Sun Records chieftain Sam Phillips described the voice of his pre-Elvis discovery Howlin’ Wolf as a sound from “where the soul of man never dies.” For young John Dawson Winter III, the blend of gravel, whiskey, mud, and madness in Wolf’s singing unearthed a well he still draws from 60 years later.
“‘Somebody Walking in My Home’ by Howlin’ Wolf is the first blues song I remember hearing,” Johnny Winter recalls. “I was in my bedroom listening to the transistor radio, and right from the beginning I knew blues was it for me. It had so much feeling. I just loved it. And I could really relate to the black experience. Most people in Texas didn’t like black people because they were too dark, and they didn’t like me because I was too white. I got that even when I was 12 and started playing guitar. By then I knew blues was what I wanted to play, and I still come at it from an emotional perspective—not technical.”
Nonetheless, it was the conflagrant intensity of Winter’s two-fingered picking, the bared-fang snarl of his tone, and the mix of sand and kerosene in his own voice that skyrocketed him from the Texas psychedelic club scene into the international music spotlight less than a year after he recorded his debut, The Progressive Blues Experiment, on the stage of Austin’s Vulcan Gas Company in 1968. By the end of 1969 he’d released his major-label debut, Johnny Winter, and the follow-up, Second Winter, and played Woodstock, laying out blueprints for the future of American blues-rock and even Southern rock.
Although Winter is currently enjoying a surprising late-career renaissance thanks to his recharged stage presence, a documentary film, and a spate of releases, it’s the images of him from 1969 to 1974 that are burned into the retina of rock history: rail thin and wrapped like a spider around the 1963 Gibson Firebird that still accompanies him onstage, wraith-like thanks to his albinism and long hair, literally attacking the strings.
“I use a Dunlop slide that’s snug on my finger, so I can fret with the slide and move faster and more exactly,” says Winter. He favors open D and G tunings, and sometimes A. “It all depends on where
my voice is,” he says.
Winter’s star continued to rise during those years, after Columbia Records persuaded him to form a new band with co-guitarist Rick Derringer that cut the influential Johnny Winter And and Still Alive and Well sets. Those albums along with the Allman Brothers first titles cast the die for two-guitar blues-rock ensemble playing. Many think the four LPs Winter made with Derringer define his golden era, but Winter still complains that Derringer played too much and too loud. “All I need to play well is a good strong snare beat and other musicians who don’t get in the way,” he says.
Winter prefers the string of discs he made in the late 1970s with blues groundbreaker Muddy Waters and Waters’ band, his own Nothin’ But the Blues, and the Grammy-winning trio Hard Again, I’m Ready, and King Bee that he produced for Waters.
But something was amiss in those glory days. By the early ’70s Winter had become a heroin addict. And while he was able to kick that drug, he got hooked on methadone, which, along with alcohol abuse, put Winter on a long spiral that brought him to the bottom roughly a decade ago. Sure, there were some high-notch concerts and recordings along the way, like 1984’s Guitar Slinger and 1992’s Hey, Where’s Your Brother?—a nod to his pop-hit instrumentalist sibling Edgar Winter. But by the time Johnny met his current manager, co-guitarist, producer and, in practical terms, savior Paul Nelson in 2004, Winter seemed like a shell of himself, appearing exhausted and occasionally out of tune onstage, revived only by the spirit of the blues that seemingly inhabits his bloodstream.
“I had a good time and enjoyed drugs and drinking,” he says by phone from his Connecticut home, “but I overdid it. It was great in my 20s. The older I got the worse it was for me. It took me a long time to figure out that takin’ dope is not good for you.” He chuckles. “Now, I feel great. Physical therapy helps, but so does not taking drugs or drinking. A lot of people I know are dead. I could have died a bunch of times. Maybe I died years ago, but God was on my side.”
Perhaps that accounts for Winter’s ongoing resurrection. In 2011 he broke a seven-year recording hiatus with the album Roots, revisiting some of his favorite blues classics with the help of such guests as Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Vince Gill, Edgar Winter, and others. The disc was heralded as a partial return to form.
This February the four-disc retrospective True To the Blues: The Johnny Winter Story was released. His upcoming Step Back,due in September, amps up his previous studio recording’s strategy with an edgier, more rocking approach and appearances by Eric Clapton, Leslie West, and Billy Gibbons, to name a few. And the documentary Johnny Winter: Down and Dirty debuted at the South By Southwest Film Festival in March. The movie frankly chronicles both Winter’s storied history and the past two years of his life, which meant that director Greg Olliver was a regular aboard the Winnebago the guitarist uses to travel to about 120 dates annually.
