‘In My Room’ With Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes

Dawes‘ Taylor Goldsmith shared a charming set of unplugged tunes, including an extremely apt Willie Nelson cover, in the latest installment of Rolling Stone‘s In My Room, a series in which artists perform from home while in quarantine.

Goldsmith set up in what he described as his “weird office, guitar, sort-of recording room,” and offered up the disclaimer that it was possible his performance might be disrupted by either his dog barging into the room or his cat jumping onto his lap (alas, neither pet made a cameo). Goldsmith opened his set with a delightful and comforting rendition of Nelson’s 1980 hit, “On the Road Again,” a track that hits even harder in an era when live music has been put on an indefinite hiatus.

“Thanks for indulging me — that felt really good to sing,” Goldsmith said after the song. “And I’m not in a rush, but playing some shows sounds good, whenever that has to be.”

After that, Goldsmith delivered stripped-down takes on two Dawes tracks, “Crack the Case,” from the band’s 2018 album, Passwords, and “All Your Favorite Bands” off of the group’s 2015 LP of the same name. “Crack the Case” remains particularly salient, and in a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, Goldsmith spoke about how writing it was his way of trying to plumb growing divisions in search of empathy.

“With ‘Crack the Case,’ I didn’t want to answer anything because I don’t know if a song is enough to do that,” he said. “A song is a song, at the end of the day. But that song is a suggestion of an approach for myself. I can come to a conversation and I can hear where somebody else is coming from without immediately saying, ‘I can’t believe that you would think these ways.’ And rather than judging and alienating others, I do think there’s an opportunity that no one is taking, myself included, to actually understand why somebody is coming from a certain place.”

Goldsmith’s In My Room segment follows performances from Sting, Joan Jett, Brian Wilson, Lucinda Williams, Waxahatchee, Cherry Glazerr, Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan, Diana Gordon, and others. To support musicians undergoing financial hardship, please consider giving to the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund or MusiCares’ COVID-19 Relief Fund.

Support Dawes directly at the band’s website.

Visit Rolling Stone‘s Instagram for more In My Room videos.