Dashboard Confessional

Wed 16th Dec, 2009 in Features

It’s been a decade since Florida-based Chris Carrabba started penning his one-man, guitar-in-hand elegies under the Dashboard Confessional name – and it’s been full steam ahead ever since.

His creation was quick to take off. The man built a steady fan base from the get-go, fuelled by the catharticism of his songs – not least teen anthem Hands Down and Spiderman 2 lead single Vindicated. 2003 album A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar saw the expanded full band experimenting with heavier sounds, but all the while retaining that special soul-baring quality – something that can be attributed to the intimacy of Carrabba’s lyrics.

After a return to their acoustic roots on 2007’s The Shade Of Poison Trees, Dashboard is back with sixth album Alter The Ending. Even in its single disc form it’s another step forward for the band, but it’s the two-disc deluxe edition that really heightens the experience; a concept that sees the entire album dissected into both acoustic and full band formats.

Carrabba took some time to chat with FasterLouder.

So Butch Walker produced a good portion of the new album. He’s known for big, brash pop numbers. How did his style fit with Dashboard?
I came to Butch from another avenue – of fandom. I know where he’s had success with certain huge female stars. Just as a songwriter and a producer and he’s definitely an incredible one at that, but I’m a fan of Butch Walker the singer/songwriter and the records he makes that way.

I feel that where I fall, in my tastes of how a record should sound, unless it is a record like The Shade of Poison Trees which is obviously and intentionally stripped down, mine falls somewhere between the Butch Walker aesthetic as a singer/songwriter and the Butch Walker aesthetic as a full blown pop producer. On that broad spectrum I think we fall in the middle in terms of our taste in production, so it seemed like a good fit.

Your fans are incredibly impassioned by your music. I’ve been to two of your shows in the past and until recently I’d never come close to seeing that connection replicated by another band. How does it feel to have a fan base like that; who do that night after night?
It’s incredible, it’s extraordinary, and it’s unparalleled. I’ve never experienced anything else like that before.

Do you feel you have to do anything extra when you’re on stage to build or maintain that relationship?
I think you have to be careful of not doing too much extra. You have to able to be focused on, for example, the way I’m playing guitar or how well or poorly I may be singing that specific song. It takes the moment away, but if you just give yourself to freedom to let it happen, it sort of happens for all of us.

At the moment you’re on the road supporting the album. In the past you’ve played with Michael Stipe, supported U2 and you’re about to go on tour with Bon Jovi. Is there anyone that you haven’t worked with that you would like to in the future?
Oh, there’s tonnes! I mean, if I had a wish-list it would be a long one. Regina Spektor is someone I would love to work with, Ingrid Michaelson is someone I would like to work with. I don’t know in what capacity, I think I’d like to write a song or two with Ingrid.

Any plans to come back to Australia in the near future?
Yeah, we’re working on plans for next year. As it was, I was planning to be there around the time I’ll be on tour with Bon Jovi, so it’ll either be either before or after that.

Now that your back on the road, is there any certain part of touring that you particularly enjoy?
Well you know, the day is long – it’s filled with less glamorous moments, for example tomorrow when I’ll be at a TV station at 5:45 in the morning to pretend I’m awake and happy. That certainly pales in comparison to when we’re on stage at night, because I love that more than anything else, you know? That’s the party, that’s the best part. I’m not looking for the after-party…that makes the night for me.

Do you have any career highlights?
Yeah there’s a lot and it’s hard to pinpoint them and it’s hard to tell you the reasons why. I mean, obviously when we sold out MSG and we were able to film it for PBS, the public broadcasting system here, that was a tremendous highlight. But, I have an equally big highlight – two weeks ago in my hometown where I announced a show basically twelve hours before the show, only on Twitter, in a club that holds only 140 people and there were something like 285 people plus 150 people that couldn’t fit inside.

The band has brought us great happiness and I think the reason is that we’re not experiencing it alone in a disconnected manner from our fan base. We’re there with them and as you’ve noticed yourself, it is a shared experience between audience and band. So that for me is the highlight, that I look out and I see faces that I know and have a connection with. I see people that I don’t know that I feel as if I do just from this experience that we share together.

You’ve been performing as Dashboard for almost a decade now…is there anything that you haven’t done with the band that you really want to come into?
There’s a lot of different songwriting that I do that I don’t think is really appropriate for Dashboard and I think about that, I think about how do I present that. I think about that a lot, and then the thing about that is that we’ve been given such freedom from our audiences to explore other aesthetics that we kind of trusted. We don’t worry that well, what haven’t we done yet? We just trust that course and that we’re already on it.

Alter the Ending is out now on Universal Music.