Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba is no stranger to the acoustic guitar, yet his new outfit Twin Forks is by far his most roots-based project yet. CHRIS HAVERCROFT speaks to Carrabba about starting afresh with a new band and venturing into a world where he is an opening act. Twin Forks support City And Colour on Saturday, December 7, at Belvoir Amphitheatre.
With Dashboard Confessional on sustained hiatus and having got a solo album out of his system, Chris Carrabba is again travelling on a crowded bus with Suzie Zeldin (The Narrative), bassist Jonathan Clark and drummer Ben Homola (Bad Books) for his raw and rootsy project, Twin Forks.
With little fanfare and an album already in the can, Twin Forks’ first offering to punters is their self-titled EP.
“I knew each of the band members individually, but they did not know each other,” offers Carrabba as to the recruitment of Twin Forks. “In that way it was an experiment of, ‘will they all get along together as well as I get along with them individually, and also would they connect musically in the same well that I felt that I connected with each of them?’. So far it has been a successful experiment. Playing music with someone is intimate and sometimes impossible.”
Carrabba suggests that he has always been a fan of folk music and grew up listening to certain songwriters. In Dashboard Confessional he felt that when he wrote songs that were reflective of this influence it was really obvious.
“Maybe it was only obvious to me, but it was really, really obvious and so ultimately that is what helped Dashboard Confessional to have a ‘to itself’ guitar sound with these heavily lowered open tunings and a right hand that was more of a drummer’s hand than a picker’s hand. That is how I avoided tipping the listener to the fact that I was influenced by some particular singer/songwriters.
“But this was a long time ago and now I am confident enough to know that I can utilise the influences without falling into any trappings of replicating the influence.”
With the full-length almost completed, Twin Forks made a decision that on their first American tour they would record the audience singing along to one particular song so as to try and put every audience member who came to see Twin Forks on one of the choruses on this first album. The band have been relying on people holding up their phones as Carrabba teaches them the song, with the aim of getting enough recordings from people so as to have enough usable material to go on the record. It is another example of the strong connection Carrabba has to his audience.
“I am always looking for a deep connection with the audience. The more potent it is, the better for me. It is addictive and now that I have had a taste of it, it’s all I want. We are finding that they are ravenous and we can’t tell if some of it is that I have been away for a while and they are just happy to see me, but we feel like it is the music. The album isn’t even out yet and the audience already sing along to all of the words, so that says to me that they are more than just casually listening.”
