Dawes All Your Favorite Bands on 180g LP + Download 

LA rock quartet Dawes' highly anticipated new album, All Your Favorite Bands, will be released in June 2015 on their own HUB Records. Produced by David Rawlings at Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, TN, this is the band’s fourth album and second on their own label. The album includes nine bracing new original recordings written by Taylor Goldsmith, except for the title track, which was co-written with Jonny Fritz. 

The album highlights the outstanding musicianship of Taylor (lead vocals, guitar), Griffin Goldsmith (drums, background vocals), Wylie Gelber (bass) and Tay Strathairn (keyboards, background vocals) that Dawes fans around the world have come to cherish. All Your Favorite Bands also features the vocal support of Gillian Welch and The McCrary Sisters, as well as Rawlings on guitar and vocals, Richard Bennett on acoustic guitar and Paul Franklin on pedal steel. All Your Favorite Bands is Dawes’ first record since 2013′s acclaimed Stories Don’t End, which Rolling Stone awarded four out of five stars, saying its “gorgeous tunes hide a not-so-peaceful, not-so-easy feeling.”

Taylor explains why the album's title: “The main line of the title track is ‘And may all your favorite bands stay together.’ I know that my favorite bands are a really deep part of who I am. They help define me, they help represent me, they trigger certain emotional memories, and they stand for the ideals and lifestyle that I will always hope to achieve. And I don’t mean rock and roll fantasies, but rather concepts like freedom and enlightenment. I would love for someone wishing me well to put it in the terms of ‘may all your favorite bands stay together.’ That would be a real friend. That person would know what truly matters. To me, the statement of All Your Favorite Bands immediately gets down to a highly personal and singular part of anybody in a way that few other concepts can. So that’s why we named our record after that song.”

Where in the past, Dawes developed their songs in the studio and took them to new heights as they evolved on the road, this time they decided to go in the opposite direction. Before going into Woodland Sound, they hit the road for two weeks of small club dates in their native California with producer Rawlings in tow. Night after night, the band road-tested the new material as Rawlings stood in the crowd taking notes. The five of them would discuss the set after each show and break the songs down, tear them apart and build them again so by the time they arrived in Nashville after a summer of touring opening for Conor Oberst and performing as his band, they were already stretching out and comfortable with them. The Rawlings production is raw and not overwrought, while the band’s playing and signature group singing is meticulous, and Taylor’s poetry is intuitive and piercing, as he uncovers nuances in people’s relationships with each other and the world around them.

“Despite taking these songs on the road a little before heading into the studio, the only things we’ve ever been concerned with are honoring the songs and the inspired moments that come from truly playing together and reacting to each other,” says Taylor. “Not only expressing ourselves by how we play individually, but also expressing each other by how we play together. After spending so much time playing music on stages and having to react in the moment, creating comfort zones in the studio where we’re supposed to take our time, play separately, and play songs as many times as we wanted feels foreign and uncomfortable. In short, having to think about the bigger picture rather than our individual performances is what makes us a band.  With this new record, all the lead vocals, guitar solos, simultaneous piano and organ and of course bass and drums were all done at the same time. And listening back, we really felt like we were listening to the way we thought we sounded. And that’s all we could ever want.”

"With its modern take on old-fashioned songcraft and interplay, Dawes may ultimately be the most satisfying American band of its generation." - Chicago Sun Times

1. Things Happen

2. Somewhere Along the Way

3. Don’t Send Me Away

4. All Your Favorite Bands

5. I Can’t Think About It Now

6. To Be Completely Honest

7. Waiting For Your Call

8. Right on Time

9. Now That It’s Too Late, Maria