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UR007: Chris Carrabba (Dashboard Confessional) [2002]
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Chris Carrabba (Dashboard Confessional) joins the show to discuss the band’s celebrated 2002 MTV Unplugged episode (during the program’s 2001-2002 reboot) and their subsequent platinum-selling MTV Unplugged 2.0 album. He talks about the impact that playing Unplugged has had on his career and also reminisces about some of his own favorite ‘90s Unplugged episodes (The Cure, Pearl Jam, Nirvana).
If you dig the show, want to share your own Unplugged memories, ask a question, request a show topic, or connect with the pod for any reason, there are a couple ways you can get in touch:
- You can email me at unpluggedrevisited@gmail.com,
- You can reach out on Bluesky at @unplugged_pod,
- You can leave a voicemail (that’ll maybe get played on the show) by dialing 234-REVISIT (234-738-4748)
Recommended![UR014: Mark Bryan (Hootie and the Blowfish) [1996 MTV Unplugged] image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/66ea0b235fcf51d2c9a0b7cd/43cbefc3-777c-4d93-9915-92abd82876d2.jpg)
Transcript
Introduction to 'Unplugged Revisited' and Holiday Edition
00:00:00
Speaker
welcome to unpllu
00:00:10
Speaker
Unplugged. Unplugged. Unplugged. Revisited. Greetings and salutations. Welcome once again to Unplug Revisited. The podcast that... Wait a second. Something's not quite right here. Hold on. Let's get this fire going. Make sure these bad boys still work. Check in on the musicians.
00:00:36
Speaker
Close enough. Okay, take two. Season's greetings and salutations. Welcome to the year-end holiday edition of Unplugged Revisitor, the podcast that celebrates, critiques, and dives deep into the last three and a half decades of MTV Unplugged.
MTV Unplugged's Holiday Connection and Chris Karaba Interview
00:00:52
Speaker
I'm your host, music journalist, pop culture anthropologist, and Unplugged obsessive Will Hodge.
00:00:58
Speaker
Okay, okay. I know there's nothing especially holiday related about MTV Unplugged. I mean, sure, some Unplugged alumni have also given us some bonafide holiday chestnuts. Pearl Jam,
00:01:26
Speaker
And of course many more. Other Unplugged alumni tried to contribute to the Christmas music canon. And I always like to point out that before she became the Queen of Christmas, Mariah Carey was unquestionably the Queen of Unplugged.
00:01:49
Speaker
But alas, even though we're in the throes of all the winter holidays, there's not really a full-on unplugged holiday connection to hang an entire episode on. You know, aside from the permanently open invitation for Mariah Carey to join us at the drop of a hat any time of day, any day of
Dashboard Confessional's MTV Unplugged 2.0 Anniversary
00:02:05
Speaker
the week. All that being said, today's episode is stocking stuffed with an insane amount of cheer and goodwill, courtesy of my chat with one of the most genuine and nicest dudes in the game, Chris Karaba of Dashboard Confessionals.
00:02:24
Speaker
Dashboard played MTV Unplugged as part of the Unplugged 2.0 reboot that took place across the 2001-2002 era and whose platinum-selling MTV Unplugged 2.0 album just turned 22 years old, officially yesterday if you're listening on the day this episode launches. I'm incredibly excited about today's episode for a couple different reasons.
00:02:44
Speaker
One, as I said, Chris is seriously just an incredibly kind and engaging guy to have a conversation with. Great stories, thoughtful answers, fun laughs, the whole nine. Two, this will be my first episode devoted to an unplugged that took place outside of the show's incredible 90s run. Truth in advertising, I'm indelibly and inescapably a dyed in the wool product of 90s pop culture.
00:03:07
Speaker
But as I've said many times before, while I will always be heavy 90s unplugged, I don't want to be exclusively 90s unplugged. I really want this podcast to take a full scope look at the entirety of Unplug's 35 years and counting footprint.
Dashboard's Breakthrough and Emo Genre Influence
00:03:20
Speaker
And three, the whole arc around how the dashboard unplug came to be is such a cool indie band has incredible mainstream moment story filled with human connection, enthusiastic fandom, and all sorts of personal and professional camaraderie that just feels really nice to share around the holidays. Plus, I guess I could squeeze a very tangential Unplugged Winter Holidays connection because the Dashboard Unplugged album was actually released just a week before Christmas. December 17th, 2002 to be exact. Which means that not only did the album get included in a lot of holiday gift guide pieces that year, but I was also able to dig up an album review that went the extra merry mile by weaving in a little Christmas cheekiness.
00:04:01
Speaker
From the December 17, 2002 edition of the San Diego Union Tribune's just released column, the holidays can be rough on your emotions to help you through this difficult time emo rockers dashboard confessional release mtv unplug two nothing goes better with eggnog than some sad punky songs So there we go, the snow covered groundwork for the first Unplugged Revisited holiday episode has been officially set.
Listener Interactions and Band History
00:04:25
Speaker
But before we go any deeper on Dashboard Confessional's 2002 episode of MTV Unplugged, we've got just a few announcements to take care of. Announcement number one. In the festive spirit of holiday gift giving, I'd like to announce the winners of our 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged CD Vinyl
00:04:51
Speaker
Thanks again to our friends at Rhino Records for sending over a couple copies of the Maniac's Triple Platinum Unplugged album from 93, which was recently remastered and reissued with the three additional bonus tracks featuring David Byrne. Okay, the winner of the vinyl copy is... miky rappaport And the winner of the CD copy is... todd begley Congratulations, Mikhail and Todd. If Santa and the United States Postal Service play nice, you both should be receiving your prizes on or around the holidays. Thank you to everyone who entered, and hopefully we'll have another fun giveaway soon. Announcement number two. We've got a couple more nice notes to share from our listener, Mailbag. And this week, both of them are from the social media platform, Blue Sky. Like many others, I'm making the trek over to Blue Sky from Twitter, and you can find me there under the handle, at WillHodge.
00:05:39
Speaker
Okay, first note is from Elser Nunos. This was in response to my interview with Natalie Merchant. This was such a great listen, Will. The history and the interview. I'll for sure be tuning in when you get to cover both of REM's Unplugged shows. Are they still the only band to do the show twice? Thanks for the question, Elser Nunos. Artists appearing more than once on Unplugged is not only one of my favorite conversation topics, It's also one of the most common unplugged specific things people ask me about, especially regarding REM. The short answer is yes. So far, REM is the only band to do two proper standalone unplugged episodes, at least in the wider recognized cultural juggernaut stateside version of Unplugged. If we're talking international unplugged iterations, Mexican alt-rock band Cafe Tacuba also did two standalone unplugged episodes, first in 1995 and then again in 2019. And to carry the double unplugged appearance thread even further, during Cafe Tacuba's 2019 unplugged, they brought out David Byrne as their special guest, just like 10,000 Maniacs did on their unplugged back in 93.
00:06:44
Speaker
which, to take the threat even further, was 10,000 Maniacs second unplugged after they first appeared on the show in 1990 when they shared an episode with Michael Penn. If the concept of multiple unplugged appearances is of any interest to you at all, let's just say you might really dig an upcoming episode.
00:07:00
Speaker
Okay, second note is from a listener named Johnny Haya, loving the show from here in New Zealand. Wondering if you're considering addressing the Stones stripped. Always suspected there was a story behind them releasing a clearly unplugged inspired record, but not with MTV. Johnny is of course referring to the 1995 Rolling Stones album strip.
00:07:24
Speaker
which while not an MTV Unplugged album, featured acoustic heavy re-recordings of some of their big hits and some notable covers. Some of them were live and some of them were in the studio.
