Dawes Aim to Play the 'Biggest Stage' Possible

Posted on Jul 30th 2010 4:00PM by Emily Tan
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Matt Jacoby

Dawes may have already played SXSW, Sasquatch! and Bonnaroo, but frontman Taylor Goldsmith has grander plans for the future.

"We're happy just to play our music and get our stuff across to people and make a living at it," Goldsmith tells Spinner. "But in terms of goals, a lot of other bands wouldn't say this and it might be a little shameless, but we want to play the biggest stage that we possibly can."

Packing numerous club venues all over the US, Dawes feel at home on the small stage. While the band longs to play larger venues, Goldsmith thinks that they still need to get more comfortable playing the bigger spaces.

"We've had so much experience on the small stages that we know how to hit strong like we need to and we know how to work when we're close together," Goldsmith says. "But it's important for us to know how to handle a big stage and learn how to make the monitors sound right and learn how to own a bigger crowd. That's something that's just new for us, so it's a must for us to wrap heads the bigger stages and get them to sound right for us."

Not only do they want to play for big crowds, Dawes hope that one day they'll be able put on marathon shows like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers or the Grateful Dead. "We hear stories about Bruce Springsteen's live show or the Grateful Dead live show, and they play for three hours a night," he says. "That's also kind of a dream of ours."

Dawes did get a taste of that on tour this year when where they were able to perform their entire music catalog. "We had one show in Connecticut where we got to play pretty much every song we have," he says. "Between new songs, the new record and a cover song, we played for an hour and a half. It just felt so good and the crowd seemed to really enjoy it."

Dawes are currently touring the US and will play the Newport Folk Festival on July 31 in Newport, R.I.

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