This summer, California folk-rock outfit Dawes lapped the country with Bob Dylan, playing a total of 21 shows together. This isn't the first time Dawes worked with bigfoot songwriters from the canon of American rock and roll—they previously toured with John Fogerty and Jackson Browne—but this was different. In his own words, frontman Taylor Goldsmith recounts the experience, from sound check jitters, to grappling with Dylan's persona, to articulating exactly how it feels to stand toe to toe with one of your idols and listen to what he has to say about your music. -- As told to Hilary Hughes

The First Sound-Check

We were aware of how insane it is to be touring with Dylan, but it's hard to wrap your head around it until you're standing side-stage, watching his band sound-check. Bob didn't sound check, but the rest of the guys did. When they came offstage, Stewie [guitarist Stu Kimball] said, "Hey man, we're happy you guys are here. We're happy to have you, thanks for coming and joining us!" It struck deep. When it was time to do our sound-check, we got up onstage. We're looking around at the piano and the drum set. It was like, "Whoa, this is Bob Dylan's stage that we're standing on right now." Little stuff like that resonates in a much bigger way than we'd really foreseen; that just kind of came out of nowhere.

Obviously, that was just the first night. We didn't meet him or anything. He played, and then his bus was gone. You know, just in and out. I don't think it's in order to maintain some sort of mystery. I just think that's the schedule he keeps.

On the Dylan Mystique

He stands up at the mic. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't smile. It's a very intentional experience that he gives the audience, a very conscious one, and it starts to make you rethink lyrics. There's a lyric on his newest album that goes "The more I take, the more I give/The more I die, the more I live." When he says "The more I give," he could easily be speaking to that aspect of his character. When he says, "The more I die, the more I live," it's an even heavier thing, because it's so applicable to the Bob Dylan experience at this point. It's not who he is onstage and then who he is at the after-party. There's no other side of him. There's no offstage guy. That full commitment, that full immersion into the artist, has allowed him to become a mythical creature, something that goes far beyond how we see our favorite songwriters. He lives Bob Dylan.

On Dylan Giving Himself to Art

I feel like some songwriters are born there, you know? When I think about Kurt Cobain or Townes Van Zandt, it's very much like their heads are in the clouds and they can't cope with how the real world works. With Dylan, he's an anomaly, because I feel like he's very aware of how the world works—and he rejects it. He cultivates that head-in-the-clouds mentality, but in a very aware and enlightened way. When you see a Bruce Springsteen or Tom Petty or Jackson Browne show, the impression you get is that you'd love to have a beer with them. That's the image they project. With Dylan, it goes beyond that. All of a sudden, this isn't a man we're dealing with—this is an example of what happens when a man gives himself to his art, when there's no longer a line between the two anymore. I love the idea of having a beer with a lot of the musicians I admire. But then there's a whole other side of things where this is something I'm witnessing, you know? This isn't a communion between the artist and me. I'm witnessing what he is.

On Intimidation

You have to put that aside. When I think of bands that have maintained a certain level of success all along—Metallica, or the Red Hot Chili Peppers—no matter what anybody thinks about them, you have to look at them and say, "Wow, those guys operated under the most pressure." If we were at that level, instead of saying to ourselves, "Oh my god, we're gonna open for Bob Dylan!" we'd be like, "Oh my god, we have millions of fans who are expecting quality shit from us!" So whenever we've been in situations with Jackson, or John Fogerty, or Dylan, we just played like it was a big show of our own. It's the same kind of pressure, and it's the same exercise in putting intimidation aside. If we can do it well—that's what professionalism is. You can acknowledge the pressure, but at the same time not have your impression be fazed by it in the slightest.

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On Musical Maturity

I'm twenty-seven. I've made three albums with Dawes. I'm in the very early stages of this. But I'm getting closer to thirty, and there are definitely nights or weeks where I'm like "I can't fuckin' do this. I can't sing. I'm out of steam. How do I regroup and reshape my approach to this in order to keep going?" I feel like my voice has changed in a lot of ways because I stopped singing like a screaming idiot, and I kept thinking, "How am I going to maintain myself in order to keep doing this forever?" With certain songs—like "When My Time Comes," which is very high and hard to sing—sometimes I think, "This is not an easy song to sing tonight. I wonder how I'll be able to do this in thirty years."

