We guitarists spend beaucoup bucks on shiny toys we hope and dream will make us better players and summon the muse. But we don’t always have to open our wallets to derive joy from music. Tinkering with our equipment, tweaking our instruments, discovering new uses for things we might have taken for granted—these are just some of the ways to stay engaged with guitar without making a trip to the gear emporium.
There’s a big overlap between the DIY and life-hacker cultures, and it can be fun to explore the intersection of these two mindsets from the perspective of guitar, so let’s give it a shot. Our ground rules are simple: We’ll look at ways to squeeze functionality out of items that cost no more than a burrito and beverage at your favorite taqueria. We’ll arbitrarily set this at $12, although all but one of our dozen hacks come in well below that.
I’m loosely defining “hack” as using an item for something other than its intended purpose. Often there’s some modification involved, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes a hack simply means seeing an object in a new light. Let’s begin with one of those.
Slide display rack. If you play slide guitar, no doubt you’ve discovered how much fun it is to collect the tools of your trade. So many materials, shapes, and sizes! Why hide these beauties in a shoebox? If you have a cool collection, it’s fun to display it. Having all your slides within reach will also inspire you to experiment with different sounds and techniques, and thus grow as a player.
Photo 1
Maybe you’ve seen those bamboo racks designed to hold dishes vertically to air-dry after being washed. Guess what? They’re perfect for holding slides at attention (Photo 1). Readily available and priced at about $8, these racks do the job right out of the box.
Safe knob removal. When you want to replace a potentiometer or even just tighten its nut, the first step is to remove the knob. If it’s a press-on knob, don’t reach for a screwdriver! It will damage the pickguard or—worse yet—gouge your guitar’s top.
Photo 2a
Here’s an inexpensive alternative that won’t damage your beloved axe. You’ll need a palette knife—a $5 tool with a flexible steel blade that painters use to apply or mix paints—and a good ol’ wooden clothespin with its internal spring removed (Photo 2a).
Photo 2b
Slide the thin blade under the knob, then carefully turn the knob as you slowly lift the palette knife straight up, gently flexing its blade as you go. Turn and pry, keeping the blade flat against the pickguard or top so it doesn’t mar the surface (Photo 2b).
Photo 2c
Go easy—just work the knob up enough to allow you to replace the knife with one half of the clothespin with its flat side against the guitar (Photo 2c).
Photo 2d
Continue turning and prying, using the clothespin as a wedge. It won’t take long to coax the knob off its shaft (Photo 2d).
Split loom trim. A good acoustic guitar can last a lifetime, but if it’s equipped with onboard electronics, that technology becomes obsolete in a matter of years. Bummer. I have three acoustic-electrics, dating from the late ’90s to the mid 2000s, that came with preamps mounted in the bass side of the body. Though the guitars are still perfectly functional, their clunky old electronics have been sonically eclipsed by today’s sleeker systems that mount in or around the soundhole. Like any self-respecting tone freak, I removed the ancient beasts from my guitars and replaced them with more state-of-the-art pickups and preamps, but doing so left a gaping hole in the side of each guitar.
The hole itself isn’t a problem. No—it’s a soundport! Very handy. But while playing, I found myself staring at the edge of the hole that was cut into the side. It’s raw and ugly. The manufacturer never bothered to sand, smooth, and finish the edges because the preamp’s mounting flange covered all the sins. After pondering the many ways I could dress up these distracting holes, I finally hit on one that’s easy, cheap, and looks cool in a steampunk kind of way.
Photo 3a
If you’ve got a guitar with a similar hole in its side, I think you’ll dig this hack. It starts with something called “split loom”—a flexible plastic sheath used to surround wires in autos, computer installations, audio systems, and so on. It’s a black, ribbed, hollow tube that’s slit along one side (Photo 3a). Split loom comes in different diameters; the 1/4" size is perfect for this hack, and a 100-foot coil costs less than $7 on Amazon.
Photo 3b
First, measure the perimeter of the hole (Photo 3b). Then cut a corresponding length of split loom, pry it open, and gently press it around the edge of the hole, covering all the rough wood. The resulting trim (Photo 3c) looks like something from an H.R. Giger painting.
