by Deborah J. Draisin

Floridian-based Twin Forks (formerly Twin Falls) is the brainchild of the multi-talented, creatively restless and incredibly humble Chris Carrabba of the much beloved Dashboard Confessional and newer project, Further Seems Forever. Dubbed as the project of his heart, Chris joins forces with bassist Jonathan Clark and drummer Shawn Zorn and sisters Kimmy and Kelsie Baron to create a uniquely intense country-oriented folk punk sound designed to make even the newest of fans sing along. Indeed, the band’s performance at odd posh eyeglass store/venue Moscot even had sidewalk onlookers stomping and clapping their hands to the energy that they could peer in on from the picture windows.

The band just released a self-titled EP this past March, available on iTunes.
Chris was generous enough to spare Jersey Beat some words of wisdom over Coronas prior to what would be the band’s first of three consecutive shows in NYC.

Q: Okay, so I noticed that you’re pulling double-duty at the Gilopanna Festival. How is it doing something like that? Is it strange? Exhausting? Confusing?

CC: I asked the promoters to take a chance on Twin Forks and not aim (their press releases) at the Dashboard fans - I have too much respect for them to pull a quick one. That being said, I do enjoy that they’re there, and that we’re there together. Given the opportunity, I’ll play Dashboard songs too, but I’m not going to place bigger on the marquee the band that’s not playing and then only play two or three of their songs, that’s just not fair. So, it takes longer to break your other project then it normally would by simply trading on your other works.

Q: So it’s actually more of a liability than an asset.

CC: Well, look: I think it’s a cheat to do it that way. I’d rather grow the fanbase from small to large than start large and have them realize that they were fooled and then walk away. Of course, I’m inviting the fans of all of my bands, trying to reach them to feel invited to this thing, but I want them to know what the thing is that they’re coming to see. Now, in respect to the days that we get to do both Twin Forks and Dashboard, I’ve got a feeling that there will be people who will make the walk across the lawn to see what we’re up to.

Q: Sure, they’re already there.

CC: People that maybe hadn’t had the opportunity or weren’t interested yet or were like “I heard it, I didn’t like it, but I’m here, I’ll go see if I like it live.” Maybe we’ll win them that way. Or “He hasn’t come to my town yet.” The strange thing that’s happening is that we’re gaining fans who hadn’t heard of Dashboard, or weren’t fans of Dashboard.

Q: That is strange!

CC: I’m curious to see if any of those fans will walk across the lawn the other way. I just don’t know how we’re getting fans that aren’t Dashboard fans; I guess by being a new band.

Q: Some people just really like to check out new stuff, they like fresh bands.

CC: Yeah. Who knows how people come across new music? The same way that I do: my friends put it in my hands or I stumble across an article, or I hear it in the grocery store.

Q: Pandora.

CC: (laughing) Yeah. I think it’s exciting: it’s been a while since we were actually the underdog, although I never really stopped feeling like the underdog.

Q: Really, you still feel like the underdog?

CC: Well, sure. We never really got the kind of radio success that cements you for a lifetime career, you know? Like, you were just talking about the Foo Fighters a moment ago (prior to the start of the interview.)

Q: Oh yeah, but he had a really strong advantage – I mean, not that the Foo Fighters don’t stand on their own, but…

CC: So maybe that’s a very unique example, but how about we say Coldplay then? Do you think that they came out of nowhere and just dominated the radio and they’re going to have a career until they just can’t pick up an instrument anymore?

Q: Coldplay is probably a good example.

CC: There are others: The Killers, there are lots, and it has a lot to do with the power of radio reinforcing.

Q: There’s also the power of media, like movies, soundtracks.

CC: Sure, which we’ve had (I’m talking about Dashboard now.) Actually, this is true with Twin Forks: we’ve had better luck with television than we ever had with radio. All that stuff: radio, television…

Q: Sporting events…

CC: All the auxiliary non-radio mediums exposing your music gives you a chance to be a live band. Actual genuine radio success I think gives you a chance to just be a band forever if you really can stay in that game.

