Steve Dawson

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Steve Dawson – From Boston to Chicago

Interview conduct on April 03, 2020

by Dan Locke

Dan Locke: What is your upbringing?

Steve Dawson: I was born in San Diego, California in the middle ’60s. I come from a messed-up family – a deeply depressed, alcoholic mother and a father who walked out on us when I was 9. My mom tried to kill herself when I was 10, so my dad had to take my sister and I. He moved us up to Idaho to avoid paying alimony and because he’d always fantasized about living by a trout stream.

How did you discover music?

It was very beautiful in the mountains but very, very boring. There were no other kids my age around for many miles. I learned to play guitar in 7th grade and filled the boredom by practicing and making up songs. I give a lot of credit to my 7th-grade music teacher, Linda Terry. Her passion and enthusiasm hit me at just the right time and made me fall in love with guitar and songs.

How did you start to write music?

I’m not sure why but I just started making up songs right away – as soon as I’d learned three chords. I started by making up joke words to the songs we were learning in guitar class but pretty quickly started making up songs from scratch. Every birthday or at Christmas I’d get a bunch of songbooks by different artists as gifts – The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Young – and I’d learn all the songs and steal the chords for my own songs. In some cases, I wouldn’t know the songs in the books and I had no access to the recordings – occasionally I’d find the records at the library and learn them that way – but sometimes I’d take the words and the chords in the books and make up my own melodies for them. I was just trying to fill the boredom but it became an obsession.

Do people get you mixed up with the other Steve Dawson?

yeah, sometimes. I’m not sure what to do about that. He’s an amazing artist and a nice person. We’ve communicated a few times. I think we both just kind of shrug it off. It’s our name.

Do you remember how you got your first guitar?

When we moved up to Idaho we were living in a motel for a while. We were late for registration for 7th grade so we had to sit with the principal to figure out my classes. All the gym classes were full, so to get enough credits the principal said, “well, there’s guitar…” I wasn’t happy about it. We had to get a guitar and so we went to the music shop in Hailey, Idaho and got a cheap acoustic. I don’t remember the brand. The strings were probably an inch off the neck. But I put hundreds of hours of time into that crappy instrument and eventually convinced my dad to buy me a better one – a Yamaha.

And do you still have it?

no. I have no idea what happened to that first guitar.

Explain to me what do you mean about the saying “I write songs and sing them for anyone, who’ll listen”

I think that’s on my Facebook page, right? I put that on their many years ago when I set that page up. It was the first thing that came to mind. It’s true, though, isn’t it? I write songs and I sing them for anyone who’ll listen to them. I don’t take that for granted at all. I’m grateful for anyone who takes the time to listen to something I’ve written. It might seem sarcastic but it really isn’t at all. It’s a simple, true statement.

How did you end up in Chicago?

I went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston after graduating from high school in Idaho. It was one of two colleges that accepted known classical guitar as a primary instrument. I lived in Boston and started playing in the Cambridge folk music scene around Club Passim. This was 1986, 1987. I liked Boston but it was very expensive and the music scene was over-saturated. There weren’t that many venues or gigs and I didn’t see how I’d be able to live and play music. A friend of mine was living in Chicago and said it was incredible for playing gigs and the cost of living was much more affordable. So, I moved to Chicago and I stayed. I love Chicago. It is an amazing city.

What was your first band?

My first band was called Stump The Host. It started as a trio with me, a fiddle player named Tom Murray, and my future wife, Diane Christiansen. We played bars in Chicago singing my songs and country and rock covers. It was fun. We added bass, drums, and electric guitar after a couple of years and got a bunch of attention from labels. It led to a publishing deal with PolyGram, some co-writing in Nashville and an almost record deal with a BMG imprint called Zoo Records. Once the music business stuff started getting more serious my anxiety really kicked in and the band disintegrated. At its best Stump The Host was a really great live band and my memories of some of those shows are some of my favorites.

One of the first videos you did was Obsidian. What was the story behind the video?

Well, I made it myself ten years ago using footage from the online archive of public domain imagery. The old dancing footage was very beautiful and evocative and, to me, seemed to match the mood of the song. I had fun making it. The editing is a little ham-fisted but, I think, it has a certain charm… well, I hope it does.

Tell me about Dolly Varden and its beginnings?

