JON CHU
Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes.
Just as fast as the L.A. fires spread devastation beginning Jan. 7, news of what the Goldsmith brothers — singer-songwriter-guitarist Taylor and drummer Griffin of the folk-rock band Dawes — lost in their cherished neighborhood of Altadena traveled rapidly throughout the music community. Just a month after they lost their music studio — and Griffin, his home and massive collection of percussion gear — Dawes was invited to make a surprise appearance to open the 67th Grammy Awards show. Backed by a supergroup including Brad Paisley, Brittany Howard, John Legend, Sheryl Crow and St. Vincent, Dawes covered Randy Newman’s 1983 hit “I Love L.A.,” with Taylor modifying the lyrics to pay tribute to the brave L.A. firefighters (watch video below).
With tour soon to begin that stops at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton on April 13 (a Red Bank show is also scheduled for July), Griffin Goldsmith and I talked via Zoom about everything he and his family had just experienced.
Regarding how he knew what to get when he arrived at his burning house, he says, “The distinction wasn’t even one I had to make. It’s so easily made for you in that moment. I got my pregnant wife, my niece who’s living with us, and our three dogs, and that was it.” (They are currently living in a rental home.)
“It’s been a wild ride of very low lows and simultaneously very high highs.”
His wife Kit delivered their first baby, a boy they have named Doc, just two weeks after the fires, but a month early. He says the birth of his son “really reframed the whole situation for me. I care much less about the loss of my house and instruments now that he’s here. I could be in a Motel 6 with him and be happy.”
He is grateful for the outpouring of support initiated by his best friend Matt Koma, who organized a GoFundMe campaign to help his family rebuild. Other highs for the band, which has been together since 2009, were being asked to perform on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Jan. 13 and at the FireAid benefit concert at The Kia Forum in Inglewood, California, on Jan. 30. At the latter (watch video below), they opened with their own “Time Spent in Los Angeles” and joined Stephen Stills and Mike Campbell on “For What It’s Worth.” Then Graham Nash came onstage to close out the mini-set with “Teach Your Children,” marking the first time Stills and Nash have performed together publicly since their band broke up in 2016. Griffith recalls that “when we were asked, ‘Hey, do you want to play with Stephen and Graham?,’ (we said), ‘Of course, that’s life-changing!’
“Given the context, it was even more giant because there was this added layer of, ‘We’re here because people are recognizing what we lost, and people obviously view us in these circles as emblematic of the Los Angeles music scene, or a small part of it in some sense.’ It really felt like L.A. was wrapping its arms around us.”
The cover of Dawes’ “I Love L.A.” single.
In return, Dawes donated proceeds from their studio recording of “I Love L.A.” to MusiCares to support those affected by the fires. They also contributed their previously unreleased song “Without the Words” to the Good Music to Lift Los Angeles compilation, with proceeds going to The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and The California Community Foundation’s Wildfire Fund.
A collector of percussion equipment for the past 20 years, Griffin Goldsmith has also been grateful for the musician friends who have given or loaned instruments to him. “I’ve purchased a few things here and there, not a ton … It’s not as simple as walking into a drum store and buy(ing) five pieces of percussion … It’s like these things call out your name. Also, given my situation at the moment, I don’t have the time to be hunting for gear.”
I mention to him a video in which he displayed a 100-pound brass drum. “I had a few of those,” he says. “I had a really beautiful one made by this guy in Serbia. That’s something I could re-buy, but I don’t really have a space (for storage) yet, so I’m not rushing to get it. I had probably 60 snare drums. They’re all gone, of course. But at this point, I want to see what I can do with much less. I’m trying to look at it as an opportunity, even though it’s not one I wanted.
“I somewhat identified with the gear. I had so much, and I was so proud of it.”
After losing it all overnight, he realizes “I have literally nothing in my name, but I’m still me, I can still make the music.”