00:07:38
Speaker
Stripped was certainly part of a little subcategory of 90s albums that tried to replicate elements of Unplugged's cultural shine without having to work directly with MTV. But as you'll remember if you listen to my first couple explainer episodes, the example I always bemoan as best exemplifying this mid-90s cohort of quasi-stolen Unplugged valor is The Eagles' Hell Freezes Over.
00:08:00
Speaker
An album that inspires such irrationally constant corrections in me that it would surprise no one if I had hell freezes over was not MTV Unplugged engraved on my tombstone. That being said, Don Henley, you're welcome to join the show anytime to talk about your solo MTV Unplugged episode from 1990.
00:08:18
Speaker
As always, if you'd like to get in touch with the show, you can email me at unpluggedrevisited at gmail dot.com, reach out on social media, or call 234 revisit and leave a voicemail that I just might play on the show.
Interview with Chris Karaba on MTV Unplugged Experience
00:08:30
Speaker
Alrighty, I think that's enough announcements for this week. Let's jump on in to this week's intersection on Dashboard Confessional's MTV Unplugged 2.0. While the logline about Dashboard Confessional is that it started out as just a side project while Chris Carabbo was in the band further seems forever, there are some ways you can look at the whole situation as almost being flipped, meaning as further essentially turning out to be the quasi-side project to Dashboard. Now, it is true that Chris was in further, quote-unquote, first. Here's a quick little timeline rundown on all of that.
00:09:03
Speaker
Many of my fellow 90s youth group kids will probably remember the band Strongarm, a hardcore band from Florida that put out two albums and two EPs on the incredible West Coast Indie label, Tooth and Nail Records. Being on Tooth and Nail meant their CDs were sold at Christian bookstores, which to me meant my mom would buy me those CDs, no questions asked. As opposed to the quote unquote secular albums, we had to constantly litigate and debate over until one of us were the other down with varying degrees of success and failure.
00:09:33
Speaker
Here's a quick snippet of the song Trials from Strong Arms' 1995 debut album Atonement.
00:09:42
Speaker
Strongarm broke up in 98, and many of its members went on to form a new band, but they needed a lead singer. Enter fellow hardcore punk scene-ster Chris Karaba, who at the time was playing guitar and singing a bit in the fellow Floridian band, Vacant Andes. In fact, here's a clip from a Vacant Andes live show from the summer of 97, where Chris actually ribs the guys in Strongarm, i.e. his unbeknownst to him at the time, soon-to-be bandmates.
00:10:16
Speaker
So Chris joins up with most of the former Strongarm guys to form the band, Further Seems Forever. The first taste many of us got of this new outfit was a six-song EP called From the 27th State that came out in the summer of 99 on Take Hold Records, another small indie label that also had connections to the quasi-Christian hardcore punk subculture and therefore also got distributed to Christian bookstores. At least to a couple in the South Atlanta suburbs, that is.
00:10:42
Speaker
From the 27th state was actually a split EP, meaning it had three songs from Further and three songs from another band called Recess Theory. Here's a little bit of the Further track Justice Prevails featuring Chris on vocals.
00:11:01
Speaker
A couple months later, in the fall of 99, Further also contributed the track Vengeance Factor to the Deep Elm Records compilation, An Ocean of Doubt, which was subtitled, The Emo Diaries Chapter 4. At the time, I was mostly familiar with Deep Elm through singles like Nada Surf's Deeper Well and Velour's Choice, as well as the first couple Branson albums. But those Emo Diaries compilations they put out in the late 90s were pretty legendary for having some killer tracks.
00:11:27
Speaker
Like the first one in 97 had Jimmy Eat World's opener and the next one had great tracks from bands like Appleseed Cast, Branson and Tess Wiley. They were legit for finding some great new to you bands and it was a really cool stamp of approval in my eyes to see further get on the Chapter 4 comp with their song Vengeance Factor.
00:11:52
Speaker
Around this period, though, is when the whole further dashboard timeline starts getting kind of overlapped and blurry. With only a grand total of four Further Seems Forever songs out in the world, the first dashboard confessional release, a 10-track full-length album called The Swiss Army Romance, came out in early spring of 2000 on the very small indie label Fiddler Records.
00:12:13
Speaker
Luckily, my local Christian bookstore somehow received a copy, and the crusty old sales clerk actually held it aside for me because he knew I liked Further Seams Forever, and this was, in his words, some solo acoustic garbage from the singer on the 27th state EP. For many of us, this was our first exposure to Chris's voice in such a stripped down, uncluttered context. Less thunder drums and mixed meter dual guitar riffage, and more acoustic guitar strum serenades about heartbreak and... and... Well, yeah, pretty much exclusively about harp.
00:12:56
Speaker
Oh, and not for nothing, multiple references to bed linens as well, and songs like Screaming Infidelities, A Plain Morning,
00:13:14
Speaker
And the title track.
00:13:24
Speaker
Later that fall, DriveThru Records licensed Swiss Army Romance from Fiddler and re-released it through broader distribution channels. While they had been around since the mid to late 90s, DriveThru would soon become known as one of the most trusted labels in the 2000s emo pop punk boom and Dashboard's Swiss Army Romance album was certainly one of the forerunners of what was to come from that scene.
00:13:45
Speaker
For example, in that 99-01 pre-boom window, Drive-Thru also released albums by New Found Glory, Less Than Jake, Midtown, RX Bandits, The Starting Line, Something Corporate, and many others. The next year, 2001, proved quite a prolific year for Karaba fans.
00:14:02
Speaker
In February, Fiddler put out a quote-unquote new dashboard release, the Drowning EP, which contained three solo acoustic songs Chris had recorded in the late 90s during the wind-down period of his stint in Vacant Andes. While the songs just slightly predated the official dashboard kick-off, they were certainly simpatico in sound and sentiment. Like, here's a taste of the chorus of the song Anyone, Anyone.
00:14:32
Speaker
By March, however, the Pick Your Fighter debates fully began within certain factions of Carabas fandom. On March 20th of that year, Dashboard's second full length, The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most, was released.
00:14:44
Speaker
After some back and forth with Drive Thru, the record actually ended up getting released by Vagrant Records, which was a huge deal. At the time, Vagrant was most known for releasing the phenomenal 99 record, Something to Write Home About, from the Get Up Kids. I could play you a snippet of the awesome song Action in Action from that album, but instead, I'll play one of my other favorite Get Up Kid tracks, their cover of The Cure's Close to Me, which was the b-side to the Action in Action singer.
00:15:19
Speaker
Okay, back to Dashboard. So Places comes out on March 20th and No Lie, the very next week, the debut full-length album From Further Scenes Forever with Chris on lead vocals, finally dropped.
00:15:41
Speaker
The album is called The Moon Is Down, it came out on tooth and nail, and it genuinely rules. Like seriously, if you're into punk inspired melodic hardcore 2000's emo at all, you cannot go wrong with this album. The album itself is a really enjoyable collection of songs with plenty of dual guitar riffage, intricate bass lines, powerful drumming, and Karaba's dynamic, unmistakable top tier howling croon.
00:16:04
Speaker
Those vocals, I should note, were recorded after he had already told the band he was quitting to pursue Dashboard full time. He let the guys know in the fall of 2000, but agreed to still record the album with them. I should also note that for their part, the band was also navigating some of its own internal discord as far as touring commitments and other things, so Karaba wasn't exactly jumping ship from an all engines go situation.
00:16:28
Speaker
For Karaba, having two different albums with two different bands released within a week of each other certainly had its benefits and drawbacks. An unconventionally built-in storyline certainly helps any album cycle, much less two happening at the exact same time. And it was enriched even deeper by the fact that Karaba actually had further opened some dashboard shows around that time.
