Top 30 Taylor Goldsmith Quotes

I read actual books. It’s cool to read on a Kindle if that’s what you want to do, but for me, I like having a bookshelf.

I wasn’t really much of a reader early on, but when I first started getting into reading at around 16 all I could really read was Kurt Vonnegut books.

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.

Bands speak for us in this inevitable way that you can’t get anywhere else because it is this perfect balance of artistic expression and popular culture.

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

Unfortunately it’s easy to just label us as part of a Laurel Canyon sound. What we try to do is to be unique.

I love Santa Barbara and have always dreamed of someday having enough money to have a spot up there.

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.

Like for me, it’s funny that I have ended up in so many side projects because I have always looked at any song that I write as a Dawes song.

And rather than judging and alienating others, I do think there’s an opportunity that no one is taking, myself included, to actually understand why somebody is coming from a certain place.

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.

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 think it’s important to always stay critical. But rather than dwelling on it and wishing I could change something, it’s important to just take those lessons learned and those new notes and apply them to the next thing.

When we were putting together ‘One Of Us,’ we were just following our impulses and what felt good.

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.

I know a lot of bands that will make their first record and get to a certain level, and then when the second record comes out, they can start where they left off as a headlining act playing in front of a certain number of people, or they can go back out and make a lot less money and open for people.

I know some bands that don’t like touring and are able to make a living producing other bands. There are a lot of ways of carving a living out, but it’s become tougher and tougher to figure out what that means.

Well, I think at first, songs were sort of the vehicle which allowed me to be on the stage and get to hold a guitar and get to sing.

We’ve always been fans of groups like Little Feat, Steely Dan, the Eagles, or Dire Straits that have that quality. Bands that sometimes are perceived as not the ‘cool’ band, because they’re so good in a technical sense.

There are times, like with Dire Straits, where you can get as close as you can be to being good at your instrument and not cross over to that tasteless place.

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.

Laurel Canyon and Dawes have become linked in a way that I think is misguided, frankly, to tell a new fan what we sound like. But at one point maybe it wasn’t.

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.

When people do, or say, things we don’t believe in, forgiveness can feel disgusting. But when you try to think of someone who isn’t worthy of it, it’s hard to find an example.

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.

When we record a song, like ‘Bedside Manner,’ it’s important that the next time I write a somber, mid-tempo song that we don’t treat it the same way.

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

You write a song; you know what you want it to sound like. With a band like ours, it’s more about the collective. It’s important everyone feels expressed and represented.

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

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.’