The Storytelling Soul of Dawes Comes to the Stephen Talkhouse

The moment you listen to a Dawes song, you can tell that Taylor Goldsmith is not only a musician, but a seasoned writer. As the lead singer and songwriter for Dawes, a celebrated indie rock and folk band with a sound true to its Laurel Canyon roots, Taylor’s lyrics tell stories and, more than that, they access places in the heart that, perhaps, stories alone couldn’t reach.

“Simple phrases all of a sudden evoke so much more when they’re sung a certain way,” Goldsmith said. “That’s what a singer can do — they can help interpret the attitude.”

He doesn’t imply that lyrics are more powerful than words on a page — but he does find that the intention of the lyrics can be delivered more directly to the listener, while readers are left to interpret on their own.

“A book might have punk rock energy,” he said, “but the reader invents it in their own way. Music holds your hand energetically, and lets you sink into the intended mood.”

Because the music is all about the mood, lyrics also can either carry the song or they can be just a piece of the puzzle. Dawes recently played with Iron & Wine — the stage name of singer-songwriter Sam Beam — and Goldsmith marveled at the difference in their styles.

“His lyrics are stunning,” Goldsmith said. “But they’re more fragmented, pictorial. I don’t know what’s going on sometimes, but I feel so much.”

For Goldsmith, he’s looking to present something clear.

“I’m not trying to be clever for its own sake,” he said, “but I want to let the intention be presented as what it is.”

Dawes — a brotherly band completed by Goldsmith’s brother, drummer Griffin Goldsmith — has been touring since November in support of its ninth studio album, “Oh Brother,” and will be performing at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett on July 13. But this year is about much more than just celebrating a new album for the brothers — it is a year marked by tragedy: Both lost their homes, their recording studio and instrument collection in the Eaton fire that ravaged their neighborhood, an artist’s enclave in Altadena, California, in January.

The fires, which raged and devastated communities around the San Gabriel Mountains for weeks, left many homeless and whole communities in ashes.

But out of those ashes rose a collective effort toward supporting impacted communities across Los Angeles. Music has often been at the center of efforts to create community, find commonality and feed those hungry for it. Goldsmith’s wife, the actress and singer-songwriter Mandy Moore, documented her family’s experience during the Eaton fire on social media, shining a light on the devastation, and the need to support relief efforts.

Dawes performed its song “Time Spent in Los Angeles” at a FireAid benefit concert and livestream on January 30, just as the Eaton fires were finally contained. Taylor and Griffin also took to the stage at the 67th Grammy Awards in early February. Joined by a backing band of all-star performers, including St. Vincent, Sheryl Crow, Brittany Howard, Brad Paisley and John Legend, Dawes opened the awards with a rendition of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” The moment successfully celebrated Los Angeles in the wake of fires and refocused the traditionally glitzy awards show toward relief efforts.

Now Taylor and Griffin are back on tour, hitting cities from Chicago to Kansas City before bringing hits from albums like “Nothing Is Wrong,” “North Hills” and “Good Luck With Whatever,” as well as songs from their newest album, “Oh Brother,” to the Talkhouse stage.

Whether “Oh Brother” will resonate as strongly with listeners as the band’s past work has — songs like “A Little Bit of Everything” and “If I Wanted Someone” from “Nothing Is Wrong,” cemented the band as one of the top folk rock bands in 2011 — remains to be seen but feels likely. Though sometimes the fate of a song is totally unknown. That’s how it was for “When My Time Comes,” regarded as one of the band’s most well-known songs, with nearly 50 million streams on Spotify.

“If it weren’t for that song, we wouldn’t be a band anymore,” Goldsmith said.

It was on Dawes’s first album, released in 2009, but just barely.

“We had already finished that record,” Goldsmith said. “It was a 10-song album, and that song wasn’t on it. But I played a riff, and our bass player and drummer showed me what they had in mind … I hit up our producer, who was already doing us a favor. We didn’t have any money or fans, and he was just being generous. I asked if we could record one more song.”

When they got the go-ahead to come back into the studio, the song wasn’t even finished — Goldsmith was frantically writing the second verse on the way to the studio, and he wasn’t sure the chorus would work because it was all “Oh’ing” and he felt like that was a cop-out.

“But then my brother and the keyboard player came in on the harmonies, and everyone was like, ‘It’s fine wordless.’ We probably owe the most to that song for making this career work.”

Genre is always a slippery beast, and for many artists it can feel like a tool of the production industry to place them in a box. That said, Dawes has often been categorized as “folk rock,” and music is in a moment when folk has begun to gather some of the traction that it held in the 1960s, when music offered a counterpoint to the people in power.

“Writers are always going to have a space to help give us a clearer sense of the collective feeling around a moment,” Goldsmith said.

But he wonders if, in these complicated times, we can have a song that offers the kind of rallying cry that “The Times They Are a-Changin’” brought to the 1960s.

“Everything is so drenched in cynicism or irony,” he said. “How do you write a song about the moment you’re living in, and how do you make it something that beckons instead of plants a flag? Otherwise, everyone that agrees with you will nod their heads and everyone else will disregard everything you have to say.”

When Dawes plays the Stephen Talkhouse for the first time on July 13, the band will be looking forward to tapping into that intimate community that the Talkhouse provides in spades.

“Music is a communal experience,” Goldsmith said. “And if you can find your community, that’s the big victory.”

Dawes will play the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett at 8 p.m. on Sunday, July 13. For tickets and more information, visit stephentalkhouse.com.