When Stump The Host ended, I knew I wanted to keep singing with Diane. By that point, we were married and had a 1-year-old. Stump had been pigeon-holed as “twangy.” This was 1991 / 92. Alternative Country or Americana was not a “thing” yet. The big thing was big, dark rock. Grunge. Diane and I, for a moment, attempted to embrace that and make an indie rock band that had a heavier guitar sound. It was not good. But it was the beginning of Dolly Varden. We auditioned drummers and found Matt Thobe, who is a fantastic, solid drummer and a great all-around musician. Mark Balletto had been a big Stump The Host fan and we brought him in to fill out the guitars. The first bassist was Lisa Wertman, who’d been in the punk trio Get Smart. We had fun but it was frustrating. By 1994 I retreated to my 4 track in the basement and wrote a bunch of quieter songs on acoustic guitar. Those songs became our debut album, “Mouthful of Lies,” and set the direction for the band that we’ve stuck with. Lisa left and was replaced by bassist Mike Bradburn and that’s been the lineup for over 20 years. We’re a family. I love all of them and playing music with Dolly Varden is a joy.

You did 30 bands in 60 minutes at the Metro back on May 28, 2014 (I was there photographing the event).

Some of the bands included Farced Haque, Echosend, The Lovehammers, and Ellen Rosner. Tell me about that night and how did you pick your song which you performed (Twangy)?

Does it seem like that was long ago, like around 2002? It was really fun. Each band could only play for 2 minutes or less. We took our song, “Almost Made It,” and played it twice as fast. It was hilarious. We all came off stage and died laughing.

How did the show in London on Sept. 07, 2019, at the Greennote go?

Fantastic! What a wonderful venue. Diane and I have toured as a duo in the UK quite a bit and it’s something we both really love. The audiences there are the best and we hope to do more of that in the future.

Let’s talk about your new project “FUNERAL BONSAI WEDDING”. How did you start it? And wasn’t name taken from an old album that you did?

The name comes from the window of a florist that I used to pass when I’d take the bus to work. Three panes with a word in each, “funeral,” “bonsai,” “wedding.” I wrote it in my book and I remembered it. I worked at a jazz record shop in Chicago for a very long time. Over the years the staff included some of the most amazing musicians in Chicago and many from the experimental jazz world. Unlike the jazz musicians I’d known in Boston, who were snobby and condescending, these guys were open-minded and enthusiastic about ALL music. They were enthusiastic about the stuff I was doing and I was into what they were doing. When I made my first solo album, “Sweet Is The Anchor,” at home in 2004 I asked a few of them to play on it: Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone, Frank Rosaly on drums, Jason Roebke on bass, Josh Berman on cornet. It worked great and when it was time to play the songs live, I asked them to join me. Eventually, I needed a name for the ensemble and I remembered the florist. In 2014 I recorded a full album with them and called it “Funeral Bonsai Wedding.” Frank Rosaly moved to Amsterdam after that and I wasn’t sure if the band could work without him. Fortunately, I met Charles Rumback and he’s been a great addition to the ensemble.

I didn’t know that Diane did the animation for your video (First Single, “Last Flight Out,”). How did you come up with the idea for the animation for the video?

Diane is an amazing visual artist. She started working on animation projects about 15 years ago. She often has me help out with the sound design. She was working on a cool project with another animator named Joel Benjamin called, “Familiar.” They asked me to compose music for it and it turned out very cool. It was included in festivals all over the world and won some awards. I’ve had a sketch that Diane did for ‘Familiar” above my recording studio desk for a few years. I always thought it would make a cool LP cover and so, for this album, I used it. That’s the giant chomping jaw image on the cover. So, for the first video, I asked Joel and Diane if they’d mind if I tried making an edit of “Familiar.” Diane’s assistant Iz Moser helped with the edits and it came out pretty remarkably well, I think. The apocalyptic landscape in the animation suits the song and the times we are living in and the lead character really inhabits the sorrow and compassion I’m aiming for. It all came together pretty organically.

How was your residency at the Hideout?