Q: That’s an interesting point.

CC: We never really got on the radio with Dashboard. We had some near opportunities and we had some great moments, like the “Unplugged” and “Vindicated” (the song is the theme for “Spiderman 2” soundtrack) that really moved the cultural needle in the way that radio does. However, they don’t still play those songs on the radio like they might still play a contemporary of mine like My Chemical Romance (or Fall Out Boy.) Like “Helena” and “Sugar, We’re Going Down” still get played – and deservedly so, those are massive hits, what I call meatballs, they just come straight at you like a fastball.

Q: Bands like that, I think they did a lot of festivals. Like, you can hop onto a festival (or twenty-five of them in a row) and really get your name out there.

CC: Well, they did a great job with that, but I just think that they had powerful radio support.

Q: For sure.

CC: Their songs were unconventional and lent themselves some sort of radio, and my songs were unconventional and didn’t really lend themselves any radio.

Q: I know, it’s weird.

CC: They did land themselves to movies and other events.

Q: Which is just as good, come on. If you hear something (that you like) in a movie, you’re gonna buy the album.

CC: (smiling) Luckily for me, yes.

Q: Absolutely. So, you state in your mission statement on Twin Forks’ homepage that the goal is to get people singing along without knowing the words – has that happened yet?

CC: Yes.

Q: That is so awesome.

CC: It’s funny that I phrased it that way. I said that after it had happened a couple of times.

Q: Wow.

CC: I said “This is like a chase now.” It wasn’t a preconceived thing. We had played a couple of festivals, and there is this really simple chorus, and I realized that, in the next forty-five seconds, when the chorus rolled around again, that people were singing along.

Q: That is cool.

CC: It was really satisfying. It’s as if you’ve solved a Rubik’s Cube or something, you know? Like, “Wait a minute, I guess I get it.” The power of connecting with people is huge, right? Having it reinforced immediately is hugely rewarding. It’s one thing to have them buy your record or come talk to you afterwards, but to not know your band and sing the chorus by the next round.

Q: Mindblowing.

CC: It’s really exciting. It also made me make an effort to be like “Maybe it’s time to have my choruses have less than a hundred words,” which is a challenge for me (both laugh.) I’ve lived up to it.

Q: Well, you’ve learned a lot. You learned fingerpicking, right, in a couple of years’ time?

CC: I knew how to fingerpick, but I didn’t know this very elaborate style of fingerpicking that is the style of playing that some of these heroes of mine play in. I love their songs and I just wanted to be able to play them, so learning that took me about two solid years of like eight hour sessions.

Q: Two years. I couldn’t learn a triad in five years (both laugh.)

CC: I did that thing where I just buckled down in every free moment, even if I was watching t.v., I was watching sports and I’d practice. The playoffs were great for me, because I could just sit for hours and divide my time.

Q: Which playoffs were you watching?

CC: Well, I guess the time of year was… now.

Q: Hockey playoffs?

CC: Hockey and basketball - I’m a massive basketball fan.

Q: Who’s your team?

CC: The Heat. Now, let me give my caveat here, okay?

Q: Okay.

CC: I moved briefly to Florida when I was young, like a junior in high school I guess, and the cheapest seats were seven dollars, no team yet. Seven dollars and you could go see this awful team. Then, they get Dwayne Wade and Shaquille O’Neal, seven dollars, you could still go. Then they win the championship – seven dollars still!

Q: No way!

CC: Absolutely. So I was like “This is my team forever.” Now they the whole Big Three and the rings and it’s not seven dollars anymore, but that made me a fan. I was young enough that seven dollars was the most I could get. I could go there, I could actually go to a game.

So anyway, learning this style of fingerpicking opened the door for me to a direction of writing that I hadn’t gone in before, and also opened me up to a challenge from Jon (who is the bass player and also the producer.) We would play what I call a “Guitar Pull” - everybody takes a turn with the guitar and plays a song. I would play those kinds of songs, and he said to me “Why are you afraid to write what you love?” I’ve said this before in a couple of interview, forgive me for it, but it was such a transformative moment for me, because I think I’d already spent a decade or taking high accolades or getting hit with rocks for doing just exactly what I believed in, not being afraid to do what I loved.