Right-Hand Man
Photo by Michael Weintrob
Paul Nelson is Johnny Winter’s supporting guitarist, producer, and manager, but his most important role is friend. If Nelson hadn’t made what was essentially a one-man intervention in Winter’s life nearly a decade ago, the guitar hero who ascended from Texas dive bars to the stage at Woodstock in a single year after recording his debut album would likely be pushing up posies instead of bending strings.
They met while Winter was cutting 2004’s I’m a Bluesman at Carriage House Studios in Stamford, Connecticut. “Johnny heard me playing some blues next door during a session I was doing for the World Wrestling Federation, and invited me to meet him,” Nelson recounts. He was recruited as a songwriter and second guitarist on the project, and when it was over Winter invited Nelson on the road.
“What he liked about me is that I was one of the few guitarists he played with who didn’t step all over his playing,” Nelson recounts. “Johnny said, ‘With everybody else, it was always a guitar war.’ I only do what needs to be done. If Johnny plays single notes, I play chords. If he plays low, I play high. It’s simple. I stay the hell out of his way and make everything sound bigger.
“Johnny took me under his wing and immediately started teaching me the blues riffs he’d learned from Muddy Waters,” Nelson says. “As I became more comfortable I started telling him the emperor had no clothes. He was singing and playing like crap, and practically falling asleep onstage. This had gone on for years with nobody trying to help him. So he asked me if I’d manage him. I said, ‘Yes, if you give up the drugs and drinking, start doing something about your health, and get back to being Johnny Winter.’ Believe me, there was a lot of screaming and fighting along the way, but he did it. There were huge changes the moment the drugs and stuff were gone—but try telling a rock star from the ’60s that!
“Some days,” ponders Nelson, “I wonder, am I his producer, his band mate, his manager, his pal? Or maybe I’m really the luckiest fan in the world.”
Nelson was well into a successful career as a session player, producer, solo artist, and hard-rock guru with credits ranging from Leslie West to Los Lobos to Steve Morse when he signed on as Winter’s manager. As a youth, he was already enraptured by the playing of Winter, Billy Gibbons, Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, Jeff Beck, Wes Montgomery, and Larry Carlton when he attended Boston’s Berklee College of Music, then went on to study with Mike Stern, Steve Kahn, and Steve Vai. So Nelson had plenty of 6-string smarts and studio skills to apply to Winter’s 2011 album Roots, as well as the new album Step Back.
Both sets feature blues chestnuts and all-star casts, with the lineup on Step Back including Eric Clapton, Ben Harper, Brian Setzer, Leslie West, Billy Gibbons, Joe Perry, Dr. John, and harmonica demon Jason Ricci. Nelson also duets with Winter on “Killing Floor,” a song originally recorded by blues giant Howlin’ Wolf for Chess Records in 1964.
“When Johnny was ready to make this album, he picked the songs in 15 minutes,” says Nelson. “These are songs he’s loved all his life.” Nelson had the rhythm section learn the original version of each of the blues classics, and then had them learn another version recorded a few decades later before they worked with Winter on the album’s arrangements. “That way they’ve got perspective going into the session with Johnny,” he explains. When the basic tracks were done, they were sent to Winter’s handpicked guests, who added their parts.
To make the guest guitarists’ parts gel with Winter’s playing, Nelson duplicated the mic setups used by each player. “Clapton, for example, used a small amp and overhead mikes,” notes Nelson, “while Leslie West put a microphone right in front of his amp’s speaker. When I use the same approach to record Johnny, it sounds like they cut their guitar parts together in the same room.” Winter owes two more albums to Megaforce Records per his contract, and Nelson has also signed a deal to record solo for Megaforce.
Nelson says that winning a Grammy and being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame top Winter’s bucket list. “He’s told me, ‘I’m at a point in my life where I love receiving awards. Give me awards.’”
Johnny Winter is known for his beloved Gibson Firebird, but he also plays a Lazer from Erlewine Guitars. He likes the Lazer because it stays in tune and sounds trebly like a Fender, but plays like a Gibson. He uses the Firebird primarily for slide and keeps it in open-D or G tuning.
All of this, and the fact that Winter is concentrating on recording and playing so many of the songs that first drew him into blues, makes him as happy as a 70-year-old kid in a candy store. “I never thought I’d reach this age, but I’m damn glad I did,” the high-speed string-slinger says. “I’d rather be old than dead. And I love playing the blues now as much as when I was 12. Maybe more. I could make albums of songs by Gatemouth Brown and Jimmy Reed and Muddy until I drop.”