He also acknowledges that beginning in his teenage years, he bought instruments, perhaps, indiscriminately. “In the last five years, I’ve been much more conservative about what I buy, so I think I know how to collect better now … and I’m going to be conscious of what is being used.”
Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith at The Grammys, in February.
Griffin anticipates that it will be hard to be away from his wife and son when he tours, knowing “that he smiled today, and at that age every week is something is new.” He imagines that it will be even harder for Taylor, who leaves behind his wife Mandy Moore with their three children under the age of 5. So they have structured the tour with two days off after every four or five shows. Griffin hopes to fly back home so there won’t be more than a week at a time without seeing his family for at least a day.
Working in “the family business” with his older brother for the past 15 years, Griffin attributes their good relationship “to the fact that Taylor is such a great communicator. He’s just a straight shooter and has no problem with saying whatever is on his mind … Whatever issue (or) outstanding unsaid thing that might be left on the table, he will grab it and say it.”
Their ninth studio album, 2024’s Oh Brother, marks a new phase for the Goldsmith brothers — Dawes as a duo. Up until two years ago, they were a four-member band. But both Wylie Gelber, a founding member and their bassist, and Lee Pardini, their keyboardist, left on amicable terms. (In concert, Dawes will still be a five-piece band with touring members.)
Griffin described the dynamics of a four-member band: “You learn people’s idiosyncrasies, and not everybody is as forthcoming as Taylor. I’m certainly not. You can get to a place like, ‘What is this guy thinking? Does he hate me? Does he want to quit? Maybe he does want to quit. Maybe he did quit.’ (Taylor and I) are at this place where we don’t have to do that. I mean, we’re brothers, there’s an open line of communication. We can disagree on something and have a conversation about it without hating each other. For us, it’s like, ‘Life’s too short. Let’s not live in a space where we’re on a bus together and so-and-so’s not talking to so-and-so because of some stupid shit that was left unsaid.’ ”
JON CHU
Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes.
Reflecting on the recording sessions for Oh Brother, Griffin says: “We didn’t think … it was going to be the same process (as their previous albums). No, we need(ed) to put this thing on our back and do what we can to put forward this image, which is … it’s us, just me and you. Let’s not shy away from that, but instead show that we can still retain the identity of the band. It’s going to be important to anybody that likes our band that it’s not, ‘Oh man, those two guys left and they started sounding completely different.’ Taylor and I (decided) … our contribution to Oh Brother was to put that front and center, to represent the sound of this band to the full extent that we can, just the two of us.
“It was fun to be able to go in and arrange things on the floor knowing that it was a much more atomized approach … we started the process with just Taylor and me, drums and guitar. It was just cool to (say let’s) arrange this song with acoustic guitar, drums and vocal, and let’s get it to a place where it feels full. We know that the essence of this thing is really strong, and it was just fun to know we’re crafting the body … without bass and piano, because it’s the two of us now.”
During the recording sessions, Trevor Menear, who has played with Dawes for years, played guitar on many tracks, and bass on two. Taylor played bass on the rest of it, except for “House Parties,” on which their friend Mike Viola did so. Taylor added what little keyboard there was on this album.
“The arrangements,” says Griffin, “were integral, as opposed to … playing three chords because there’s four guys playing…and then the three chords turn into something else because everybody’s jamming. This was less that and more, ‘Let’s make sure that what’s interesting about this song is inherent in the way that we’re playing it.’ It felt organized differently.”
Taylor has always been the band’s main songwriter. “He’ll go into his cave and write whatever he needs to write,” says Griffin. “Then we will discover the arrangement together. Whatever the song wants to be, we do that together.”
While Taylor is usually the lead vocalist, Griffin occasionally takes the lead. The Oh Brother song “Enough Already” is in two-part harmony, but Griffin’s part is the one that has the melody. He sang lead on “Roll Tide” from their 2016 album We’re All Gonna Die, and I mention an Instagram reel of just the two of them, poignantly harmonizing on “Take Me Out to the City,” with Taylor on acoustic guitar and Griffin on tambourine. “There’s always been one song here and there throughout the career (where I take the lead), definitely a lot of harmony. We grew up singing together with our dad.”