Photo 3c
Typically, you’ll also have four holes where the preamp was screwed onto the body. You could reinsert the original screws, but without the thickness of the preamp housing to hold the screws away from the wood, their tips will poke into the guitar’s interior. I wanted to avoid that, so I sought out four shorter screws—long enough to sit securely in the holes, but short enough that they wouldn’t protrude inside. Short hex screws did the trick and even enhanced the steampunk effect.
Photo 3d
Bonus! Another use for split loom is to protect the skinny wires on wall-wart power supplies. Onstage, these flimsy cables can break quicker than you can spell Yngwie, but sheath them in split loom and your drummer can drop a cymbal on the wire without cutting it. I suggest cinching a zip cable tie at each end to keep the loom in place (Photo 3d).
Photo 4a
Bigsby helping hand. I learned this trick years ago from a guitar tech who maintained a slew of Bigsby-equipped guitars for a rockabilly client. If you’ve ever restrung a Bigsby, you know the problem: You make a nice tight curl at the string’s ball end, wrap it over and then under the roller bar, carefully slip the ball end over the pin, maintain string tension with one hand as you valiantly try to guide the string across the nut and into the tuner post with the other, and then gnash your teeth as the ball end pops off the roller pin, forcing you to start over.
But you can avoid this frustration, and all it requires is an eraser with wedge ends. Cut the eraser in half lengthwise (Photo 4a) and jam one piece under the ball end to hold the string in place (Photo 4b). Now you have both hands free to guide, thread, and tighten the string. The eraser is soft and flexible enough not to damage your guitar, yet that ball end isn’t going anywhere.
Photo 4b
Combo port-a-tilt. If you play clubs, surely you’ve heard the “turn it down” refrain, usually delivered by the manager or an irate bartender. (Hey, I’m just trying to hear my guitar over those damn drums!) The problem, of course, is that your amp is blasting your knees and seated customers’ eardrums, but not aimed at your ears. Leo Fender solved this problem with tilt-back hardware mounted on large combos and piggyback cabs, and we can adapt his trick to much smaller amps.
Photo 5a
The secret is to get your hands on a solid doorstop. I like the one in Photo 5a because its brushed steel handle provides extra rigidity and support. It’s sold on Amazon for $9 by a company appropriately called Everything is Play.
Photo 5b
I keep it in my gear bag—it’s about the size of a stomp tuner—and then wedge it under my amp (Photo 5b) when I set up onstage. With a low-profile doorstop like this, I’ve discovered that even if you push it all the way back to the cab’s rear bottom edge, the center of gravity works in your favor to keep the amp leaning forward. In other words, it remains stable. Position the amp a foot or two farther back on the stage than usual, and you’ll get a nice directional beam from the speaker. Now you can turn down and still hear your guitar, and everyone’s happy.
Photo 6a
Burnishing nut slots. If you hear a little ping when tuning one of your guitar’s wound strings, it could be a sign that it’s getting snagged on a little burr in the nut slot. In some cases, fixing this means taking your axe to a pro with the tools and knowledge to reshape the slots, but often you can solve the problem yourself.
Dan Erlewine—luthier and guitar guru extraordinaire—hipped me to this slot-burnishing technique. For starters, whenever you change strings, don’t immediately throw them away. Instead, clip out a section of each wound string—12" is about right—and save it.
in a matter of years.
If you play a lot and own several acoustic and electric guitars, it won’t take long to build up a stash of wound string sections you can use as burnishing tools (Photo 6a). Complete the kit with a roll of waxed dental floss. A dial caliper, a relatively inexpensive tool sold in automotive parts stores, is handy for measuring string gauges, but not essential.
The concept is simple: Clean out and burnish the offending slot using a piece of wound string that has a slightly smaller diameter than the one on your guitar that’s pinging. For example, if you’re using a .024 3rd string on your flattop, a .022 works well as a burnishing tool. You can eyeball this pretty easily. If the burnishing string drops down into the slot—don’t force anything—you’re good to go.
Photo 6b
But remember: When burnishing the slot, always maintain a downward angle toward the headstock (Photo 6b). The highest point of each nut slot must be the edge that faces the fretboard. Press the burnishing string lightly into the slot and run the string back and forth, using firm, steady strokes. A dozen passes should do the trick.