00:16:49
Speaker
Additionally, as a momentary fast-forward button on that whole story, Karaba has reconnected with the further guys multiple times over the years, reuniting with them in 2010 to play some live shows, recording the album Penny Black with the original lineup in 2012, and playing even more reunion shows as recently as 2022. But back to early spring of 2001.
00:17:11
Speaker
If you were tracking along as a Carabafan at this pre-MTV boost period, you most likely fell into one of three camps. Either one of the two polemic fringes that vehemently liked this, but not that, that,
00:17:37
Speaker
but not this,
00:17:42
Speaker
Or, most likely you just joined us in the larger middle group that really dug being able to hear Karaba's voice and songwriting in both contexts. If you were a part of that middle group but wanted to have a laugh watching the other two factions go at it on the message boards, you'd drop in a comment that your favorite Karaba vocal was on something like Further's Snowbirds and Townies, specifically because of how chill and laid back his vocals were.
00:18:09
Speaker
and then just watch the two entrenched camps go at each other. let them fight Before the end of 2001, Karaba would also release Dashboard's second EP, So Impossible, which is most notable for including an early acoustic version of Hands Down, a song whose full-band electric counterpart would go on to become one of Dashboard's biggest hits. But more on that in a minute.
00:18:41
Speaker
That brings us to 2002, a huge year in Dashboard's timeline, due in large part to the band's intersection with MTV Unplugged. so this is unplugged that's for a confessional umph like which might be redundant thank you guys for coming At this point in Unplugged's overall arc, the show that had so intrinsically impacted 90s pop culture was experiencing its first major reboot. It had ceased its proper episode-over-episode run after the 97 season, had a couple one-off specials with The Cores, Shakira, and Alanis Morissette in 99, and then launched its Unplugged 2.0 reboot in 2001 with acts like REM, Lauren Hill, and Jay-Z back by the roots. The Unparalleled series is back. MTV2 presents Unplugged 2.0, with performances from r REM, Stained, Lauren Hill, Shakira, and more. Unplugged 2.0. Encore presentation premieres on MTV with r REM tomorrow at 10. As I said back in episode 3 of my trio of Unplugged Explainer episodes,
00:19:40
Speaker
With the 2.0 reboot, I think MTV managed to successfully reconfigure the unplugged ethos for a new era really well. I like the genre diversity of the half dozen artists they filmed, but I think what it mostly lacked was the consistent feel of being a regular recurring show. But the episodes themselves, apart from airing in a ramshackle scattershot kind of way, were pretty great. Especially, and I'm sure this comes as no surprise, my beloved R.E.N.
00:20:14
Speaker
Dashboard getting to do an unplug during this 2.0 reboot was a bit of an anomaly. A welcomed forward-leaning breath of fresh air, but an anomaly nonetheless. For one, Dashboard was a new band that didn't really have a presence in the 90s like the other acts in the 2.0 rollout did. Two, they were already essentially unplugged themselves, a concept Chris joked about at the beginning of the episode.
Impact of MTV Unplugged on Dashboard's Career
00:20:36
Speaker
And three, as was a common talking point around the episode, dashboard was often reported to be the first non-platinum selling act to do an unplugged. The two very important elements made the unorthodox dashboard unplugged a reality. The first notable element was the cultural moment that this current iteration of emo, a genre that had been around in some fashion since the mid 80s, was having in the early 2000s.
00:20:59
Speaker
The fantastic culture writer Andy Greenwald wrote a really great book on emo called Nothing Feels Good, Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo. And here's how he described this specific moment in the genre's evolving chronology.
00:21:11
Speaker
emo broke in the summer of two thousand and two it had its tipping point if you will not in the mainstream consciousness just the mainstream media With Vagrant Records moving big numbers on every release, Jimmy Eat World going platinum, Dashboard Confessional taping an MTV Unplugged, and New Found Glory debuting at No. 4 on the Billboard charts, the word emo, always meaningless at best, became buzzworthy. A cover line to sell magazines. An affectation to make Over 40 magazine columnists seem down. A semi-current limbo stick against which to judge all music. A catch-all, basically, for any music not made by Britney Spears or Lem Biscuit.
00:21:47
Speaker
The second notable element was the individual impact a Dashboard Live show made on long-time unplugged heavyweight Alex Coletti. Coletti had been with Unplugged from the very beginning, produced it all the way through its legendary 90s run, and was currently running the 2.0 reboot. To me, Coletti is the keeper of the Unplugged flame. He was essentially the showrunner, before the term existed, throughout all of its major culture-impacting years, and he's got all the best Unplugged stories.
00:22:14
Speaker
I've been lucky enough to interview Coletti a couple times over the years, and here's how he described getting dashboard on unplugged to me over email recently. I left a voicemail on MTV president Van Toffler's phone on a Friday night at 11pm from a dashboard show at Irving Plaza. It was like that moment in Back to the Future. Chuck, it's Marvin. Your cousin, Marvin Berry, you know that sound you've been looking for? Well, listen to this. I begged him. pleaded for us to do an unplugged with dashboard. Later I went to another dashboard show at Roseland Ballroom and we found the best fans and invited them to the unplug taping because I knew that replicating the audience response was key to capturing this phenomenon.
00:22:53
Speaker
As you'll hear in my chat with Karaba, Coletti's appreciation of the band was not only the key component to landing a dashboard unplugged, but also to getting the correct dashboard vibe dialed in by understanding the emotionally intertwined relationship between artist and audience. Leading up to the late April unplugged taping, dashboard song Screaming Infidelities appeared in MTV's made-for-TV anti-heroine movie Wasted.
00:23:16
Speaker
and the channel also added the Screaming Infidelities music video into heavy rotation on MTV2. Dashboard also released their Summer's Kiss EP in early April, which featured four songs originally performed solo on Swiss Army Romance that were re-recorded in the new quartet iteration of the band.
00:23:43
Speaker
Cultural interest in MTV Unplugged, while nowhere near its massive 90s cultural footprint, was building back up with the 2.0 reboot as well. Episodes by REM and Stained were well received, Jay-Z's Unplugged album went gold and hit number 8 on the Billboard Hip Hop Albums chart, and Lauryn Hill's controversial Unplugged appearance generated a platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated album that peaked at number 3 on the Billboard 200 in the window of time between Dashboard's filming and broadcast.
00:24:11
Speaker
Karab and his band took an extremely cool approach to their unplugged taping, and a lot of the choices were quite evocative of earlier unplugged episodes. For example, the small audience was not only seated up close, but also completely surrounding the band, giving the performance a real intimate in-the-round vibe that characterized the first few seasons of Unplugged's heyday. However, the session was also extremely of the moment.
00:24:34
Speaker
as all the 2.0 reboot episodes were filmed in MTV's new Times Square Studio, mostly associated with the channel's love-it-or-hate-it Carson Daly-anchored live show, TRL. Here at our Times Square Studio, I'm Carson Daly. Welcome to the show. Unbelievable how many people have come out. Outside is incredible. We've got an amazing with the Backstreet Boys.
00:25:00
Speaker
So while the acoustic guitars and on-all-size audience felt nostalgic, the wall-to-wall windows overlooking Times Square and its flashing billboards for McDonald's, Kodak, LG, and the Virgin Megastore kept it feeling quite fresh. Instead of going for some of the typical unplugged magic with special one-off cover songs or a knockout special guest,
00:25:20
Speaker
Karaba hung everything on his own songwriting and his still new band's ability to really nail their performances. In fact, as you'll hear Karaba explain during our chat, the band was in a unique state of developmental flux, as bassist Dan Bonebrake was on his way out to focus on the band Seville, and guitarist John Loeffler had only been in the band for a week or two.