Winter still has a bucket list: “I’d like to write some more original numbers,” he says, “but I haven’t had any song ideas since 2004. I’d also like to win a Grammy for one of my own records. And I’d like to go to Egypt—not even to play music, but just to see the pyramids and stuff. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame would be nice, too, but I’d rather have the Grammy. And I want to get it for playing good blues.”
Johnny Winter's Gear
Guitars
1963 Gibson Firebird
Dean “Z” series Johnny Winter signature model
Amps
Music Man 4x10 combo
Effects
Boss CE-2 Chorus
Strings and Picks
Strings, Picks and Slides
DR Pure Blues .010–.046 gauge
Fender medium thumb picks
Dunlop Johnny Winter Texas Slider
Another complaint Winter airs is that he considers his early records more rock than blues: “I really wanted to play blues, but in the early ’60s the white people didn’t want to hear us play that, especially in Texas, so when we started out it was more rock and R&B. It was frustrating, because I was in love with blues.”
Winter attended his first blues show at age 14: a Ray Charles concert at the Municipal Auditorium in his native Beaumont, Texas. Three years later he had a pivotal experience at that city’s Raven club. “I went to see B.B. King play for about 1,500 to 2,000 people—all black. It was great music, nobody bothered us, and after I met him, B.B. let me play,” he recounts. “It felt great to get a standing ovation from an all-black audience. I felt like I had to be playing the music right. B.B. didn’t even know if I could play. If I was in his place I don’t think I would have let me. He’s one of the nicest people in the world.”
By that time Winter’s oddball, lightning-strike thumb-and-forefinger picking style was already well developed. “It seemed to come naturally to me,” he observes. “A lot of the older black guys played with thumbpicks, but I started using one because I liked Chet Atkins and Merle Travis. Chet got his style from Merle. They probably influenced my speed, too. I’ve always played hard and fast. After all these years, I still play the way I did when I was 15. And my gear hasn’t changed much since 1970 when I got my Firebird.”
Winter acquired that iconic instrument at a festival, where a guitar dealer from St. Louis brought it and a clutch of other 6-strings to sell to the musicians on the bill. “I was already playing Les Pauls and Stratocasters,” Winter recounts. “The first really good guitar I’d gotten was a Black Beauty ‘fretless wonder,’ but when I saw that Firebird I thought, ‘I’ve got to try that!’ The neck’s been broken four or five times over the years. I keep getting it fixed. But everything is stock. I always thought it was fine the way it was, so I never messed with it.”
Winter still plays the Music Man 4x10 combo amps that Muddy Waters turned him onto during their ’70s collaborations, favoring those over the Fender Super Reverbs he’d used until then due to their higher wattage. His settings: volume and treble on 10, everything else at zero. And Winter’s one effect remains an old Boss CE-2 chorus pedal, “just to make things a little fuller.”
Waters was also a major influence on Winter’s slide playing, which is as much a signature as his ripping single-note solos. “Muddy, Elmore James, Robert Johnson, Son House—they got me interested in slide,” Winter explains. “I use a Dunlop slide that’s snug on my finger, so I can fret with the slide and move faster and more exactly.” He favors open D and G tunings, and sometimes A. “It all depends on where my voice is,” he says.
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Because the upper range of his voice dissipated after decades of howling “rock ’n’ roll” into microphones to kick off his sets and growling like a frisky badger for the rest, Winter started dropping his standard tuning down a whole step to a D about 20 years ago. “Otherwise, I’m pretty much doing the same kind of thing I’ve done all my life: playing the same kind of music I love—the blues—the same way I always have.”
As Winter reflects on his career, it’s obvious that Muddy Waters remains his brightest musical beacon. “I played with a lot of people over the years,” he says. “Jimi Hendrix. Eric Clapton. But without a doubt, Muddy was the most important for me. I met him for the first time when we opened for him at the Vulcan Gas Company, where all of the psychedelic bands, like the 13th Floor Elevators, played. So the psychedelic sound got into my playing as well. But Muddy was it. His name and ‘blues’ were inseparable to me. And I feel the same way that Muddy felt about the music. When people come to see me I want them to know they’re going to hear good blues and that I play what makes me feel good, and that I’m interested in sharing that good feeling with them.”On Candid Camera
Sure, director Greg Olliver’s rock-doc Johnny Winter: Down and Dirty provides a through-the-Winnebago-windshield view of the life of the Texas guitar legend as he travels the U.S. and Japan, and reminisces about his adventures with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and his idol, Muddy Waters. But it also busts myths about his health and history, thanks to Winter’s relentless candor.
