Straight From The Horse's Mouth: Dashboard Confessional meets Manila

MANILA, Philippines - Supreme caught up with Dashboard Confessional lead singer Chris Carrabba before their sold-out gig at the new home of international acts, TriNoma concert grounds. Here’s what he has to say:

PHILIPPINE STAR: When did you start as a musician?

CHRIS CARRABBA: I don’t really remember any time in my life without music. My mom’s a musician. She’s phenomenal. We grew up without much means, but one thing we did have in the house was a piano. So it was constantly amazing to hear music in our house all day long, all day, all day, all day. My mother loved music as a music fan. So either she was playing the piano or she was playing records. You don’t even realize that it influences you until you actually look at your life experience.  

What is Dashboard Confessional as a group like?

The puzzle of my band consists of many pieces, but always consists of the same four guys for many years now.  There’s John Lefler, who plays guitar, piano, and kind of everything and Scott Schoenback, who plays bass, and Mike Marsch plays drums.  And myself. And then we have tons of friends who join us when they can and we’re open for it. That was the idea in the beginning of the band. 

How did you come up with the hit single Belle of the Bouleverd from your album “After The Ending”?

When we made Belle of the Boulevard on my demo, I have some pretty awful string arrangement, so the idea of having a string arrangement was there from pretty early on. I just assumed Johnny, our guitar player, would come up with something orchestral, but the more we talked about it we realized that there’s something with strings that they can be saccharine, you know.  Butch Walker suggested that if we took it to somebody who is a master of that craft, it would fit without ever being the focus and that’s now my favorite part of the song.  Tony Visconti is a legendary string arranger. And so that was the benefit of working with Butch where he has friendships with people.  Never in a million years would it occur to me that we could get him (Tony) to make the arrangement for us. Butch asked Tony if he could do it. Tony called back an hour later and said, “I love this song, I’ll have it to you tomorrow.”

What can your fans expect from your latest album?

“After the Ending” is not a concept record in that if you listen to the songs in order, you’ll know the story. It was a struggle to find an order that did not tell the wrong story. So I would sequence them. I didn’t know what feeling I was looking for, I didn’t know what I wanted to feel, having heard the whole record in sequence. I just knew I wasn’t getting that feeling. And at some point you have to trust your gut, you know.  So I must’ve sequenced it every way that you could possibly do it, only knowing what the first and last songs were going to be.  

So I knew that I knew the story, had a beginning and a last chapter and, somewhere in the middle was the meat of it. And if I told out of order, it would become the wrong ending. So somehow I managed to find what I hope is the right order.  I get the feeling even now when I listen to it over again that it’s right. I know what I’m supposed to feel.