almost nothing of the 1970’s Laurel Canyon scene of Crosby, Stills and Nash or Joni Mitchell in their music. The only songs they did that sounded remotely like that were two numbers featuring Taylor Goldsmith on acoustic guitar, “Moon in the Water” (which Taylor played and sang solo) and “Crack the Case” (which brought in the band playing softly behind him). Otherwise, Dawes emerges as a straightforward rock band, the kind of sound you’d expect from the people Taylor Goldsmith mentioned as his influences in his interviews: Bob Dylan, The Band (jointly and severally, I presume), Bruce Springsteen and Warren Zevon, who was on the fringes of the Laurel Canyon scene (he was signed to Asylum Records and Linda Ronstadt covered some ol his songs) but really wasn’t a part of it because his imagination was way too dark.

Dawes performed a series of quite good songs including the single from their very first album, “From a Window Seat,” as well as the single from their 2021 album release, “Who Do You Think You’re Talking To?” (It’s from their album Good Luck with Whatever, their most recent release, though they have another one scheduled to come out in July.) Besides the two acoustic tracks and the first two songs mentioned above, the band played “Mistakes We Should Have Made,” “To Be Completely Honest,” “When the Tequila Runs Out (We’ll Be Drinking Champagne),” “Until My Time Comes,” “None of My Business,” and “A Little Bit of Everything.” If you get the impression from these titles that Taylor Goldsmith has a wry sense of humor and a somewhat cynical but still loving view of relationships, you’d be right. In fact, what impressed both Charles and I about Dawes’ music was the quality of the songwriting; both melodically and lyrically, these are songs that know where they are going and are the products of a musical mind that knows just where he wants to take us. Dawes turned out to be a pleasant surprise, well worth listening to and getting to know.