“I think for me, being the songwriter, it sometimes feels like you are doing bumper bowling. You keep hitting all these obstacles,” says Taylor Goldsmith, leader of the California folk-rock band Dawes. “You have to straighten yourself out and get in the groove and just do what is natural to you.”
Dawes still delivers songs that put listeners in mind of the Laurel Canyon scene, but Goldsmith has honed his writing to such a degree the songs are even more sophisticated, introspective and, yes, natural-sounding than they were on the previous three albums.
It’s likely no surprise that Goldsmith writes about the fallacy of “charms and riches” lasting (“Waiting for Your Call”) and spends almost 10 minutes reflecting on heartache (“Now That It’s Too Late, Maria”). He prides himself on writing songs that find him at his most “comfortable and confident” but stretching the boundaries—or in his words, hitting those pesky bumpers—to better express his innermost thoughts. The trick, he says, is not to overthink the process.
“For all the inventiveness and innovation of Neil Young, he won’t tell you to go join a jazz band,” Goldsmith says of the legend’s advice on how to stretch creatively. “This is a process that never stops and I’ll be happy never to be done with it. I hope to be honing my craft for my entire career [because it] involves a lot of searching to understand who I am. But somewhere along the line, you also have to remember this is super simple.”
Goldsmith is well-schooled in such lessons. His dad, Lenny Goldsmith, is a former member of Tower of Power and Sweat Hogs. In a way, Goldsmith received a graduate education in music when he was just a child not just from his father but also from the family’s musical pals, including Miles Joseph, one of the best-known members of Bob Dylan’s famous gigging bands, who gave him his first electric guitar.