When I ask Griffin which Oh Brother track is his favorite, he unequivocally answers “Surprise.” “It’s a dense one. Long and dense. I like it because I think it’s one of Taylor’s heaviest songs lyrically, and I feel like we did a really good job of making the arrangement of the sound of the music reflect the sentiment of the song.”
This song’s lyrics are eerily prescient of the recent upheaval in the Goldsmiths’ lives. Griffin recalls, “Taylor sat down and started playing that riff, then I grabbed a few different pieces of gear, and it was like, ‘We’re here, that’s it.’ So a lot of it was figured out instinctually.”
Even before the L.A. fires occurred, the Goldsmiths’ recording studio was not ready in time for the production of Oh Brother. So they recorded the album in Viola’s studio, and he co-produced it with them.
The cover of Dawes’ “Oh Brother” album.
The cover art for the album is telling. Taylor and Griffin are sitting in a room decorated with childhood artifacts. I tell Griffin I couldn’t decide whether they look deep in concentration, contemplation or aggravation (which would call for an exclamation point at the end of Oh Brother). Griffin responds, “That’s why I thought that photo was fitting (for) the double entendre of the title. It’s like, ‘Oh, brother, it’s us now,’ as well as we lost two members after 17 years. There was definitely this heaviness of, ‘Oh brother, this has been quite a ride.’ ”
Do they have thoughts of becoming a quartet again? “Live, it’s still five people, as it was … but Taylor and I are somewhat embracing this new configuration because it allows us to be nimble in a way that we weren’t before, and it opens up a set of opportunities.”
I tell him the idiom “less is more” comes to mind and say, “Fewer percussion instruments, fewer band members. You’re really distilling the best of you.”
Griffin concurs. “We’ve been doing performances occasionally around town, just the two of us — me on a small kit and Taylor on guitar. It feels really cool — full and different and unique and expressive, in a totally different way. So yeah, less is more. Definitely that rings true in that context.”
Besides Oh Brother, Dawes also released, last year, a 10th anniversary deluxe edition of Stories Don’t End. It is remixed and remastered, with bonus material including acoustic demos, versions of songs recorded with Blake Mills and Shawn Everett (both associated with the band Simon Dawes, the precursor to Dawes), and an outtake of Griffin singing an early version of “Picture of a Man.”
Dawes is also featured on Brad Paisley’s new single “Raining Inside” and on “This Is Life” by the L.A.-based band Winnetka Bowling League, founded by Koma.
Collaborating with other musicians has always been integral to Dawes’s identity. “For me, more than Taylor at this point because he’s just so busy with his family, that’s been a huge part of my life,” says Griffin. “I play on (other bands’) records all the time.” (Recently he did some sessions with the band Bright Eyes; he is on their last record, Five Dice, All Threes, and is slated to tour with them in January 2026.)
As to what we will hear in Princeton, April 13, Griffin says “we don’t ever go on tour with 15 songs … and play the same setlist every night. It’s a completely different setlist every night. We’ll be representing the new record heavily, so there’ll be a lot of tunes off of Oh Brother.
“We like to, over the course of the evening, span our catalog: play at least one tune from every record. But also (not) skimp on the singles that people want to hear. It’s not lost on us that people want to hear ‘When My Time Comes,’ ‘Things Happen’ and ‘All Your Favorite Bands.’ I think ‘When My Time Comes’ is pretty much in there every night, but aside from that and maybe ‘All Your Favorite Bands,’ everything else is kind of up in the air, and depends on what we played (in the previous concert).
“I guarantee it’ll be fun and entertaining!”
Dawes will perform at The McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, April 13 at 7 p.m. (visit mccarter.org), and The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, July 11 at 8 p.m. (visit ticketmaster.com). For more on the band, visit dawestheband.com.
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