Photo 6c
Though you won’t be able to slip a wound string into a thinner plain string’s nut slot, you can polish it out with waxed dental floss (Photo 6c). The goal is to leave a slippery surface at the bottom of the slot. It doesn’t hurt to “wax out” the wound string slots, too, after you’ve burnished them.
By the way, hang onto all those pieces of string with ball ends. In a moment, we’ll see how to use them in another hack.
Hush pucks. If you practice electric guitar in an apartment, dorm, condo, or even a stand-alone dwelling, you know how low-frequency sounds can travel through the floor and disturb neighbors, roommates, or family members. Even if you’re playing no louder than folks might listen to TV, those low notes can travel far and wide through the building.
Photo 7
Fortunately, there’s a way to keep the peace, and it comes in the form of isolation pads. They’re available in many designs, but the sorbothane pads sold by Isolate It are perfectly sized for guitar combos (Photo 7). Measuring 1/4" thick and just over 2" in diameter, these high-tech, squishy discs will decouple your amp from the floor. Each pad is rated up to 320 pounds, and according to the manufacturer, they absorb almost 95 percent of equipment vibration. Designed to isolate air compressors and other heavy machinery from a factory floor, these are tough little buggers. A set of eight pads runs about $23 on Amazon, so that comes out to less than $12 per amp. (Whew, we didn’t blow our budget.)
Bonus! Have a home studio? You can also tuck these vibration-absorbing pads under your monitors to reduce low-frequency transmission into your studio furniture, and thus get cleaner, more accurate mixes.
Photo 8a
Leather laces. I love to work on my guitars. Whether I’m trying out one of the projects from Dirk Wacker’s Mod Garage column or finding new ways to hot-rod a guitar, there’s always an instrument on the workbench. But one thing has bugged me for a long time: I hate gripping metal hardware with metal tools. The potential for scraping a potentiometer when you’re de-soldering its lugs, or scratching the sides of a Tune-o-matic bridge when you’re filing saddle slots, is just too great.
Ah, sweet relief. Leather laces—the kind found in heavy-duty work and hiking boots—can prevent metal-on-metal contact. Just master tying a slipknot (Photo 8a) and you’ll be in business. Whenever you need to protect a part, simply sling a leather slipknot over each of the tool’s gripping surfaces, pull the knots tight, and voilà—you have padded jaws. This can work with vise grips and bench vises (Photo 8b), pliers, wrenches, clamps, and other gripping tools. You can buy 12 feet of this handy stuff for less than $8. It’s thick enough to stand up to a cranked vise and tough enough to last years. Rawhide rules!
Photo 8b
“Paid my dues” bracelet. If you’re into declaring your guitar-tribe affiliation in a subtle way, here’s an idea you might like. Collect the ball ends from all those used strings you toss out each year—including bass strings—and make a bracelet that other guitarists will instantly recognize.
The cost is minimal. Other than the ball ends (start saving them now), you’ll need a roll of 1 mm elastic cord. This diameter threads perfectly through the ball ends of guitar strings, regardless of manufacturer. You can buy this stretchy stuff at hobby shops and online—98 yards cost me $7. That’s a lifetime supply.
Photo 9a
Additional tools and materials? Measuring tape, scissors, a wire cutter to snip the ball ends from the windings, a tool to hold the ball end still while you snip, and a white grease pencil (Photo 9a).
Start by measuring your wrist (if you like your bracelet a bit loose, add 1/4" to this number). Now add 6"—this total is how much you’ll need to cut from the roll of elastic cord.
Use wire cutters to snip the ball ends from the strings. A small hex wrench inserted into the ball end works great to hold it steady while you snip it free from the winding.
Photo 9b
With the grease pencil, mark the cord 3" from each end. At one end, make a single knot at the 3" mark—this will be a backstop for the ball ends you’ll be threading onto the cord from the other end (Photo 9b). Slip the ball ends onto the string until you reach the second white mark.
Tip: I suggest turning to bass strings for the final two ball ends. Their larger holes will slip over the final knot, covering it.
Photo 9c
Now grip the 3" ends, pull the cord semi-tight, and tie a square knot to hold the bracelet together. Snip off the extraneous cord, but leave a little at each end of the square knot—1/8" works great. Push the ball ends over the square knot, slip the bracelet on, and admire your work (Photo 9c). Wear it proudly—each ball end signifies hours of playing time. (Paid my dues!) This handmade bracelet makes a great gift for other guitarists in your life.