Early in the movie, which premiered at this year’s South By Southwest Film Festival, we see Winter receiving a visit from a physical therapist and struggling through exercises designed to strengthen and lengthen his back muscles, atrophied from years of bad posture, chemical abuse, and general neglect.
“Not everybody would allow a filmmaker to show them being vulnerable like that,” says Olliver, who also directed the critically heralded 2010 documentary Lemmy, about Mötorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister. “Johnny isn’t a rock star. He’s a real person and one of the most frank and open people I’ve ever interviewed, which made the two years I spent working on Down and Dirty really fun. Not once did he ever hold back.”
But viewers also see Winter enjoying life—horsing with his friends and his accomplice, manager/guitarist Paul Nelson, and taking pleasure in simple, but deep, pleasures like spinning a Robert Johnson record on a phonograph. There’s also plenty of live performance footage and cameos from Billy Gibbons, Joe Perry, Derek Trucks, and others commenting on the power and durability of Winter’s influence and legacy.
Olliver says his decision to train his lens on Winter came organically. Like the 6-string legend, Olliver was born and raised in Texas and grew up on the sound of blues from its originators and well as Lone Star heroes the Fabulous Thunderbirds and ZZ Top. When Olliver approached Winter and Nelson, they readily accepted.
Once Olliver got on the Winnebago, he discovered another bond with Winter: a love of horror and science-fiction films. “Johnny loves to stay up late at night on the bus watching B movies,” Olliver recounts. His taste varies widely. Two favorites are the 1956 classic Forbidden Planet and the hideously bad 1972 Ray Milland vehicle Frogs, which, to borrow Olliver’s description, “is about a bunch of frogs hopping around a plantation killing people.”
Olliver’s own project between Lemmy and Down and Dirty was Devoured, a genuinely creepy horror film that’s just been released in the U.K. “Johnny said that he loved it,” Olliver notes.
The glue between his two documentaries and Devoured is Olliver’s gift for storytelling. But there are some stories that didn’t make the final cut of Down and Dirty. “When we were in Hong Kong, Johnny said, ‘Hey, we should find some opium, and then we’re gonna put it up our butts.’ I said, ‘Johnny, if there are two things I’m not going to do on this trip, it’s find opium and put it up my butt.’
“When I told [veteran Winter and Double Trouble bassist] Tommy Shannon that story, he said, ‘You know, there was a time and a place when that sort of thing was perfectly acceptable.’”
For updates on the film’s availability, check johnnywinterdownanddirty.com.
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For the first time in the band’s history, the Dawes lineup for Oh Brother consisted of just Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith (left and right).
Goldsmith’s lyrics spoke to me the loudest, with lines like “Well, you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks / Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it’s starin’ right back” (a casual Nietzsche paraphrase); and “Oh, the snowfall this time of year / It’s not what Birmingham is used to / I get the feeling that I brought it here / And now I’m taking it away.” The way his words painted a portrait of the sincere, sentimental man behind them, along with his cozy, unassuming guitar work and the band’s four-part harmonies, had me hooked.
Nothing Is Wrong and Stories Don’t End came next, and I happily gobbled up more folksy fodder in tracks like “If I Wanted,” “Most People,” and “From a Window Seat.” But 2015’s All Your Favorite Bands, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Folk Albumschart, didn’t land with me, and by the time 2016’s We’re All Gonna Die was released, it was clear that Goldsmith had shifted thematically in his writing. A friend drew a thoughtful Warren Zevon comparison to the single, “When the Tequila Runs Out”—a commentary on vapid, conceited, American-socialite party culture—but it still didn’t really do it for me. I fell off the Dawes train a bit, and became somewhat oblivious to their three full-lengths that followed.
Oh Brotheris Goldsmith’s latest addition to the Dawes songbook, and I’m grateful to say that it’s brought me back. After having done some catching up, I’d posit that it’s the second work in the third act, or fall season, of his songwriting—where 2022’s Misadventures of Doomscrollercracked open the door, Oh Brother swings it wide. And it doesn’t have much more than Dawes’ meat and potatoes, per se, in common with acts one or two. Some moodiness has stayed—as well as societal disgruntlement and the arrangement elements that first had me intoxicated. But then there’s the 7/4 section in the middle of “Front Row Seat”; the gently unwinding, quiet, intimate jazz-club feel of “Surprise!”; the experimentally percussive, soft-spoken “Enough Already”; and the unexpected, dare I say, Danny Elfman-esque harmonic twists and turns in the closing track, “Hilarity Ensues.”
