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Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba talks Tom Petty, Bon Jovi, missing Florida, crafting ‘Crooked Shadows’ and more

The emo troubadour performs at Jannus Live on March 24.
 
Published March 19, 2018|Updated March 20, 2018

Just because Chris Carrabba hangs his hat in Nashville doesn't mean he doesn't still think of Florida as home.

"That's where I found out who I was," said the singer-songwriter behind Dashboard Confessional, who in the early 2000s emerged from Boca Raton to become flag-bearers of emo's move into the mainstream. "It's a really big deal, and that lasts you a lifetime. And to be frank with you, that's where my lifelong friends stem from, or still are.

"I don't live in Florida because my job dictates that it's a little bit better and more advantageous to be in a more active music city like Nashville. But it's very odd to realize when I'm done with a tour and I'm going home that I'm not going to Florida. But my family's there, and my friends are there, and I make every excuse to get home."

A fresh tour is as good an excuse as any — especially when you have a new album in tow. On Saturday, Dashboard Confessional will hit Jannus Live in support of Crooked Shadows, their first LP in more than eight years. (Click here for details on the show.)

Like most of Dashboard's recent albums, Crooked Shadows sounds bigger, bolder and more fleshed out than his early guy-with-a-guitar albums and EPs. But to Carrabba, 42, the album feels more like the old days than you'd think. He explained why in a recent phone interview.

You probably have a lot of friends on the Gulf Coast. I think one of your drummers lived in Tampa for a while.

Two. Two former drummers who are from the West Coast. Mike (Marsh) lived there for a period, and then Ben (Homola) was from St. Pete. My drummer from Further Seems Forever was from Tampa. That Alligator Alley line — it's funny how far musicians will go to play together in Florida.

Of all the shows you've played in Tampa over the years, one of them was opening for Bon Jovi on tour in 2010. I still find it kind of hard to believe that happened. How do you look back on that experience now?

I have the same answer: It's hard to believe that that happened. That came about because I did a series of fundraisers for Hurricane Katrina, and unbeknownst to me, in New Jersey, I did this benefit show and Jon Bon Jovi came to see us. He was probably in disguise; I didn't know he was there, no one knew he was there. And then three, four years later, I get a call: "I really loved when I saw you were doing the fundraisers, and we'd really love to take you out on tour." We wrestled with it for a minute, because it is an unusual pairing. But ultimately, it was a quick yes, because the way I've always looked at Dashboard is like, where can I play that it's not supposed to work? For example, starting out with me and an acoustic guitar playing exclusively with hardcore bands.

The thing with Bon Jovi, also, was there's very few bands that you could probably learn that much from. You know what my favorite part about that tour was? Finding out that these guys, in spite of being one of the biggest bands to ever exist, to be wealthy beyond imagination, famous beyond imagination, they're just like friendly, nice dudes. That's a lesson there, too.

Speaking of rock legends, I know you were a huge fan of Tom Petty. Did you ever get to meet him, or play with any of the Heartbreakers?

No. Big regret that I never even saw them play.

Oh, no way!

Yeah. They came to Florida a few times when I could only afford like $6 shows, so I couldn't have gone, right? And then the next chance I would have had to see them was when I was touring 300 days a years, so I didn't have a lot of chances to go to shows. It was one of those ones where I was like, I'll get to see them. Now I'll regret that forever.

One thing that stood out to me about Crooked Shadows was, it sounded like there's a new bit of grit in your voice, a real kind of growl. Do you sense that? How do you feel about your voice as it ages?

There is some grit in there, isn't there? I don't know that I am cognizant of the change or if there's intention for it. There's several ways to make records. Dusk and Summer, if I picked one — we wrote the songs, we toured the songs, we practiced the songs, and then after quite some time, we went in with the songs very well-honed. I think we got really great performances of the songs on the record.

But here's the difference with Crooked Shadows: I cared less about the execution, in terms of the most perfect note choices or inflection. What I really wanted was the immediacy of the emotional intent in the message of the songs. So knowing that was the goal, I decided to make the record just in my basement. I'd write a song, and the moment it was finished, I would record it, figuring I might not ever get closer to the true meaning of the song than moments after I'd written it. So yeah, I do think that probably plays into some sort of grit in my voice. I think I sing like I like to sing, and we produced the record ourselves, so I don't know that there's a guy in the booth with half an ear toward how it's going to sound on the radio, going, "Clean it up, clean it up."

You mentioned Dusk and Summer, which continued this evolution from a guy with an acoustic guitar into this bigger, more sweeping sound. When you work with a guy like Daniel Lanois on that album, are you consciously or unconsciously thinking about U2? Big, sweeping, polished rock songs?

Well, the thing is, sweeping is one thing; polished is another. So Daniel, sweeping is for sure, I think. Polished, with Daniel, is not so much a thing. He's an adventurer. He's a pirate. He is a warts-ad-all kind of guy. However, there were label people involved, too, with a lot of opinions. They wanted a certain-sounding record that would be contemporary at the time.
I think I've said this before, so forgive me, but I like my first three and a half records better than my last three and a half records. The first three and a half records, there was no one to give me their opinion, so I was just shooting from the hip and going by my instinct. For the last three and a half, I was so eager to learn from people that had so much experience that I left my own experience as an afterthought. And I did learn a lot, am grateful for the lessons. But I wondered what would have happened if with those songs if I'd gone down the less conventional path that I usually take, or that I instinctively take.

So picking up those lessons and applying them as you move on, it sounds like Crooked Shadows has more in common, on a personal level, with the first bunch of albums and EPs — even if, as a listener, what I'm hearing is a brighter, fuller, more sweeping studio-type sound. In your mind, the creation of them harkens more toward the first albums?

It does. The marching orders I gave myself were sort of like this: What if I approached the songwriting with the same trust in my instincts that I had with the first few records, but had the lessons, growth and knowledge that I've accumulated about music and musicianship in the ensuing years? If I was both of those things, and if this was my first record, what would it sound like?

If you had a time machine and an unlimited budget, you wouldn't go back and change anything about the first albums? Add instrumentation, rearrange them in any ways?

No. I don't think so.

Is it a different state of mind, forcing yourself to write for another human being versus writing for yourself?

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's definitely a different mentality.

You can turn it off and on?

Well, it's very hard to turn on the writing for myself. I have to wait for that to show up, and hope that it does. Writing for other people, there's less trepidation. If it isn't any good, I can just trash it and move on to the next attempt, and there's not crushing feeling of defeat that hinders me from getting to the next song. All of it's exciting and glorious and rewarding, but it's not an easy thing to do. Sometimes it flows out without resistance, which is really wonderful. But it isn't easy.

What about when you're interpreting somebody else for yourself? I'm thinking about your covers, or the Covered and Taped EP, when you're taking on Julien Baker, Justin Bieber or the 1975. Where's your creative fulfillment in creating a good cover song?

You know when you can't stop playing a song? It's on repeat? That's what happens to me too, but I play and sing, so I'll just find myself doing that. The neat thing about covering something is that the writer has their own message and intention, but the listener, of course, has their own interpretation, which may be close, or way far off. But exploring that spectrum is what makes covering a song fun. I'm not singing from the same impetus that caused them to write that song. I'm singing from the pieces of that song that resonate deeply in my life so it becomes mine for a minute.

— Jay Cridlin