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by Dave Kirby
Lopez was lead singer for The Authority, the Latin-flavored party machine outfit that crawled about in Manhattan clubs with the likes of Blues Traveler and the Spin Doctors, but a band that leaned a little more toward Latin-funk boogie and marathon-dance-floor toasting than its more pop-oriented contemporaries. The band made a decent run in its time, doing several long U.S. tours and just about cracking it at a time when NYC bands were an item on the national stage. But close only counts in horseshoes and airborne viral infections. After seven years, the band folded. According to Lopez, it was about time.
"We were into funk and Latin jazz-we were influenced by Prince and stuff like that," he said. "The first five years were great. The band was everything. We were working together, watching each other's backs. It was really going good. But the last two years... you know, eventually, bands fall apart because of egos or people changing their priorities. It was really tough. We were gigging more or less just because we were in debt and had to play.
"People ask all the time, 'How come Blues Traveler or the Doctors made it and you guys didn't?' Looking back on it, I think it was just that our songs weren't as strong. Those guys knew how to write pop songs, and we just didn't. I listen to some of that stuff now, and I just shake my head. We just couldn't write great songs, and I think that's what it takes."
After The Authority folded, Lopez briefly teamed up with former Spin Doctor Eric Schenkman, and later still with former Blind Melon guitarist Roger Stevens for an intriguing rock/funk project called Extra Virgin. Once that had run its course, Lopez began to turn inward.
"I've always been a 'band' guy. Writing songs for bands, or playing drums (which was my first instrument)," he said. "But at some point I decided I needed to simplify, and I just sat down and started writing stuff for myself."
Amid the one-off side projects that constitute any NY musician's career, Lopez found the time to gather a collection of songs-confident statements of self, reflections of street life, odes to imperfect redemption-and recorded them at home, with just an acoustic guitar and spare instrumentation. The result is a clean and impressive CD, suggesting something like an urban Steve Earle in some respects, with its scarred wisdom and uncertain revelations. But it's one that Lopez himself concedes is little more than a demo-something to give out at gigs.
"It wasn't really meant to be anything, other than just getting some songs down, trying out the songwriter thing," he said. "It came out good, and I plan to get into the studio and record it with a full band, sort of do it the way it was intended.
"It's tough getting a band together for long enough to do it, though. Everyone in New York is a mercenary; everyone's got something or other going on. It'll happen this winter, I hope."
In the meantime, Lopez plays the Fox Monday, Oct. 21, as solo opening support for renowned NY songwriter Joseph Arthur, a guy whom Lopez also gigs around a little bit with in a part-time project called Holding the Void.
"We were just hanging out at my house, playing some songs together, and Joseph said, 'Why don't we start a rock band, just start up a band to play songs,'" Lopez explained. "I said, 'Sure,' and offered to play drums. He went home that night and called me the next morning and said he already had written eight brand new songs for the band. Just like that. And every one was great-Joseph is the kind of guy I'd play in a band with anytime. He's just such a good songwriter, everything he writes I dig."
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
Carrabba confesses
by Alan Sculley
By the time the mainstream music industry began to discover the phenomenon that is Dashboard Confessional early in the summer, The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most had sold more than 200,000 copies, almost entirely by word of mouth. The secret is clearly out. The song "Screaming Infidelities," has been getting radio and MTV play. Ironically, Carrabba, in a recent interview, said all of this might not have happened without some prodding from a former boss. Up until 2000, Carrabba had been teaching elementary school in Boca Raton, Fla., while touring in the punk rock band Further Seems Forever during school vacations. Carrabba's musical pursuits hadn't gone unnoticed at school.
"My co-workers and my supervisors, my vice principal in particular, all knew what I was doing," Carrabba, 27, said. "They all had taken an interest over the years, and they would come to my shows, believe it or not. My vice principal sat me down... She sat me down and said, 'You know, we love having you here, and we would have a job for you here for as long as you want it, but I think you need to go and kind of pursue this.' She talked me into taking a year off, a year's sabbatical."
Carrabba has never looked back. But instead of simply continuing in the punk rock vein he had previously pursued, he chose a different direction for his music, crafting a largely solo-acoustic sound built around his percussive guitar riffing and a highly emotional vocal sound.
By early 2000, Carrabba had recorded his first CD as Dashboard Confessional. Called Swiss Army Romance, the songs were drawn from a difficult romantic breakup. Carrabba didn't hold back on his feelings, candidly pouring his pain and insecurity into his songs. With Swiss Army released on friend Amy Fiddler's tiny self-run label, Fiddler Records, Carrabba chose an unlikely path to introduce his new music to the public. Playing solo acoustic, he went on tour opening for the plugged-in punk bands like New Found Glory.
"The idea was like, OK, all I know how to do is give shows, punk rock shows," Carrabba said. "So it was like, I'm going to do these until I can figure out how this works."
"There was a tide that I turned in November, December of 2000 where people just seemed to suddenly pay a little bit of attention," he added. "Even though the time and place for it was very odd, people just started to pay attention. I thought to myself, 'Well, this could work.'"
The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most arrived the following April, drawing on similar themes of romantic turmoil. Carrabba said he was still drawing from the same broken relationship that inspired Swiss Army Romance with his new songs. "It was close enough to the other record that there was a lot of that still lingering," he said. "But it (The Places CD) was quite introspective, more introspective."
Touring continued. Gradually Carrabba began to add musicians and turn Dashboard Confessional into a full-fledged band, which today includes drummer Mike Marsh, guitarist/keyboardist Johnny Lefler and bassist Scott Schoenbeck. And even though The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most continues to gain momentum, Carrabba and his bandmates are looking ahead. They have just finished preproduction on the new release and plan to begin recording in November, with an eye toward a spring release for the CD.
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A veteran survivor of the downtown New York City club scene of the mid-'90s, Rene Lopez sounds like a guy who's moved on and away from the sticky-floor, late-night madhouse dance scene to a better place. At least a different place.
Over the past several months, one of the biggest under-the-radar success stories has been Christopher Carrabba's band Dashboard Confessional and their CD, The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most. The CD was released in April 2001 on Vagrant Records, but since this past spring it has been steadily gaining raves. Carrabba's soul-baring lyrics-most of which concern romantic turmoil-have drawn a fanatical following. Attendance at Dashboard shows has swelled to the point where the group draws upwards of 2,000 a gig-and most everyone in the room knows Carrabba's songs so well, they sing every word and sometimes drown out the vocals on stage in a concert experience that verges on communal catharsis.