The main engine behind Dawes, the Goldsmith brothers are both native “Angelinos,” having been born and raised in the L.A. area. Taylor is still proud to call the city his home.
Photo by Jon Chu
“I have this working hypothesis that who you are as a songwriter through the years is pretty close to who you are in a dinner conversation,” Goldsmith tells me in an interview, as I ask him about that thematic shift. “When I was 23, if I was invited to dinner with grownups [laughs], or just friends or whatever, and they say, ‘How you doin’, Taylor?’ I probably wouldn’t think twice to be like, ‘I’m not that good. There’s this girl, and … I don’t know where things are at—can I share this with you? Is that okay?’ I would just go in in a way that’s fairly indiscreet! And I’m grateful to that version of me, especially as a writer, because that’s what I wanted to hear, so that’s what I was making at the time.
“But then as I got older, it became, ‘Oh, maybe that’s not an appropriate way to answer the question of how I’m doing.’ Or, ‘Maybe I’ve spent enough years thinking about me! What does it feel like to turn the lens around?’” he continues, naming Elvis Costello and Paul Simon as inspirations along the way through that self-evolution. “Also, trying to be mindful of—I had strengths then that I don’t have now, but I have strengths now that I didn’t have then. And now it’s time to celebrate those. Even in just a physical way, like hearing Frank Zappa talking about how his agility as a guitar player was waning as he got older. It’s like, that just means that you showcase different aspects of your skills.
“I am a changing person. It would be weird if I was still writing the same way I was when I was 23. There would probably be some weird implications there as to who I’d be becoming as a human [laughs].”
Taylor Goldsmith considers Oh Brother, the ninth full-length in Dawes’ catalog, to be the beginning of a new phase of Dawes, containing some of his most unfiltered, unedited songwriting.
Since its inception, the engine behind Dawes has been the brothers Goldsmith, with Taylor on guitar and vocals and Griffin on drums and sometimes vocal harmonies. But they’ve always had consistent backup. For the first several years, that was Wylie Gelber on bass and Tay Strathairn on keyboards. On We’re All Gonna Die, Lee Pardini replaced Strathairn and has been with the band since. Oh Brother, however, marks the departure of Gelber and Pardini.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is an intense time; this is a vulnerable time,’” remarks Goldsmith, who says that their parting was supportive and loving, but still rocked him and Griffin. “You get a glimpse of your vulnerability in a way that you haven’t felt in a long time when things are just up and running. For a second there, we’re like, ‘We’re getting a little rattled—how do we survive this?’”
They decided to pair up with producer Mike Viola, a close family friend, who has also worked with Mandy Moore—Taylor’s spouse—along with Panic! At the Disco, Andrew Bird, and Jenny Lewis. “[We knew that] he understands all of the parameters of that raw state. And, you know, I always show Mike my songs, so he was aware of what we had cookin’,” says Goldsmith.
Griffin stayed behind the kit, but Taylor took over on bass and keys, the latter of which he has more experience with than he’s displayed on past releases. “We’ve made records where it’s very tempting to appeal to your strengths, where it’s like, ‘Oh, I know how to do this, I’m just gonna nail it,’” he says. “Then there’s records that we make where we really push ourselves into territories where we aren’t comfortable. That contributed to [Misadventures of Doomscroller] feeling like a living, breathing thing—very reactive, very urgent, very aware. We were paying very close attention. And I would say the same goes for this.”
That new terrain, says Goldsmith, “forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do. I’m really excited in that sense, because it’s like this is the first album of a new phase.”
“That forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do.”
In proper folk (or even folk-rock) tradition, the music of Dawes isn’t exactly riddled with guitar solos, but that’s not to say that Goldsmith doesn’t show off his chops when the timing is right. Just listen to the languid, fluent lick on “Surprise!”, the shamelessly prog-inspired riff in the bridge of “Front Row Seat,” and the tactful, articulate line that threads through “Enough Already.” Goldsmith has a strong, individual sense of phrasing, where his improvised melodies can be just as biting as his catalog’s occasional lyrical jabs at presumably toxic ex-girlfriends, and just as melancholy as his self-reflective metaphors, all the while without drawing too much attention to himself over the song.