Great! I was playing pretty regularly with Robbie Fulks when he was doing his Monday night residency at the Hideout in Chicago between, I guess, 2012 and 2016. It was always so fun and the Hideout is just the best. When he decided to stop doing that, I did a month of Mondays there featuring various incarnations of groups I’ve worked with including Dolly Varden and Funeral Bonsai Wedding. I’d also been interested in working with the Quartet Parapluie string quartet led by cellist Mellisa Bach. I’d known her through Jay Bennett, who we’d toured with in the early 2000s, and I loved her group. I asked her to join FBW at the Hideout for one of the Mondays and I asked Jason Roebke if he’d do some string arrangements. It was a whim and a possible disaster but I’d gotten more comfortable taking and enjoying musical risks. The results were stunning beyond any expectation. Roebke’s arrangements were complex and rich but complimented the songs almost to a scary degree. The string quartet seemed to effortlessly glide through the arrangements and I had to stop a few times to hold back tears. That night at the Hideout I decided to make a record with this group.

How do you stay healthy while touring?

by not doing it! But seriously, folks…I haven’t toured all that much over the last 8 years or so. I hope to do a lot more in the next 5 to 10 years. I love singing songs to people but the travel doesn’t agree with me. I’m an anxious mess. It’s best if I limit it to 10 days or less at a time and if I can get enough sleep.

How do you go about creating a piece of music?

wow, that’s a big question. It’s always different with every song. Some start with a melody, others with a lyric or a lyric concept, some with a chord progression that seems interesting. I am learning to allow the music to dictate the direction as much as I can these days – trying not to force it into any preconceived idea. It’s always a new experience but I do find that if I can surrender to the song that it will take the reigns, so to speak, and lead me to places that are far more interesting and surprising than I would have thought of. Songwriting is a lifetime exploration.

What are you’re feeling about streaming music?

I’m into the fact that people can find almost any song in seconds. That’s cool and I’ve definitely enjoyed Spotify and Youtube for that exact reason. The money to artists is so insulting that I can’t even really think about it. When Spotify first started showing up, I was enraged but it was like spitting into the ocean. So, I gave up – surrendered. It is what it is. Capitalism is evil. It is destroying the planet and our nervous systems. My little corner of outrage over the payments for streaming songs is useless. The horse is out of the barn. It’s a global problem that’s much bigger and more sinister than streaming music.

Digital vs. vinyl?

yes, and yes! I like ‘em both

Any plans to tour?

I hope so but not till after the COVID-19 pandemic dies down. We have plans to play a festival in Nottingham, UK, in July. I’m not sure if that will happen now. I was beginning to work on US tour dates just as the lock-down began. I’ll pick that back up again in the fall, maybe. We’ll see.

What is your favorite club to perform in?

There are a few. The Hideout, SPACE in Evanston, The Old Town School of Folk Music – which is a concert hall, I guess, more than a club. We used to love playing at Schubas and Metro. Chicago has so many great venues.

What song from the past is in your mind right now? And what is the meaning that song means to you?

We just got the news last night that John Prine is in critical condition from COVID-19, so a lot of his songs are going through my head today. “Paradise” is a personal favorite. He has the incredible gift of being able to say so much with just a few words. It’s really amazing. The line, “where the air smelled like snakes,” always kills me. So much sensory information in that one line that creates a whole world of imagination. Genius.

How do you feel the COVID-19 virus going to affect the music business in the future?

Geez, we’ll see. The online concerts are cool, to a point. But I sure hope that doesn’t become a bigger, more permanent thing. The in-person connection of live music cannot be recreated online. It just can’t. Live music is an interplay with the audience, the molecules in the air, the room, the other musicians. Nothing can replace that.

You have an upcoming concert at the Old School of Music in May. Do you think it will still happen because of the COVID-19 crisis?

It’s been rescheduled for June 21st. Let’s hope we’re though this by then.

Lots of people are doing nightly concerts over either YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Are you planning to do something like that?

Diane and I did one Friday night. It was cool and a lot of people watched and enjoyed it. We’ll try it again. It’s definitely weird sitting in your living room singing into an iPhone. Not the same. But right now, it’s the best we can do.

How do you see yourself in the next five years?

Hopefully continuing to write songs and make better records. I have been working on a solo album for a couple of years in my home studio, Kernel Sound Emporium. It’s now a double album. 20 or more songs. I was going to release it in the fall. Maybe I still will, though I keep messing with it. We’ll see.

Anything you would like to say in closing?

Thanks a lot for all the cool questions, I appreciate it. I loved making this album with these incredible musicians and I hope people will check it out.