00:25:42
Speaker
Luckily, drummer Mike Marsh, who had been playing off and on with Carabas since the pre-dashboard days, was an absolute secret weapon in gluing the band's dynamic performance together. From a set list perspective, Carabas smartly fashioned a flow of songs that sonically and visually evoked the band's story up to that point. He played the first two songs, Swiss Army Romance and The Best Deceptions, completely solo. Just the charming tattooed Troubadour and that gorgeous Gibson J-185 acoustic. Which he still has, by the way. He pulled the guitar out during our interview and it still looks and sounds amazing. On the third song, Remember to Breathe, Loeffler joined him seamlessly alternating between guitar and piano, while Marsh and Bone Break came out halfway through to finish out the track as a four piece. Though, it should be noted that Marsh humorously came out during the second verse, performed a single cymbal hit,
00:26:35
Speaker
and then exited the stage again until he and Bone Break came back out a few minutes later.
00:26:52
Speaker
With all four members now on stage, Karaba chose to roll out quite a few songs that were essentially getting their first live full band iterations. For example, the sharp hint of New Tears, Living in Your Letters, and Turpentine Chaser were all three originally found on Swiss Army Romance, but had just been re-recorded as full band versions for the Summer's Kiss EP.
00:27:21
Speaker
While other songs like So Impossible for you to notice and hands down had only been released as stripped down acoustic versions on the So Impossible EP that had come out just a few months prior. And if you were curious if playing newer versions of songs, some of which were relegated to harder to find EP releases, would prove a challenge for the audience to keep up with? Well, think again.
00:27:49
Speaker
In fact, it was the audience's inescapable presence in singing, a truly bedrock-level element of Dashboard's live show, that really defined the band's unplugged moment. Having the audience sing along on the occasional lyric or two had certainly been present in other memorable unplugged episodes from acts like Aerosmith, Poison,
00:28:17
Speaker
and even LL Cool J.
00:28:25
Speaker
But there had been nothing like the dashboard audience's line-by-line sing-along on not just every song, but every word of every song. Oftentimes, Caraba could simply just walk away from the mic for entire stretches of a song, and the audience wouldn't fumble a syllable.
Post-Unplugged Success and Reflections
00:28:40
Speaker
Take, for example, the opening song, Swiss Army Romance, in which Caraba gives over the entire outro stanza, more than 30 seconds worth to full-on audience takeover.
00:28:58
Speaker
Other times, Karaba could remain at the mic, singing his heart out, and the audience would meet his vocal energy with such intensity that if you were just listening to the CD or vinyl, it was kinda hard to tell that he hadn't walked away from the mic.
00:29:15
Speaker
But the real special sauce appeared in songs like The Good Fight, where Karaba would trade off lines back and forth with the audience, who were so locked into the moment with the band and with each other that they created a singular, cohesive third voice, essentially turning the song into a quasi-duet.
00:29:37
Speaker
Karaba's choice for a closing number, the infectiously pulsing hands down, proved both present and prophetic. The original studio recording of the song had just been released a couple months prior to the unplugged taping on the so impossible EP. But despite its relative newness, as with pretty much every other dashboard song, it seems that just as soon as Karaba was able to write it down, it also somehow simultaneously floated through the ether and downloaded itself into every single dashboard fan in a way that caused the unplugged version to become an intense word-for-word audience karaoke that might have left the uninitiated listener with the impression that this had been a decades-old dashboard concert staple instead of essentially their most recently released unofficial single. I mean, just listen to the way the crowd sings back to Karaba like he's covering one of their songs.
00:30:29
Speaker
I should also note that this Unplugged is definitely one of the ones that is worth tracking down. Not just the audio, but the visual component as well. Which is pretty easy, since it was the early 2000s and record companies were combatting online downloading by releasing those killer CD-DVD combos. But if you're watching the broadcast or video version, there's this utterly charming moment where two girls are so caught up in the musical frenzy that they literally high-five each other after that line.
00:30:55
Speaker
Singalongs are one thing, but to inspire teenagers to unironically high-five each other on national TV via an acoustic guitar? I mean, all songwriters are not built the same, you know? But more than just perfectly capturing an ephemeral cultural snapshot in Amber, Karaba choosing hands down as the unplugged closer also continued the story arc he had been drafting with the setlist, as that song, or more specifically another version of it, would soon become a major moment in the band's post-unplugged pop cultural fingerprint.
00:31:25
Speaker
Here's how they got there. Their Unplugged episode aired in the early summer of 2002 and the album was released in mid-December. It hit number one on the Billboard Indie Albums chart and even went platinum, which was a cool bookend to the only non-platinum band to play Unplugged, Talking Point. As far as album reviews, NME wrote that, It's miles better than you'd expect from most Unplugged efforts. Blender said, Unlike the usual Unplugged set, many songs actually sound fuller than the studio versions. adding, the real difference is the audio and Spin, after noting that it was filmed in the familiar ah TRL studios, wrote that, the content is so untrl that it feels like television from another dimension
00:32:06
Speaker
Going on to note, no matter how far Karaba has moved from his punk roots, creatively or commercially, the performance does what punk is supposed to do. It sizes up the barrier between the talent and the paying customers and then puts a boot through it. At the O2VMAs, Dashboard's Screaming Infidelities music video won the MTV2 award, beating out, just in case you forgot this was 2002, acts like Nora Jones and The Strokes.
00:32:31
Speaker
Then, in 2003, Carabbo released the third full-length album under the dashboard banner, A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar, which ended up hitting number 2 on the Billboard 200, a truly notable feat for an indie band. Lead single Hands Down, now on its third version, where the acoustic guitars were swapped out for some tasty distorted electric muscle, hit heavy rotation on MTV and ended up becoming a top 10 hit on both US alt rock radio and the UK rock and metal charts.
00:33:07
Speaker
During this period, Dashboard was suddenly everywhere, selling out Madison Square Garden and popping up all over TV on shows like The Today Show, The Tonight Show, Last Call with Carson Daly, and the woefully short-lived MTV2 Albums Covers Show, where a quote-unquote newer band covered an album by a quote-unquote older band.
00:33:27
Speaker
The show launched in early 04, with Dashboard covering r REM's automatic for the People record. Amazingly, I should say. And the closer featured REM frontman Michael Stipe joining the Dashboard guys to sing, nay, elevate into the stratosphere, a fourth distinct version of Hands Down.
00:33:56
Speaker
They even had one more big cannonball splash into the deep end of the pop-cultural pool in 04 with the hit song Vindicated, which anchored the chart-topping Spider-Man 2 soundtrack, plus got its own Spider-Man-inspired heavy-rotation music video by superstar Nigel Dick, plus cracked the Billboard Top 40 and reached number 2 on all-rock radio.
00:34:29
Speaker
As you'll hear in my chat with Karaba, who is still at it with Dashboard by the way, they just did a huge tour with Counting Crows last year. Even after more than two decades of indie longevity dotted with some incredible mainstream successes, he points to Dashboard's unplugged moment as one of the indelible milestones and primary catalyst to helping lay the necessary groundwork for the rest of his still going strong career. So let's get into it. Here's my unplugged revisited chat with Dashboard Confessionals Chris Karaba.
00:34:58
Speaker
Today, I'm stoked to be sitting here with Chris Karaba of Dashboard Confessional to talk about the band's brilliant MTV Unplugged episode from 2002. It was part of the Killer Unplugged 2.0 reboot that also featured standouts from Lauryn Hill, Jay-Z and the Roots, and my beloved REM. So my immense thanks to you for joining the show today, Chris. I appreciate it. I will. Thanks for having me.