Yet, when he said that to me, I was like “Oh, I have been a chicken about this. I’m afraid of smudging the field that my heroes had cleared for the rest of us.”

Q: I understand.

CC: Ultimately, I think I did find a way to write within the parameters of that style and find my own take on it without just having a watered-down rendition of these heroes of mine, you know?

Q: I’d so. The band is unique.

CC: I think that we realized that it’s not just the one influence, but an influence from this period of time in my life – this folk, outlaw country and bluegrass, and how can we mix this all up? Well, folk is sort of the leading factor, because it’s mostly fingerpicking, or that kind of chordal structure. There are riffs, like in bluegrass, but they’re short, they’re not long runs – and it’s the tempo, or the bootstomping feel that you get from it, like you might get on a mandolin. So we combined those two, which crossed, but then we put in this outlaw country, but there’s not so much of it that we’re doing. Some of the lyrics could be country songs: some of them have a little twang. Some of that have a minor - a flat fix – that you find in country songs, but mostly it’s the attitude.

Q: And not being afraid to say the word “heart” anymore?

CC: Well, that was an exercise, it wasn’t fear. You’re asking about when I swore off using word “heart.”

Q: Or “love.”

CC: In my writing, that’s two years. I do this on occasion. You’re a writer, so I don’t know if you ever find little tricks that you like, where you say “I’m going to take this out of my pencil box for a while, see what else I have to draw with.”

Q: You want to avoid certain clichés.

CC: Now, the thing is that there’s a time and a place for “heart” and “love.” When you’re a songwriter, that time and place can be every song, why not? They’re great descriptors, and powerful. Writing for two years songs that did not use those words – and it wasn’t like “Okay, now the time’s up” – it was just that the very first time took two years, I didn’t set it as two years. The very first time, the “Sounds right” word to use, and only word to use, was “heart.” I used it and threw away that rule.

Q: That’s a pretty cool way to operate, actually.

CC: And I don’t think it could work again. I’ll try another word, you know?

Q: Yeah, it wouldn’t be as organic if you did it again.

CC: The next time, I don’t know what it will be, but I do that periodically. I’ve done it throughout my writing.

Q: I just threw out a word that I avoid, “organic.” It was everywhere for a while, and I was like “I’m not saying it, sorry.” For those not in the know, Twin Forks’ “Back To You” video is actually a collection of fan-made lyrical artwork – that’s so awesome.

CC: Yeah, it was awesome!

Q: I think that’s a cool way to connect with people.

CC: In my other band, we’d done this contest, and we got such a large amount, and could only choose one.

Q: That’s so hard!

CC: So I thought “This time, let’s find a way where we can utilize…”

Q: Everybody.

CC: As many that had submitted, I just thought it was great.

Q: It was great. That’s actually become more of a thing now. I think bands are starting to warm up to the idea of including the fanbase in their art.

CC: Is that true? Is there a period where they weren’t?

Q: Oh, yeah!

CC: I guess my relationship with my fanbases is a little odd in that it’s pretty close. The line of delineation is…

Q: Blurred.

CC: Yeah. Pale at best, right?

Q: Which I think is an improvement, by the way, from what I’m used to. Back in the day, everybody was more inaccessible.

CC: You know, I kind of like the whole “Rock God” thing.

Q: You do?

CC: Yeah, as a fan – maybe not exclusively.

Q: Maybe for Morrissey.

CC: I swear to God, you just picked the guy I would’ve picked! Amazing.

Q: (laughing) Well, I think it works for him.

CC: By the way, there’s no secret that I have a haircut like his, that’s not just that I happen to have this haircut.

Q: Oh, that wasn’t an accident, really? Oh. He’s like everybody’s man-crush, like ever, I think.

