Dawes' Return to Little Rock's Rev Room Provided Magical Moments

by Julian Spivey

Julian Spivey Photo

 
Dawes returned to The Revolution Room in Little Rock, Ark. on Monday, April 11 for the first time in more than five years but like it so often does when spending time with old friends it didn’t feel like there had been much distance at all.

Dawes, the band out of Los Angeles fronted by songwriter/vocalist/guitarist Taylor Goldsmith, has had a fruitful half-decade-plus since their last performance in Little Rock with the release of three albums since then: 2018’s Passwords, 2020’s Good Luck with Whatever and last year’s Misadventures of Doomscroller.

The band performed eight songs from these three albums throughout the evening, which consisted of two sets with maybe a 15-minute break between the two. While I would probably tell you I’m a bigger fan of the band’s earlier output than the last three albums the selection of songs from those albums on Monday night was truly impeccable and lined up with what I consider to be some of my favorite tracks from those albums, including “Comes in Waves” (my favorite song off Misadventures of Doomscroller) and “St. Augustine at Night,” (my favorite song off Good Luck with Whatever) which Goldsmith played solo early on in the second set. I also really enjoyed “Who Do You Think You’re Talking To?” from Good Luck with Whatever.

The band began the night with an epic performance of “Someone Else’s Café/Doomscroller Tries to Relax,” the lead track off the most recent album which clocks in at nine minutes and 26 seconds on the album and is at least that long performed live. It’s a real jam.

The band truly jammed all night, which surely is something they must’ve done the two previous times I’d seen them, but I just don’t remember the sheer shredding on every instrument in the band. I think this is because I’ve always considered myself a lyrics fan first and music fan second and Taylor Goldsmith is one of the best (and certainly underrated) songwriters of his generation with such conversational verses and incredibly literary and often witty turns of phrase.

Part of the reason Dawes may have seemed to jam harder than I remembered on Monday night, was guitarist Trevor Menear, who’s joined the group since I’d last seen them. He absolutely shreds on the guitar and was a true highlight the entire evening. The entire band is a tight-fit, perfect blend of rocking sounds with Griffin Goldsmith holding it down on drums, Lee Pardini on keys and Wylie Gelber on bass. It was a bit bittersweet seeing the band on Monday because Gelber, an original member of the group, will be leaving the band after the tour wraps this month. According to a past social media post by Taylor Goldsmith, Gelber will shift his career goals to being a designer/contractor/builder. I guess some of us have to grow up, after all.

Dawes has reached the point in their career where they have a good discography of albums and incredibly they seem to be able and capable of playing any and every song in that discography and they switch up their setlists every night – this made it hard for someone like me who actually kind of likes spoilers to plan ahead to figure out what would be played. I like learning songs I may not know quite as well so I can shout along at the shows.

So, there were definitely songs played on Monday night I didn’t know quite as well as my favorite Dawes recordings like “Ghost in the Machine,” “Living in the Future,” “To Be Completely Honest” and “Time Flies Either Way,” but they all sounded well – even if I couldn’t make out all of the words due to the sound close by the stage – blaring instruments with the occasional hard time making out lyrics.

The group also played a new song, “What It Takes,” that just debuted on Friday and sounded pretty awesome live, even though I’ll have to go to Spotify to catch all of the lyrics. Goldsmith also debuted another song solo at the beginning of the second set called “King of the Never Wills,” which was amazing, and I could hear well because it was just him and his guitar.

Among my favorite songs performed at The Rev Room were “Things Happen” off 2015’s All Your Favorite Bands and “Time Spent in Los Angeles” off 2011’s Nothing is Wrong.  

But there were two performances of the evening that I would classify as magical. The first came at the very end of the first set when the band performed “When My Time Comes” off their 2009 debut North Hills, which essentially put them on the map and to this day is probably the ultimate fan-favorite of their work.

In 2013, I had recently become a huge fan of singer-songwriter Jason Isbell and saw he was opening for Dawes at The Rev Room that October. I had never seen Isbell and this was his first show in my neck of the woods since I’d become acquainted with his work. To this date, it’s still the only time I’ve ever bought a concert ticket for the opening act having zero clue who the headliner was. Isbell was terrific that night. But I also became a fan of Dawes that night – and the biggest moment of that was the reaction of seeing the crowd of hardcore fans absolutely having a cathartic moment during the song and screaming along, especially to its epic chorus.

Four years later I was one of those fans having a cathartic experience singing along to “When My Time Comes” and another six years after that there I was on Monday night at The Rev Room feeling it all over again. It only gets better every time.

My other favorite moment was Taylor Goldsmith’s solo, one-song encore at the very end of the night when he performed my favorite Dawes song, “A Little Bit of Everything,” off Nothing is Wrong. It’s an absolute beauty of a song and an emotional listen. I’d seen the band perform it before, which is terrific, but it was also a nice, moving experience seeing the man who wrote it perform it, just him and his guitar, in a room full of strangers who’ve become a community with their shared love of music.