Of course, most of our conversation revolves around songwriting, as that’s the craft that’s the truest and closest to his identity. “There’s an openness, a goofiness—I even struggle to say it now, but—an earnestness that goes along with who I am, not only as a writer but as a person,” Goldsmith elaborates. “And I think it’s important that those two things reflect one another. ’Cause when you meet someone and they don’t, I get a little bit weirded out, like, ‘What have I been listening to? Are you lying to me?’” he says with a smile.
Taylor Goldsmith's Gear
Pictured here performing live in 2014, Taylor Goldsmith has been the primary songwriter for all of Dawes' records, beginning with 2009’s North Hills.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
Guitars
- Fender Telecaster
- Gibson ES-345
- Radocaster (made by Wylie Gelber)
Amps
- ’64 Fender Deluxe
- Matchless Laurel Canyon
Effects
- 29 Pedals EUNA
- Jackson Audio Bloom
- Ibanez Tube Screamer with Keeley mod
- Vintage Boss Chorus
- Vintage Boss VB-2 Vibrato
- Strymon Flint
- Strymon El Capistan
Strings
- Ernie Ball .010s
In Goldsmith’s songwriting process, he explains that he’s learned to lean away from the inclination towards perfectionism. Paraphrasing something he heard Father John Misty share about Leonard Cohen, he says, “People think you’re cultivating these songs, or, ‘I wouldn’t deign to write something that’s beneath me,’ but the reality is, ‘I’m a rat, and I’ll take whatever I can possibly get, and then I’ll just try to get the best of it.’
“Ever since Misadventures of Doomscroller,” he adds, “I’ve enjoyed this quality of, rather than try to be a minimalist, I want to be a maximalist. I want to see how much a song can handle.” For the songs on Oh Brother, that meant that he decided to continue adding “more observations within the universe” of “Surprise!”, ultimately writing six verses. A similar approach to “King of the Never-Wills,” a ballad about a character suffering from alcoholism, resulted in four verses.
“The economy of songwriting that we’re all taught would buck that,” says Goldsmith. “It would insist that I only keep the very best and shed something that isn’t as good. But I’m not going to think economically. I’m not going to think, ‘Is this self-indulgent?’
Goldsmith’s songwriting has shifted thematically over the years, from more personal, introspective expression to more social commentary and, at times, even satire, in songs like We’re All Gonna Die’s “When the Tequila Runs Out.”
Photo by Mike White
“I don’t abide that term being applied to music. Because if there’s a concern about self-indulgence, then you’d have to dismiss all of jazz. All of it. You’d have to dismiss so many of my most favorite songs. Because in a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.” (He elaborates that, if Bob Dylan had trimmed back any of the verses on “Desolation Row,” it would have deprived him of the unique experience it creates for him when he listens to it.)
One of the joys of speaking with Goldsmith is just listening to his thought processes. When I ask him a question, he seems compelled to share every backstory to every detail that’s going through his head, in an effort to both do his insights justice and to generously provide me with the most complete answer. That makes him a bit verbose, but not in a bad way, because he never rambles. There is an endpoint to his thoughts. When he’s done, however, it takes me a second to realize that it’s then my turn to speak.
To his point on artistic self-indulgence, I offer that there’s no need for artists to feel “icky” about self-promotion—that to promote your art is to celebrate it, and to create a shared experience with your audience.
“I hear what you’re saying loud and clear; I couldn’t agree more,” Goldsmith replies. “But I also try to be mindful of this when I’m writing, like if I’m going to drag you through the mud of, ‘She left today, she’s not coming back, I’m a piece of shit, what’s wrong with me, the end’.... That might be relatable, that might evoke a response, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily helpful … other than dragging someone else through the shit with me.
“In a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.”
“So, if I’m going to share, I want there to be something to offer, something that feels like: ‘Here’s a path that’s helped me through this, or here’s an observation that has changed how I see this particular experience.’ It’s so hard to delineate between the two, but I feel like there is a difference.”
Naming the opening track “Mister Los Angeles,” “King of the Never-Wills,” and even the title track to his 2015 chart-topper, “All Your Favorite Bands,” he remarks, “I wouldn’t call these songs ‘cool.’ Like, when I hear what cool music is, I wouldn’t put those songs next to them [laughs]. But maybe this record was my strongest dose of just letting me be me, and recognizing what that essence is rather than trying to force out certain aspects of who I am, and force in certain aspects of what I’m not. I think a big part of writing these songs was just self-acceptance,” he concludes, laughing, “and just a whole lot of fishing.”
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Led by Goldsmith, Dawes infuses more rock power into their folk sound live at the Los Angeles Ace Hotel in 2023.
