Dawes Plays Muddy Waters
L.A. Folk Rockers Channel Vintage California
Emerging out of the ashes of alternative outfit Simon Dawes, current L.A. four-piece Dawes are fast becoming the carriers of the throwback folk rock torch. Together, Taylor Goldsmith, brother Griffin Goldsmith, Alex Casnoff, and Wylie Gelber and their debut release, North Hills, are drawing comparisons to greats like Crosby, Stills & Nash and Credence Clearwater Revival. As life-long SoCal dwellers, the quartet seems about as far removed from their Southern-rock-meets-country-twang sound as you can get. But, as leading man Taylor points out, maybe we’ve got our geography wrong.
“From my perspective, and I listened to that music growing up when I was living in L.A., people like Neil Young and Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills & Nash and The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, every single one of them is an L.A. band,” he pointed out. “And those are all the people we get compared to. I feel like country’s definitely influenced that music, but I don’t feel like that’s necessarily Dawes; It’s kind of L.A. in general.”
Truthfully, it’s no wonder why North Hills‘ sound is so entrenched in Los Angeles nostalgia. Alongside producer Jonathan Wilson, the band spent a chunk of their recording session holed up in one of the city’s oldest musical hubs.