Gathering enough ball ends for a bracelet can take a year, depending on how much you play and how many guitars are in your petting zoo. (To help you estimate how many old strings you’ll need to collect to make a bracelet, six ball ends—one string change—equals about 3/4" when laid side-by-side.) Of course, you can accelerate the process by petitioning your guitar-playing friends—and even local techs or repair shops—for old strings. Then you’ll need to change the bracelet name to “paid our dues,” but that’s tribal too, right?
Photo 10a
The draftsman’s duster. Horsehair. It’s all about horsehair. Okay, let me explain: You know how dust and skin debris collects under the strings around the pickups and at the headstock, and drifts into the nooks and crannies at the bridge and tailpiece?
If you’ve tried to clean this off with faux-feather dusters or Swiffer cloths, you’ve probably been dismayed by how these synthetic materials seem to simply redistribute most of the schmutz and create static electricity that attracts even more dust. We need to turn to the art world for a solution … the draftsman’s duster (Photo 10a).
Long ago, illustrators figured out that horsehair had the perfect balance of stiffness and flexibility to remove eraser crumbs and chalk and pencil dust without smearing or smudging their work. Who knew that this is also the perfect tool for fastidious guitarists?
Check it out: The durable bristles are long enough to reach down through the strings to the body—even on an archtop. They’re soft enough not to scratch the finish, yet have enough inherent springiness to knock away any loose debris with a flick of the wrist. Best of all, horsehair doesn’t create static electricity.
Photo 10b
The draftsman’s duster is perfect for cleaning off amp controls (Photo 10b), stompboxes and pedalboards, rackmount gear, mixer pots and faders, monitor speakers, mic stands, instrument cases, gig bags—basically all the gear you own. Do you have a keyboard or piano? Those bristles will reach down between the keys to brush out built-up crud. The Alvin Draftsman’s Duster #2342 shown here costs less than $8 and makes it easy to keep your equipment shipshape.
The chopstick probe. And speaking of shipshape gear, sometimes cleaning your guitar requires more than a good dusting, like when you need to scrape hardened sweat and dirt from frets, bridge hardware, and pickup screws and pole pieces. You don’t want to use a metal tool for this—it will do more damage than good. My search for a safe scraping tool first brought me to bamboo kabob skewers, but the ones I tried were so thin they’d bend or break under moderate pressure.
Photo 11a
Then I discovered you can put a sharp point on a bamboo chopstick with a pencil sharpener (Photo 11a). Now we’re talkin’! Here’s a tool that’s stout enough to use as a scraper, yet soft enough that it won’t gouge the fretboard or scratch metal hardware.
Photo 11b
To remove gunk from around frets, apply a drop of lemon oil to a Q-tip, moisten the hardened dirt, then gently work the sharpened chopstick in and around the fret (Photo 11b). To clean and protect metal parts, use a similar technique, but treat your Q-tip with WD-40 (Photo 11c).
Photo 11c
Spare-string vault. Of course you bring spare strings to a gig—that’s a no-brainer. But as you may have discovered the hard way, even the slightest kink on a new string can render it unusable—it messes up the intonation and feels funky between your fingers and frets. If you carry spare strings in your gig or gear bags, they risk getting mashed and mauled by your guitar, pedals, or other equipment. The soft plastic string pouch just doesn’t offer sufficient protection against heavier items.
Photo 12a
There’s a simple fix: Find an unused DVD case. Remove the product-info wrap from your spare strings and then place the strings, still in their plastic pouch, inside the middle of the case. Center the pouch over the spindle—this will hold it firmly inside the case without touching the strings themselves. Most cases have two little clips, which will each hold a spare flatpick (Photo 12a). Slip the product-info wrap into the DVD case’s exterior sleeve (Photo 12b) and shazam—you can head to the gig knowing your strings are protected in their own lightweight, yet sturdy vault.
Photo 12b
Thinking sideways. All right! We’ve covered a dozen hacks, but there must be hundreds more. If you have favorite tips and tricks, please take a moment to share them with the PG community. We’re all ears.
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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.”
YouTube It
Led by Goldsmith, Dawes infuses more rock power into their folk sound live at the Los Angeles Ace Hotel in 2023.