00:35:18
Speaker
Well, before we get into dashboards Unplugged, I was curious about your own connection to Unplugged during its 90s heyday. Did that era of Unplugged impact your own musical taste in any way? I think it absolutely did. It definitely shaped my taste and it was of my taste. I remember The Cure and, of course, Nirvana, which I probably should have said first. Of course, REM. I could think of the Pearl Gem one as the standout moment for me where it was clear to me how much power you could have with just these acoustic guitars. Now, at the time, I was in a lot of heavy bands. Most of my rearing as a musician was in these very heavy bands, but all I had to write on was an acoustic guitar and it was a rotten acoustic guitar well.
00:35:58
Speaker
It was a real rough one. and i always thought But I always thought that there was like ah an honesty that you could arrive at very quickly and directly in the acoustic guitar. And then I just i guess in my youth, I thought that the the next logical thing, if you want to add power, was to turn on the amps, which is true, and which I do love. I do love amps.
00:36:18
Speaker
right um But I remember watching the the unplugged and having my ear really turned not just by the tone, but just the the presence of a powerful energy all over the place. um And I think it was ah it took a few years, I think, to come into fruition in my own band dynamics. But it really planted a seed deeply for me. Yeah. Oh, I love hearing that out. You know, you kind of mentioned your, your rearing in the nineties punk and hardcore scene. I was curious, at least among your circle, what was sort of the general consensus on quote unquote playing acoustic and did the popularity of unplugged infiltrate those conversations in any positive or negative ways?
00:36:59
Speaker
Interestingly, I think we all loved the Unplugged series in the same way that I think we loved things like 120 Minutes, these counter to the norm. ah Some of them were counterculture, certainly not Penfield's show was counterculture. I'm not sure how counterculture is on the face of things to do in Unplugged where you get the biggest bands in the world to just that are already all over MTV.
00:37:21
Speaker
come do MTV ah as at a performance. But the truth is, you're presenting them in a way that the listener, the fan, the viewer is not accustomed to seeing the band that they love and the songs that they know so well. So it's a real jarring and challenging experience for the listener. It's euphoric, because they all did it well. But the concept is a little jarring, I think, if you already are it's so deeply attached to a band.
00:37:42
Speaker
And especially in the, in the heyday of this rock and roll reboot, the grungy route. Although I will say the same goes true for that, you know, even seeing Bon Jovi do the acoustic thing on the, I think it was a VMA or something like that, that they first did it on. Yeah. The 89 VMAs. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it's a kid, but it stuck in my head too. In this scene, I think we all loved those big counterculture moments. And I think we just reacted more. I think we were allowed to like it a little bit. There's a lot of like rules and stuff like that within the youth culture punk rock scene, you know, especially in those days. But that was one that we all took a pass on that one because it was inherently left of center.
00:38:22
Speaker
I love that. i I love that you mentioned the Cure episode too, because I think sometimes the unplugged episodes that didn't end up getting albums, sometimes those are kind of forgotten. And the Cure one is so fun when you see them like playing toy pianos and kazoos and, you know, Robert Smith, quote unquote, plays the violin on that one song. But yeah, I think the Cure one especially is a great counterculture one, like you're saying, taking this huge band and allowing them a framing to see them in a completely different way. You asked me a moment ago about whether there were many acoustic guitars in the in the scene I was from or many people doing, and there was no one in my area doing it. And there was no one that I could really, I guess Billy Bragg, things like that, that sort of overlapped with us and Joe Strummer sort of overlapped, but that that wasn't our generation's thing. so
00:39:08
Speaker
yeah It was a little bit of uncharted territory. I do remember after the ah videotape of the the Cure One made our ah made its way to the skate shop that we were at, but we that was one of our our hubs for music discovery, that it did feel like a permission slip, I think, to pick up some acoustic guitars.
00:39:26
Speaker
And the Cure was one of those bands that was but straddled a lot of lines. and and And a lot of my friends that listened to very heavy music, heavy, meaning different things than it probably means now. yeah Melody, I think that The Cure became the the great decoder ring for for finding your way into melody within heavy music. yeah was for me for sure. I think the big ones that got releases, we lived with, everyone lived with. The big ones that came out as records. But, you know, we did trade a lot of video tapes and eventually DVDs and you could burn them of those things. So certainly REM, of course, Pearl Jam, of course, of course, Nirvana. But the Cure one, that was one that we we spun it like a record. We listened to it, all we watched it, I guess. We watched it all the time.
00:40:09
Speaker
I love that visual. I think that that's such a cool part of Unplugged too. And I know we haven't gotten into y'alls yet, but I think that's so cool that you guys package the DVD with the CD because I think sometimes, especially if you weren't there in the moment, people actually forget that Unplugged was a television show and the aesthetic was a big part of it. It was one thing to listen to Pearl Jam doing their Unplugged bits. It's another cool thing to see Eddie falling off of his stool and Jeff standing on on the drums and and doing a bass toss. I'm pretty sure maybe the only acoustic bass toss in history, but, you know, maybe I could be wrong. But I can't think of another one. Exactly. You know, I wanted to ask you kind of already hit on it a little bit, but to dig in a little more. Most folks know the dashboard origin story of it being your solo acoustic side project while you were in the very loud, very electric. Further seems forever.
00:40:59
Speaker
What made the acoustic guitar your tool of choice for the new songs that you were writing that that weren't necessarily lending themselves to the further mold? Interesting. Why was it the right choice for that? I think for so many of my songs, it's just been the right choice. I've always felt like writing on acoustic guitar was elemental to the process. Specifically, I think it you you have a ah lack of artifice. It's very clear whether the idea has merit or not.
00:41:25
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Like many things in arts, the limitations is what ends up being you or being instructive, I think. And if you permit me, just to jump back to that Pearl Jam one for a moment. Oh, yeah, yeah. Eddie almost unable to contain that energy physically on the stool. We can envision it riding on his arm with a sharpie. These things really struck me and my friends as renegade stuff. Yeah, and I think when I picked up ah an acoustic guitar from then on, it felt like a surefire way to to cut right to the heart of that energy. And I think that while I was in further, I wrote many of the parts that I did write for further collaborative effort, but
00:42:07
Speaker
I would say Josh Colbert was the main driver of that band musically, music writing wise. But when I did write my parts, I almost always wrote them on acoustic. But then interestingly, as heavy as we were, as angular as we were, Josh wrote most of his parts on acoustic too. And I don't know how he got there. We never talked about it. But it didn't seem out of the ordinary to spend the time writing on the acoustic guitar, whether the destination would be electric or not. That makes sense. Yeah.
00:42:29
Speaker
You know, as dashboard starts taking off and you exit further around, I think it was like the fall of 2000. So if we fast forward a little bit to that summer fall of 2001, that window where your second dashboard record has come out and it's making waves, but screaming infidelities hasn't blown up as a single yet. In that window, tell us your memories of how you first got the invite from MTV to participate in the new Unplugged 2.0 reboot.
00:42:56
Speaker
It just so happens that I ran into a friend who was integral to this process the other day, so it's all front of mind for me. I'm happy to share it with you because it's a really beautiful memory in my mind. We had started to have some success beyond the underground. Never was the goal that success, but we embraced it. We were excited that people were connecting with our music and all of a sudden we were fielding moments of opportunity.
00:43:19
Speaker
It's such a strange thing for a basement band. And we're trying to learn how to navigate this. And as these things happen, and that moment ah approached where the major labels are kind of coming to shows and radio people are coming to shows and kind of the suits of the world are coming to the shows. You could kind of sniff them out and immediately.
00:43:39
Speaker
We had a pessimistic view about that stuff at the time. So I was surprised when I saw a guy who didn't quite fit in into the same demographic that we were playing to, but didn't have the suit vibe thing, kind of walking in through the room. And then a friend of mine introduced him. His name is Alex, Alex Coletti. He'd come to see us play. It was a friend of a friend who was that friend was very excited that Alex was there. There was an energy about that that I noted, but didn't didn't have time to dwell on.
