TEAM LAST CALL

Dashboard Confessional’s new album, Dusk and Summer, is about as celestial and expansive as a pop album can get. There are paper-thin acoustic ballads that waver quietly in the ether and fist-pumping rockers drenched in liquid harmonies that explode into the horizon. It’s the most gratifying kind of ear candy you could write and still claim art as your motive.
More importantly, it’s almost 100 percent emo-free. This is a hugely important fact for singer-songwriter Chris Carrabba, whose tattoos, pompadour and cash-money face have made him the official poster-boy for the genre since he started performing as Dashboard in 1999.
With Dusk and Summer, which debuted at number two in June, Carrabba is proving that he’s bigger than an ephemeral trend like emo – no matter how you define it. His legion of fans has transcended the sensitive teenage kid demographic and now includes lawyers, jocks, punks – and enough of them that his band has graduated to headlining places like Madison Square Garden. And you can bet that those 20,000 people will be singing every word of every line of every song at the top of their lungs.
Team Last Call tracked down Carrabba at his rehearsal space in Burbank, California, to talk about the “e” word, what it’s like to be a sex symbol and how sometimes life is so surreal you can barely get your head around it.
“If you listen closely, you can hear ‘Welcome to the Jungle,’ because we’re practicing right next to Guns n’ Roses today,” Carrabba says excitedly. “Now get your head around that!”

Team Last Call: You took a very long time to record this album. That, coupled with the fact that you dug up guys like [producer] Daniel Lanois to work with, suggests a lot of ambition. Going into it, what kind of album did you want to make?
Chris Carrabba: This one! [laughs] It maybe will be the only time in my whole career where what I really set out to do is what the end result was. That’s why I took so much time – because I knew what it was supposed to be, and things weren’t quite the way they should have been. With all the tinkering and the massive amounts of songs we’d written, I found it, and I presented it on this record. I knew what I wanted, and here it is.

TLC: There is this amazing phenomenon going on at your shows, where people are singing along every word to every song, sometimes even louder than you. What’s that experience like from your perspective up on stage?
CC: It’s really overwhelming. It’s always new. I really keep waiting for it to be like, “Oh, this again?” But it never is. It defies convention somehow, and I love that. People aren’t supposed to let themselves go like that. People are reserved by nature, but somehow we all let our guard down at these shows. We’re free – myself included. We want to sing about it. And they do, and I’m floored. I can’t believe it. I’m like, “I’m not the only one.” We’re all standing there feeling that way.

TLC: What do you think it is about a Dashboard show that lets people have that experience?
CC: God, I really don’t know. It could be the obvious thing of, well, they’re pretty good melodies, so people enjoy singing them. And the lyrics are cathartic on a lot of levels. But I don’t even think it’s that, because usually that means they’re good for private moments. Maybe it’s the attitude that we bring in, that we come in thinking, “Damn it all to hell, we’re going to let it all go.” And when we do that, maybe other people feel it. Maybe it becomes a mob mentality. But that’s like armchair quarterbacking. I really don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet. I’m a bit afraid to figure it out, because what if I ruin it?

TLC: It’s grown to the point where you’re looking out at literally thousands of kids belting words back at you that you wrote in a diary somewhere. Does it ever freak you out that it’s getting so cult-like?
CC: It’s an odd time. I remember the first time I played in New York. It was in a VFW that held about 50 people, probably. This time when we play New York, we’re going to be playing Madison Square Garden.

TLC: Right. It’s crazy!
CC: It’s mind-boggling. But at the same time, that’s the thing that I’m most proud of. Just by accident we have this vast cross-section of people that will listen to us, and really listen to us. And let’s face it, man, people love us or they hate us. We’re nobody’s second favorite band. Which could be damning.

TLC: There is this intense polarization. I think a lot of it has to do with the whole emo label and you being made into a poster-boy for it.
CC: It’s like I’m guilty of something somebody said about me, basically, because the press had decided that that was going to be the term they used for us or the angle they were going to use to write about us. I’m fine with it, because I think all music is emotional. I don’t think the term is very original, but I didn’t come up with the term. But it is polarizing, and I feel like if people don’t like us, it’s probably not because they listened to us.

TLC: Right, it’s because of their concept of you.
CC: Yeah. But I’m not much concerned with that. Life is too short.

TLC: The good news is that with the new album, the emo thing has been fading.
CC: It really has. It’s so surprising, because I thought for sure that was just going to be a fact of life. And even when people ask me about the term “emo,” it’s almost more academic. Like, “Now that it doesn’t apply to you, what do you think of it?” As if I’m a commentator or something like that. I used to be on the team, but now I’m running color for the game.

TLC: And you’re probably like, “Thank god!”
CC: Yeah! It was almost this running joke within the band, especially because I’ve been accused more than once of being pretty buttoned-up, pretty well guarded emotionally. So I think people that really know me are probably the most amused by that [label], as if I’m this guy falling all over himself to be effusive day in and day out, to share myself and my woes and my victories with the whole world. In fact, it’s not the case.

TLC: It’s not like you run to your tour bus and cry in your bunk for hours after the show or something.
CC: Not at all! I wonder if that’s people’s view of me? I’m certainly not dour, not in the least bit. So that’s what I find the most amusing. I’m not quite Robert Smith.

TLC: When you think about where you’re at now – playing Madison Square Garden, selling millions of albums, touring with bands like U2, seeingyour album debut at number two – can you really wrap your head around how big this whole thing has grown?
CC: I don’t think entirely, which may be lucky. I think I’m humble because I’m a little foolish about it. I can’t quite wrap my head about it, and it serves me well. Because if I could, my ego might get in the way or I might find the weight of it crushing, as far as expectations.
Where we debut on the charts – it’s exciting when you get the call, but I have yet to figure out what it all means. I’m lucky that that stuff hasn’t had a direct affect on my writing. We’re in trouble – I know it – if I start saying, “What kind of songs do I have to write to debut at number one?”

TLC: You’re like the first emo pinup model. How do you react to being treated like a sex symbol?
CC: Well, the truth is, Jeff, I’m very good-looking. Even if I was working as a ditch digger, I think I’d be dealing with that in my life somehow or another. [laughs]
I don’t know. It is what it is. If I didn’t play guitar, I wouldn’t be anybody’s sex symbol. It’s as simple as that. But you’re damn right I picked up guitar to get girls, so it’s working!

TLC: Do you have any way of mapping out or even guessing where you want to go next?
CC: Well, yeah. I want to challenge the convention of what I’m doing. So the convention would say that I would write a bunch of hit songs on my next record because we’re pinned for success right now. But I want to write something important, and the thing that I’m drawn to right now that feels important is a more stripped-down record. So hey, man, we may not ever be talking again, because it may be career suicide. It might be.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine