BONUS TRACKS: Dawes, "From a Window Seat"
On dreaming about flying away, whether you're asleep or awake
Bonus Tracks is for songs that might not get a full essay and so otherwise wouldn’t be written about. These shorter write-ups will post on Tuesdays, while the main essays run on Fridays.
I’m fine on airplanes. Do I love the thought of being at the mercy of technology tens of thousands of feet in the sky, kept aloft on what might as well simply be a combination of hope and magic? Not exactly! But when I fly a take a Dramamine (for the takeoff and landing), I put my headphones in, I nod off and hope I don’t snore, and I place myself entirely in the hands of an industry that increasingly does not seem to deserve it. But I’m fine with them. Really.
Taylor Goldsmith, lead singer and songwriter of LA band Dawes, isn’t crazy about flying either. Or at least, he wasn’t. In 2012, as the band was touring all over the world in support of Mumford and Sons, Goldsmith channeled that angst into a song about daydreaming on planes, making up stories about the other passengers and the crew, sleeping and dreaming and putting his thoughts on paper until they became a song about the insane realities of air travel.
Dawes formed in Los Angeles in 2009, developing a SoCal Laurel Canyon sound familiar to anyone who grew up listening to classic rock radio and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Their debut, North Hills, is rootsy and clever, but it also sounds like a million other clever rootsy bands from Laurel Canyon. For me, it was 2011’s Nothing Is Wrong when Dawes came into their own, primarily with their songwriting and their effortless approximation of 70s California AM Gold radio rock.
Take the first song, “Time Spent in Los Angeles,” a kindred spirit to “From a Window Seat” in that it’s about the life of a traveling musician and the people you might meet and the experiences you might have on the road:
“But maybe that’s how I found you
Maybe that’s taught me exactly what I want
Maybe meeting you so far away from home
Is what makes it all so clear”
Whether it’s Los Angeles or someplace else, sometimes you find what you’re looking for in unexpected places, especially if your’e never in one place for very long. (“These days my friends don’t seem to know me without a suitcase in my hand.”) A touring career rock band is going to understand that in ways that maybe others might not. And Dawes certainly has classic rock careerist aspirations, given their location and their pedigree.
And that commitment to a certain FM radio AOR is the thing that separates Dawes from aforementioned bands like Mumford and Sons. They aren’t chasing trends and catching fire in a “right place/right time” kind of way. Listening to another song from Nothing Is Wrong, “A Little Bit of Everything,” I hear everything from Warren Zevon to Neil Young to Jackson Browne; in fact, Jackson Browne is probably the biggest point of comparison I can think of to Dawes, especially when it comes to songs about loneliness and airplanes.
A brief detour (or layover, if you will): One of my all-time favorite songs is “Late for the Sky,” the title track from Jackson Browne’s 1974 album featured prominently in the movie Taxi Driver and one of the biggest tearjerkers in all of rock history. It’s a song about a relationship at its end, with a couple that no longer recognizes each other and a feeling of isolation and longing at its core. And by the end it uses air travel as a metaphor for escape, for freedom. The narrator has been sleeping through his own life, dreaming about chasing that release.
“How long have I been sleeping?
How long have I been drifting alone through the night?
How long have I been running for that morning flight
Through the whispered promises and the changing light
Of the bed where we both lie
Late for the sky?”
“The bed where we both lie” takes on a double meaning, partly lying to themselves and to each other. The sky on the cover of Late for the Sky, getting dark but still blue from the setting California sun, offers a glimpse at some potential future: another place, another city, another coast. An airplane can be a simple means of transportation, much like Browne’s own Chevy BelAir (supposedly given to him by Glen Frey of the Eagles) on the cover, but it can also be a portal to something else — people watching, telling stories, but also a chance at reinventing yourself.
Structurally and lyrically, “From a Window Seat” has an anxiousness to it, a punchy skittishness that reflects the narrator’s concern about his constant travel and the people he sees surrounding him.
“I buckle in my seatbelt and plug my headset in a chair
And to the music, I watch flight attendants move
They are pointing out the exits, but it looks more like a prayer
Or an ancient dance their bloodline reaches through”
As he looks around at the other passengers, he starts to wonder about what brings them all there together in that same place at that same time. “And I think, maybe he’s in town for someone’s birthday, or maybe he makes trouble everywhere.” But no matter what goes on in the air, everyone else on the plane seems not to be worried; they know the earth, “the rivers and the freeways,” are still there, down below. It’s simple for them, but less so for our narrator, who looks down and only sees “buildings and a million swimming pools.”
In the bridge, our narrator makes a commitment about being back on the ground, and whether he even needs to get back up in the air again:
“I want to make out all the signs I’ve been ignoring
How the trees reach for the sky or in the length of someone’s hair
Cause when you don’t know where you are going
Any road will take you there”
From the air, everything looks the same. But on the ground, there’s variety, there’s detail: the words on signs, the height of trees and the length of hair. There’s beauty all around, and he doesn’t need to fly and make up stories to experience and appreciate this. Then, we get a more or less direct quote from George Harrison’s final single, taken from his 2002 album Brainwashed: “If you don’t know where you’re goin’ any road will take you there.” For Dawes, this line could be taken pretty much literally: what good is a plane when you can take roads wherever you’re going?
I actually haven’t kept up much with Dawes, last checking in with 2015’s All Your Favorite Bands. Apparently they’ve released four more albums since then, plus a few live albums I’ve listened to a little bit of, so I have some catching up to do. The next time I fly, I’ll be thinking about Goldsmith and the band flying from city to city, and wondering about the person next to me and what they might be thinking, why they might be flying. Maybe they’re in town for someone’s birthday, and maybe they make trouble everywhere. You never know.