00:44:09
Speaker
So I said ah had a nice visit with him before the show and some other friends and then kind of got busy with the show. At the end of the show that Alex came back and really properly introduced himself as to who he was. This of course is Alex Gletty, the creator of MTV Unplugged. He'd become a fan, but this was his first show.
00:44:28
Speaker
He did not come to Scout dashboard playing. There was not a plan for another, you'll remember Will and probably your listeners. Unplugged was off the air for some time at that point. And he had no plan or I don't know if he had any desire, you'd have to ask him about reviving it. I would let him tell you this story, but I'm here.
00:44:45
Speaker
There you go. As he told it to me, during the course of our show, what he saw the audience do, what he saw out in the audience, that sing-along was the element that he had always envisioned happening with the MTV Unplugged of the past, and he kept waiting for it to happen, and it never happened.
00:45:02
Speaker
When he saw the way our audience sang, which seems pretty common these days, but I think if there's those words to remember that that was not commonplace. There was, I don't know whether it was a rule or not. I don't know if it was etiquette or not, but people just didn't quite sing along quite like that. Sure, you sing along at the chorus, but this was every word. They were part of the band. And this is what flipped the switch for Alex, as he's told me. So much so that he called Van Toffler, the head of MTV, from the show and held up the phone. Wow.
00:45:31
Speaker
so that he, so that Von could hear the audience singing that way. And the head of MTV Unplugged, having heard the audience, I'm giving credit to the audience here. In that moment between Alex and Von Toffler and my audience, they decided to revive MTV Unplugged in that moment. And what if my fans hadn't sung along that night?
00:45:51
Speaker
Right. That's a beautiful story and a beautiful credit, like you're saying to the audience. and I don't know. It's incredibly insightful. You you don't often hear artists posed a question and deflect genuine praise to their audience in such a way. So I think that's incredible. And to everyone that was there night that night, at least from my perspective, thank you so much. I have my thanks too. Right, yeah. Some of the other artists that ended up being with you guys in that 2.0 reboot, so I'm thinking of REM, Lauryn Hill, Jay-Z, even Stain to some extent, all of those bands had, you know, significant mainstream successes in the 90s. So what did getting that MTV vote of confidence at such an early point in your career mean for you, both individually as the kid who watched Unplugged and also professionally for your band?
00:46:38
Speaker
Well, we were the first, possibly only, non-platinum acts to be ever be given an unplugged, and it went platinum. I think it's not hard to figure out what it did for our career. It gave us one. yeah I think we were headed for a certain kind of success based on the trajectory of our career to that point where it felt like it was going and the fact that it was we were being shared from one fan to the other with a level of excitement that cast the net wider than we could have done on our own. But we weren't on the radio and we we had, I believe, a video on MTV for screaming infidelities.
00:47:14
Speaker
Not on rotation, yeah probably. Not yet heavy rotation, but soon, yeah. Not yet, but soon. So the first thing it did for us was, before it was even out, was give us a little bit of a ah cachet that with the people that weren't in the know. Clearly the scene knew where we were and frankly had us up on its shoulders.
00:47:34
Speaker
Yeah. But that's not going to get a record spun for you on a radio station necessarily. But the word that you have done in MTV Unplugged and the curious nature of how it came about ah certainly, I guess, got some of my calls answered. That is a nice thing to put on the resume. You kind of mentioned for those fans who were already hip to you guys that had been following along. Honestly, I've been listening to your voice from literally the 27th state, the split EP you guys did. I was very curious from Following you guys for a couple years already from your time and further to splitting out to Dashboard, this version of Dashboard as a band that we see and hear on Unplugged, that was still a fairly new iteration even of Dashboard. So tell us a little bit about how you guys actually prepped for Unplugged, kind of moving from that you being solo to now ah being a four piece.
00:48:27
Speaker
could misremember this will. It's been a lot, a lot of years in between. But I'm almost certain that that show I was, I was telling you the details about that that Alex came to was our first tour as a band. So you mentioned from the 27th state, that was a split I did when I was in Further Seems Forever with a friend's band and recess theory. Yeah. But one of the things on that tour that would happen is I kept meeting friends and with Further Seems Forever Oh, wouldn't it be cool to be in a band with him? Wouldn't it be cool to be in a band with her? Wouldn't it be cool to play music together? And sometime along the way, when I was starting Dashboard, I i thought with Dashboard, for those that don't know, was a solo project for a couple of records. It was just me and an acoustic guitar, largely, maybe a few bands that had a few songs that had just some spare instrumentation beyond acoustic guitar and vocal.
00:49:14
Speaker
I left it that open so that if maybe my friend Maria was home from Torus, you'd jump in and play with me. And um maybe Chad from Newfoundland might come home and want to play guitar at a show with me. And that's also why I didn't name it Chris Grover. Well, that's one of the reasons I didn't name it Chris Grover. Yeah.
00:49:30
Speaker
I wanted it to be sort of an open invitation if I had other bandmates or friends that wanted to be bandmates that night. I thought it was a cool cool way to arrange an art project. So along the way, one or two of those guys and women ended up being home more than I originally expected. And before you know it, they were playing with me quite a lot. Now, certainly, I think most most famously is probably that lineup on the MTV Unplugged, which is John Loeffler on Dan Bonebrake on bass, and Mike Marsh on drums. All incredible musicians.
00:49:58
Speaker
that I had admired before being in Dashboard, with the exception of Johnny, who I met during the time I was in Dashboard. Mike and I had played in a band together, and Dan and I had played in a different band together. I don't think those two had ever played together. Anyway, it was just like one of those things where we we found ourselves with some time and a spot to play together, and but and that's how the the lineup kind of came about. Interestingly, that show was, I believe, John's first show with us. Wow. Okay. And I believe it was Dan's last show with us.
00:50:28
Speaker
whoa okay we knew there was always going to be a rotating cast yeah i had hoped and still hope that everybody that's ever played with us will continue to or come back yeah and most of those guys do or have and and will but there was something special about that lineup and There was something special about knowing it was Dan's last show, no matter how how much we pleaded for him to stay. yeah We couldn't quite convince him. Dan's my best friend to this day. So I'm really grateful that though are our musical partnership changed over the years ah from Dashboard to other things, I always have that video to go, well, I'll be honest with you. i've yet to I think I've yet to watch.
00:51:10
Speaker
MTB unplugged. I'm waiting for my memory of it to fade and it just hasn't. Oh, nice. Okay. But when it, but I will always have that. I certainly have the pictures somewhere around here. Yeah. Photo booth within the building there of all of us taking pictures. Not only is it an important piece of our musical lineage, but it's just an important piece of my up. It's like a picture within a, within a wax stamped envelope. Yeah. of where Exactly who we were and where we were at the time that we, when we're ready, we can always just break open yeah and see.
00:51:40
Speaker
Especially for such a transitional period like that, you know, new coming in old going out. I love the, that idea that you're kind of painting as dashboard is almost this, uh, etch a sketch. There's like a fixed frame. There's like, you know, you and your songwriting and the songs we know and love, but there's also a lot of room for malleability of how those songs are going to come out. That's cool. I love that.
00:52:01
Speaker
And they should they should be malleable. That's my favorite part about the songs too, is there yeah they're meant for but to be whatever they're going to be tonight. You know, when Scott joined the band, Scott Shanebeck, the bass player who replaced Dan after he left. So he sort of had to contend with the fact that people expected this now. Before they understood it was this transitioning thing always. yeah But there was a there was permanence to what Dan brought.
