In the most wretched way, Dawes became very visible earlier this year after drummer Griffin Goldsmith lost his home in the Pacific Palisades fires. He and brother Taylor are the only constant members of the band, who came to my attention with their 2011 album “Nothing Is Wrong”.
The closing track “A Little Bit of Everything” remains one of Taylor’s finest songs. It opens with a man preparing to jump off a bridge, “his back against the San Francisco traffic”, and giving his reasons for doing so: “It’s the news at six o’clock; it’s the death of my first dog”. The second verse centres on a man at a buffet trying to choose his meal while mourning the loss of “his only son”; it seems pathetic, in a literal sense of pathos, that “an extra chicken wing” will help him mollify his woes.
The third verse is even more poignant, as a bride-to-be writes wedding invitations but her future husband observes she doesn’t “seem to be having any fun at all”. She convinces herself that “love is so much easier than you realise” and that she will be giving him more than “some stupid little ring”. The final chorus sums up the song: “It’s like trying to make out every word when they should simply hum along”. Life is an accumulation of events, prone to lead you to grief, sadness or doubt.
This performance comes from a show in September 2019 recorded for the US Public Radio show Live From Here at The Town Hall in New York City, which was filmed two months after I caught the band by chance in Washington DC. “A Little Bit of Everything” was the emotional peak of the show.
Taylor sings the first two verses with just the piano, played by Lee Pardini. He holds the guitar in his hands, leaving it unstrummed, so he can perform the song, pointing and gesticulating, aware that it is being filmed as well as broadcast for radio. It is a more passionate reading of the song than he gave on record, perhaps because he had finessed the delivery over dozens, if not hundreds, of performances over the years.
The drums and second guitar come in at the very end of the second chorus, in time for the instrumental verse, and then drop out for the final chorus, coming back in for the closing few lines.
Great choice of song and performance, thanks for that