Dylan just shows that it really doesn't matter. If the song is good, it doesn't matter if he can hit the big ol' A-natural. It's just a good song. Everybody always beats themselves up—I'm not a good enough singer, I'm not a good-enough guitar player—but if you're a good-enough songwriter, none of that would ever matter. That's what I'm shooting for, and I'm looking to these guys—to Dylan, to Jackson—and how they've reshaped their careers to suit them to where they're at now.

Bob Dylan's voice is not what it used to be, but not in a he-lost-it kind of way. I think it's cooler than it ever was, and I feel like he's been able to reinvent what it means to play a song to where it's exciting for him. You hear these versions of "Visions of Johanna" and "Tangled Up in Blue" and they sound like versions you would hear on Modern Times. It's his way of staying relevant to himself and staying updated with himself. I just noticed all that, and thought, "How is it gonna look for us when we get older and we want to continue playing shows?" I don't mean to make it sound like, "This is what old men do!" because I don't really see them as old guys. With Dylan, he's more relevant than any contemporary artist. He's still this cultural icon, even for eighteen-year-olds. The way he's carved out that path is truly astounding.

On Winning Dylan's Fans Over

I feel like we're very lucky in the sense that Dawes can be the kind of band that plays with Bright Eyes or M. Ward but that also plays with Bob Dylan. I don't know if there are a lot of bands of guys in their twenties that can do that. I'm not saying that makes us particularly good or anything—I'm sure there are a lot of younger guys who think we're terrible, and a lot of older guys who think we're terrible—but for the people who do like us, it's not an age-specific thing. We can do a college show and our music might speak to students based on the music they listen to. Some of the older folks at the Dylan shows said they expected to not like us: they made it very clear. But then they'd come up to us afterward and say, "I was expecting you to sound like what music sounds like from musicians your age, which is something I don't like, but I still liked you."

With the Dylan shows, the first couple of songs were the most difficult ones of the night, because we were trying to win the crowd over. It felt like "I'm here to see Dylan, who in my opinion is the greatest songwriter ever, so you better do a fuckin' good job." I saw it with people in the closer rows—those looks on their faces that said they weren't sure how they felt about us quite yet. Once we got to the third song, I felt like they opened up to us a little bit more. By the last song we played—we only play seven songs because it's a 40-minute set, and our songs sometimes can get a little long—everyone seemed really on board.

On Taking Notes

This tour epitomized what it means to make the music the focus. [Dylan's band] had just enough familiarity with the material, and just enough unfamiliarity with how Dylan was going to treat it that night, that they were constantly reading each other, constantly on their toes, constantly reacting to each other as a band. It was never a matter of "This is where I play this guitar part," or "The cymbal gets hit here." It was very much a "I'm gonna hold this chord until he starts singing, and when he doesn't I'm gonna add some extra color to keep it interesting or create some tension." That's real music. They set up these old-looking spotlights, and there are no videos—no big screens where everyone past the twentieth row just watches TV. You're there for a live band experience, not a show. You're not there for some big sing-along. He was very much about the craft. His commitment to being honest to the experience, it's representative of who he is. You don't need to have snazzy transitions in between songs. And you also don't need to have the voice you did forty years ago. If you have great songs, the right people are going to show up. His fans are all there for the right reasons because he won't give someone the wrong reasons to come for him.

The Last Night of the Tour

We hadn't met him the whole tour. We were over by the trailer, ready to leave, just packing up and getting on the bus. He walked right up to me and he said, "It was really great to have you guys. What's that last ballad that you guys played?" I said, "'A Little Bit of Everything.'" And he said, "That's a great song." That was our whole conversation—he walked away, and that was it.

But I got to meet the man.

A big thing for me was that we didn't want to make anyone feel like they were going to meet us out of obligation. For him to walk up of his own accord and to want to say that—you know what? That's so cool. He's being a real nice guy, and he's not doing it because anyone asked him to. It was legitimate. It was one of the coolest things I could've hoped for, especially to have the guy who paved the way in terms of how we all view songwriting tell me that "A Little Bit of Everything" is a great song. It's far beyond what I ever could've dreamed of.

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