CC: It’s not even…yeah, I’ll give you that, he’s everybody’s man-crush. For this guy who writes these songs that are “This is how I feel, and it’s either great or not great,” he’s just a bad motherfucker somehow.

Q: Yeah, he is.

CC: I just love that. Steve Earle is the same way. He writes these songs that are just like…

Q: Tremendous.

CC: “I’m going to cut (my chest) open and show you what’s inside, but don’t get too close, because I bite,” you know? That’s one of my favorite things about Steve Earle: you just feel like this guy’ll take you into his arms, and then throw you right out (laughs.)

Q: Lemmy Kilmeister is like that, actually.

CC: Oh yeah? I’ll bet.

Q: I think so. Like, he’ll sit in the corner and have a beer and observe you, but if you piss him off, you’re dead to him, it’s crazy. You’ve expressed concern about “using it or losing it” when it comes to inspiration. That one really hit home for me, because I worry about that all the time.

CC: Yeah, you can’t rely that it’s going to be there. When you need it, it’d better be there, but it can’t be there, if you’re not working on it when you don’t need it.

Q: Like an exercise for a muscle.

CC: You need the thing to be ready to fire. All of these mixed metaphors are floating through my head, but the truth is that I just write all the time. I’ll write with or without inspiration. I always have a little inspiration, but sometimes you’re less inspired. The idea is to complete the work and put it in the pile and say “That’s finished. Is it epic? Maybe it is, I don’t know, I’ll find out in three weeks when I go and listen to it again, but most likely no, because I doubt I’d probably still be talking about it for the rest of the day.”
But, when I get that thing inside which is like “Oh, I’ve got one, I’ve got one!” I’m open to it, because I’m always open to it, I never tamp it down. It doesn’t mean it’s easy all the time, it just means that, by honing it constantly, there’s just less resistance. You don’t know what’s going to hold you up – it could be the simplest thing.

Q: You know, one of the biggest problems that I have is that I’ll come up with a great intro, and it’s perfect, and then I touch it, and then I ruin it, and then I put it down. Does that ever happen to you with songs?

CC: Yeah, it’s funny that you should say “intro.” I say that a song can live or die in the first line. I’ve often had these great songs that just…

Q: Didn’t make it?

CC: They just didn’t have a good first line that made me want to know what the hell the story was, even though I knew, having written it, that this story was worth telling, but there was no invitation in the front.

Q: So it’s the other way around for a song – the opposite from the issue I’m having, where I don’t want to mar the perfect intro with the stuff I come up with afterwards (both laugh.)

CC: Revision is necessary, but it really can be dangerous. It’s really good to look back: I found a song that we had written in the hotel room, spur of the moment. We were all in there: Kimmy and Kelsie and Jon and Shawn and I. Jon was playing the guitar, I came up with this melody, he came up with a harmony - we were just singing it and the whole song happened. “Somebody record it!” They recorded it, and then another day, we worked on it, Jon and I. “How did it go?” “I think it went like this.” “This would be better.” “No, this would be better.” You’re tacking on the pieces, right? You’re building it up. Then we listened back to the tape and I’m like…

Q: “Nope.”

CC: “Useless, it was already done.”

Q: Yeah, sometimes you tinker with it and you ruin it, kind of like making a banana split, right? If you wouldn’t have overdosed on that last bit of maraschino cherry…

CC: Right! But, on the other hand, you have to try. You have to tinker with it. You can’t be sure that the first thing was the right thing, even though it most often is. Sometimes it isn’t, and just what if? So, thank goodness for recorders, you know?

Q: Thank God for the recorder, I used to walk around with one. I love this quote too: “It takes a while where talking about it with friends isn't where you go, and talking about it in songs is where you go,” (Rolling Stone interview, 2006.) Sometimes, you get into a rut where every great idea that you have comes out of your mouth like verbal diarrhea and it never makes it to the paper, and then it’s gone. I think that pretty much sums up the way that artistic energy works. How do you avoid that, do you just stop talking to people?

CC: I do. That’s not macabre, it’s not that I won’t go out, but maybe I won’t go out until I’ve written the song.