00:52:25
Speaker
and I think Scott's willingness to, well for one to keep inviting Dan to join us at shows here and there and and stuff like that, but I think his willingness to to help us prove to the audience that there's deference to the things that they liked that we did together.
00:52:41
Speaker
and then while we're growing and and into a new place. Yeah, yeah. he was He was intent on learning nuance that Dan did, you know, that's personal, you know, playing is personal. And like some of that stuff, you just can't emulate. And Scott made it his mission to give his playing playing wise give credit to certain things that Dan would do in the Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's a nice touch.
00:53:01
Speaker
I've always loved that for your Unplugged, you've booked some of those previous Unplugged traditions. You know, there was no cover songs, no special guests, no sort of expanded instrumental palette. Were there any back and forth discussions about if you wanted to do those things leading up to the show or was that an intentional decision like right from the jump of it's just going to be a snapshot of us doing our thing?
00:53:23
Speaker
Well, really what it was was that Alex and I had, Alex Coletti and I had talked a lot about how meaningful that audience is in the presentation of the song. And we sat down together to try to figure out which song that we would cover that would, that every single person in that group, that that audience would would but have the same reaction to as they happen to be having to our stuff. And Alex pointed out how diverse our audience was in terms of like their own musical taste. Yeah, yeah diverse from each other. And he kind of posited that we were the overlap. It wasn't us. It wasn't us. He kind of presented like someday somebody's gonna be able to cover one of your songs and all these people that like all these different things will happen to all like that together and have that moment. But I don't think it's tonight.
00:54:07
Speaker
So I don't recall that we took the cover thing all that too far. And as it pertained to the guest, any guest joining us for performance, Alex really thought that the audience was the showcase guest. And I appreciated that. yeah And then he delivered on it, by the way. I mean, they are a featured presence literally on the stage yeah with us. Yeah. I love that idea of the audience being the special guest for you guys.
00:54:30
Speaker
If we move into the the set list a little bit, to me, and and you can let me know if this is true or if this is just one of those music journalists over analyzing things, but I like the sort of clever historical journey of the show's opening quartet of songs. You know, you doing Swiss Army romance and best deceptions completely solo, then Remember to Breathe starts as a duo, goes to a full band, and then The Good Fight just explodes, you know, even brighter than the album version. Did you intentionally craft that opening to sort of sketch a little journey for people that were catching up to the band for the first time? So many of the people that were at our shows had been with us for almost so the entirety of that journey. So it felt important to me to show the uninitiated what the arc was and maybe give them a ah sense of how we got onto their television screen that night.
00:55:21
Speaker
And there wasn't a real way to do that, but that linear line, that linear line, that that line was indelible to me as like an indelible mark. Like I was alone. It was just me and these folks. And then we put a band together. The journey was was something that felt was worth representing both visually with them actually walking onto stage and sequentially. Yeah, yeah.
00:55:45
Speaker
With, with almost half of the songs you did for unplugged sort of getting their first full, like four piece full band. I know some of them you had already played with some other variations, but for you as the songwriter, were there any specific songs that really opened up in a new way for you? Like as a listener, turpentine chaser is one that having the Swiss army romance version and then hearing what you guys did on unplugged, it was like, it was really beautiful the way that opened up for me. But for you as the songwriter, were there any of those that were kind of getting their debut that opened up for you in a new way?
00:56:15
Speaker
you named one that was among them a turpentine chaser even when we play it now it it predates the upload there are other versions of it that are that could have been definitive even afterwards but when we introduce that song we make reference to the unplugged we played a lot of those songs on unplugged i mean we continue to play a lot of those songs live yeah Of course, they became mainstays. It ended up being the the invitation to so many of our current fans back in the day and how they discovered us. But I don't think of Screaming Fidelity as the unplugged song. I don't think of, again, I go unnoticed. I don't even think of Hands Down, which is another one that I think had its big arrangement. Yeah.
00:56:55
Speaker
And really kind of debut. It was on an EP before that that I think we'd pressed a thousand of. It was just me and an acoustic guitar. Maybe eventually press more, by the way. but yeah yeah At that point, it was just sort of a demo. But something about both Turpentine Chaser and Remember to Breathe, um they seem definitive for to to the Turf more than any other. It feels like it's of the unplugged.
00:57:22
Speaker
Remember feels like seated that night for the song it would eventually become, which this is this very malleable dynamic, almost dare I say jammy kind of moment within our live so songs. And also remember to breathe for what it's worth felt like ripping a band aid off of the constraints of dashboard being forced by me, by me to remain small and unadorned.
00:57:50
Speaker
And when we hit breathe part with, with the big hits that Mike does and dynamic range, we allowed ourselves to broaden into in that moment. I think it unlocked the door for the future of dashboard. Oh, that's so cool to hear you say that. And I'm not sure there's anyone that is as clean, like on those tomfills and stuff as Mike was, you know what I'm saying? Like he, he absolutely nailed it in the moment. The, the four of y'all together, uh, that version is just incredibly beautiful. And I've heard a lot of people try to imitate it.
00:58:19
Speaker
no one No one's been able to accurately do it, but. Yeah. Mike is rarefied here. Mike is such a phenomenal drummer and musician, but to me, he was always a drummer second. I thought of Mike always as this really incredible melody writer and he's a good lyricist and he's a good songwriter, collaborator, to bend in other bands with him.
00:58:40
Speaker
where he was the drummer and singer. And I think there's a certain thing that he came by since like a lot of people can be not a lot of people, there are people that can be as skilled as Mike at that instrument. But I think they're probably thinking of that instrument first. I never got the sense that Mike was thinking about that instrument first, I got the sense that he was thinking about some other piece of the song, I would imagine I would I would always guess that it was usually melody or even lyric like even the syllabolic nature of a lyric sometimes and how that can be percussive. I always just thought he had this interesting, very interesting way of cracking the code that also didn't veer into bombast. So he could really push a song really far without it losing the necessary simplicity that I think is a big piece of the puzzle for for songs. Because once it gets once it gets beyond the place where the biggest impact is what you feel,
00:59:35
Speaker
Once you're thinking about it cerebrally, I don't think you can have the emotional reaction. So I was very grateful to him on that. And then the other piece of that puzzle that's really special to me, speaking specifically to that night was that John Lether had just joined the band. Previous to that, his cousin Mike Stroud was the guitar player. Mike was also in a band, is in a band called Rat Attack. We only ever had him on loan.
00:59:57
Speaker
And he had suggested John and also said he'd be willing to let John come in and shadow us like, and teach him the parts every night. So John had been on tour with us, but had, and he had, I think for a couple of weeks at that point and had rehearsed with us, but, and maybe played a song or two out on the stage. But there's visual for for all time in history. There's a, there's visual representation and actual recording of me understanding how special that guy is as a guitar player.
01:00:27
Speaker
How special he is as a contributing factor when it comes to additive melody about incredible adherence to a dynamic journey and also how willing I was going to be, I knew it in that moment, to follow that guy if he pulled the song somewhere and that's the best part of bandmates.
01:00:48
Speaker
It's not like, will they follow me? yeah i So where are they going to take me? There's a moment I remember, and one day when I watched this thing, I wonder if you can see it, where I am just kind of fully committed to that journey. In that moment, I've decided I'm going with this guy. yeah And it was really rough because we were leaving. We knew we were losing Dan, who is my guy.
