When you see yourself as the center of things, it deprives you of a certain level of empathy.
I think it's important to always stay critical. But rather than dwelling on it and wishing I could change something, it's important to just take those lessons learned and those new notes and apply them to the next thing.
I actually like social media, and I recognize what modern technology serves.
Growing up, even finding all those notes that you write in first grade to your future self of like what you want to be when you grow up - it was always music.
But when you're six records deep, every record has one or two songs that need to be in every set, so you're already looking at 12 songs that you know you're going to play.
It's easy to look at kids sitting around a campfire looking at their phones and to think, 'What a shame.' But I think they're going to be more advanced in terms of communication than my generation.
We've always tried to inspire ourselves, so to speak. In the beginning, that could mean just hearing your own songs played back to you for the very first time.
I love Santa Barbara and have always dreamed of someday having enough money to have a spot up there.
Our dad was a singer and keyboardist and was in bands throughout his whole life. He was in a band called Sweathog that opened for Black Sabbath and eventually was the lead singer of Tower of Power for a few years.
When you go back and listen to 30 years of Tom Petty records, they are pretty consistent. I love that.
I read actual books. It's cool to read on a Kindle if that's what you want to do, but for me, I like having a bookshelf.
Books look handsome and it's a real singular experience getting to go to a bookstore. I don't want to not do that.
I wasn't really much of a reader early on, but when I first started getting into reading at around 16 all I could really read was Kurt Vonnegut books.
I'm in my early thirties. I live in Los Angeles, California. I'm an artist.
And rather than judging and alienating others, I do think there's an opportunity that no one is taking, myself included, to actually understand why somebody is coming from a certain place.
And that's the case with all of James McMurtry's songs. He never presents these characters for us to judge, but only to sympathize with. He has a capacity for compassion with every sketch that he makes with a person that he is not.
A song like 'Telescope' was about a friend of mine. He doesn't know it's about him.
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.
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.
I love the idea of having a beer with a lot of the musicians I admire.