01:01:10
Speaker
right I've been following that guy and where he leads for a long, long time, yeah but it felt like he was turning us over to into some capable hands. yeah quite a night What a night. That's a good way ah of saying it. I want to immediately go back and pop in the DVD now because just even trying to think of what sort of um bittersweet space you had to be in, even just playing between those guys, you know, like feeling like one ushering out, one ushering in being super excited, but also sad and sentimental and all that having to having to navigate all that and still be incredibly present. That's a lot. Well, I don't know. I don't know that you will see so much of
01:01:48
Speaker
morning of the future loss of Dan because I thought for sure this moment would keep forever Oh gotcha. Okay. Yeah. I think what if you see anything it's hope. Yeah, there you go. Almost certitude that this guy's gonna stay in this band with us forever. Yeah. Yeah. I I did actually, I had one more question about the audience that that I wanted to ask you about because I really think that the audience presence, not only did it make so much sense for their place within Dashboard's legacy, but also just thinking about the idea of audience for Unplugged. I love how those couple rows of audience members behind you really sort of harkened back to the early years of Unplugged when the artist, you know, most of them performed in the round for those first few years and then they kind of got away from it in the later 90s.
Legacy of Dashboard's MTV Unplugged and Final Thoughts
01:02:34
Speaker
I know having an audience sing with you wasn't a new experience, but being completely surrounded by an audience like that, was that a new experience for you? Or had you played with people behind you before? Well, I played surrounded, that's for sure. I'm almost certain I could say I could say with Yeah, the answer is yes. I played with people behind me before, but you have to know a little bit about of our our world to know how unremarkable that bit is, where you're playing a lot of
01:03:01
Speaker
basement shows in their days in the early days and you're playing these cramped clubs on the way up and you're playing living rooms and you're playing parties and you're playing ah house shows and it was pretty gritty in a really beautiful way. And I would say fewer places had a stage then didn't have a stage in the first place.
01:03:20
Speaker
so So many of my shows, I was just on this, literally on the same level as the audience. yeah um I have a photographer friend of mine who's really important in our scene. His name is Michael Dubin. So many of my great memories. And I think I speak for other bands in our scene, ah every other band in our scene probably.
01:03:40
Speaker
We were lucky to have Michael there with us or around us just as a friend because we have some image in our head that we can hold in our hand at that time. But i found I found a picture not long ago and there are people on the stage.
01:03:53
Speaker
And one of those people is Michael Dubin, who I i didn't know really yet. So the answer is yes, I was used to having people on stage. It had been a minute since I've had people on stage, because in the probably preceding year, we kind of become like an official, like a real band for whatever that means to you. And so we were playing a lot of clubs where did the gear worked.
01:04:17
Speaker
and and there And there was a stage. And I didn't love that bit. I still don't. I still miss being right there with the audience in a way that we could feel each other in more ways than one. you know Yeah. That's such inherent foundational punk scene idea, looking at being like, how, how many different ways can we sort of remove that barrier between band and audience member? And and it was amazing to see it achieved in such a mainstream moment on MTV, a channel that is known for the artifice and lengthening that layer between artist and audience. So.
01:04:53
Speaker
going Going back to to Hands Down for a second, you are right. the The unplugged version of Hands Down is so incredible. Selfishly, my favorite version is the one you did with Michael Stipe. I wondered if you could sort of tell us about how Hands Down being the last a song in the set, how that sort of bridged into the next chapter of the band's successes with the video blowing up on MTV, Mark commission, a brand, a scar going all the way to number two, you know, eventually having vindicated a couple of years later. How did hands down help lead into a lot of what was the next couple of years for the band?
01:05:31
Speaker
Well, I can tell you how it became the closer of the show, of the of the episode, in the same way that Swiss was the, Swiss Army Romance was the opener. The Swiss Army Romance was the opener because it was the earliest song that people had heard, and it was representative of who Dashboard was on the first record.
01:05:50
Speaker
And Hands Down was representative of who we were right then and who we were becoming. And Hands Down was released a couple of months before the MTV Unplugged wasn't widely known. It was part of a four-song EP that is won there's the telling of one story, if you listen to it in in sequence. Though it wasn't out very long, it was evident in that very magical way that this was the closer for the night.
01:06:17
Speaker
We had a bigger song. We had Screaming in Fidelity's was the biggest song that we had. But the show felt over once we played Hands Down. If we played it earlier, show was over. It just felt like it still feels like the crowd sings that song in such a way that they have nothing left after.
01:06:36
Speaker
So it shows over. So the the song had to be last. I want to point out, Will, there's another version that you mentioned that i did that we did with Michael Stipe. And when Michael Stipe sang it, he implored me that we sang the refrain an extra round. And he's Michael Stipe. His ideas are the best. right is I can see as we're talking, I have a video of you and I can see that you have almost as much REM memorabilia as I am. I was elated to hear his ideas and eager to follow him yeah down his path. And i i point I say all this because from that moment on, that's the length of the song. oh That refrain remains longer than it is on Unplugged, longer than it is on any record. It is the way that we sang it with Michael Stipe that night.
01:07:25
Speaker
Uh, congratulations for making my favorite song in your catalog, even more my favorite now to know that that it has, uh, such a legacy attached to it. That's amazing. i I love the shadow that moments like that can cast for years. You know, some things are incredible really in the moment and some things, uh, really kind of shape the future state.
01:07:44
Speaker
Okay, well, to bring things current a bit, I was curious, when you're having fan interactions these days, how often does Unplug like still get mentioned? And in what context are people you know wanting to talk to you about it? It is brought up frequently, daily, and with enthusiasm. For many people that come to my shows, it was an important piece of their maturation, I guess. I think it struck many of these people just at the right time of their lives.
01:08:13
Speaker
which has given the record really long legs. I think people enjoy long relationships with records like that. yeah And um I feel very lucky that ours is is one for for so many people. That's beautiful. I love that.
01:08:26
Speaker
Last question that I have for you, you've already sort of answered elements of this in in different answers so far, but to pull all those strings together. Looking back at the arc of your still going strong career, for you personally, where does Unplugged sit alongside everything else you've accomplished in you know the last 25 plus years that you've been playing professional music?
01:08:48
Speaker
Oh boy, that's ah that's a bit of a tough one, Will, because as everyone who's ever heard an and artist interview before, you know, we all say that it's difficult to choose between these records. Yeah, yeah. That said, it's way up there.
01:09:01
Speaker
That's succinct. I love it. That's beautiful. Chris, again, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show today and yeah, for sharing your unplugged stories with us. I genuinely appreciate it, man. Thank you. I'm happy to do it, Will, and I'm grateful for you doing this podcast. I am as big a fan of you and of this series, which is why it makes it so sweet and beautiful that I actually got to experience one for myself.
01:09:26
Speaker
See there? What'd I tell ya? Nice this guy around. I could've talked Unplugged, his own episode, and the other greats he mentioned, The Cure, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, all day with him. What a super fun chat. Thanks again to Chris for taking the time to join the show. I highly recommend tracking down both versions of Dashboard's MTV Unplugged 2.0 album, the CD-DVD combo so you can have the amazing video of the whole thing, and one of the half dozen or so vinyl variants that both look and sound simply amazing.
01:09:55
Speaker
Okay, thank you so much for joining me on this fun new adventure this year. I hope you and yours have a fantastic holiday season and if you've got some holiday road trips or even just some well-deserved downtime coming up and want to pass the time by catching up on some older episodes, feel free to spend my first three longer runtime explainer episodes covering the entire 35-year run of MTV Unplugged from 1989 to the present and we'll hit the ground running with a fresh new batch of episodes in 2025.
01:10:24
Speaker
A quick scheduling note, since the next podcast would fall on January 1st and most folks will still be in holiday zone-out mode, we'll be back in rhythm with another episode on January 15th. As a reminder, if you want to connect with the show, you can reach us via email, social media, or by leaving a voicemail at 234-REVISIT. As always, please take a moment to follow the pod on your platform of choice so that it'll automatically pop into your feed when it goes live. Until then, my friends, be kind to yourself and look out for each other. Happy holidays!