Q: How do you avoid the laziness of “Oh, I have a day off, I’m going to stare at the wall now for forty-seven years, instead of actually creating anything,” is that training?

CC: By taking them every now and then. By allowing myself to say “This just isn’t the day, Man. This is the day that I just kind of need to be a person, I need to catch up on ‘Game of Thrones.’ I need to leave that guitar in the case in the hotel room.”

Q: Working full-time as an artist versus not I think is the problem, because then, when you have that minute, instead of being an artist, you’re burnt out.

CC: But then there’s that other thing, where you have this responsibility toward some future writing where, like I was saying, you’re going to need it to be there for you. So, here’s your opportunity, your day off in this hotel. So maybe instead of writing a song, I’ll study a style of play – I just can’t bring myself to write a song that day, and I just kind of want to watch baseball if it’s on. I’ll put the sheet music up and I’ll start tinkering with it, and slowly, I’m not paying attention to Sportscenter anymore, I’m looking at the page. Part of the day goes by, you’ll take a shower and pick up the guitar again and you’ll look at the page, but you’re bored with it, and suddenly there’s a song in your hand instead.

So, allowing yourself to take a full day off, or some half day where there’s a half-hearted effort: at least the guitar is in my hand, you know? I’m letting myself off the hook.

Q: That’s what I do, I leave the page up and I stare at it.

CC: This is where I get into real writer’s block. I’m very insistent: I must have that guitar
in my hand, I must have that pencil out, I must have the piece of paper out. I write on blank typing paper, I can’t even look at lines on paper, I have to have completely blank paper. And I write every which way, it’s just horrendous. Piles of them are spread everywhere. I’ll be sharing a room with whomever, and they’ll walk in and go “Oh, God.” They just walk right out, like they can’t even look at this mess.
I don’t know: it’s hardest to write on the road, for me. They’re two very, very different – and rewarding – experiences to me, the road life and the writing life.

Q: You’re probably too tired, aren’t you?

CC: It’s draining, but I also have this thing that I say about shows in general: there’s only the show. Bullshit happens all day long, like the simplest thing can ruin your show, but there’s only tonight’s show, that’s how I look at it. There’s not tomorrow’s show: I’ve got a hundred shows booked, but as far as I’m concerned, there’s only tonight’s show. So, I will push my voice as far as I can push it tonight, I’m not protecting it for tomorrow. I’m just trusting that it’ll be there through my good habits that I’ve built up over these years, and the strength that I’ve built up in my voice. I’m not going to hold back so that I can sing tomorrow, but then you talk about waking up the next day and going through the process again, of warming up and making sure you’re quiet for part of the day zening out for as much as you can.

When can you write a song, you know? There’s press. The show is the only thing that counts when you’re on the road. It counts even more than writing a song. When I’m home, the only thing that counts is the song. It’s really fun, it’s really a great reward, those rare times where a song comes out of nowhere on the road, because it’s like it had to. It’s not that there wasn’t any resistance, it was fully formed – you’ve been working on it in the back of your mind, and I believe in that. You probably do it too as a writer.
It’s like “How did that come out so easily? It’s not that I’m a genius, it’s because somehow I’ve been working on it.”

Q: It was brewing.

CC: Brewing, yeah. I’ve really been working out, to the finer degrees, of where things are going to go, so that when it comes out, there’s structure, there’s substance and nuance and all of that stuff. You‘re just like (snaps fingers) “We’re going to play that tonight!” and sometimes we do.

Q: That’s cool! I’m really surprised, but not surprised, to read that the major labels’ thing
is to have all of the bandmembers record individually.

CC: No, I don’t know that that’s necessarily just a major label thing, or that all major labels always do that, but that is a common thing that I found while I was on a major label. It is sort of a method of modern recording; it’s a method of recording that’s become accepted. Some of it has to do with…

Q: Feasability?

CC: Yeah. There are some things that you have to do to protect the budget. Major label stuff has to be super clean, super compressed, super pristine. But, if I can draw on an analogy here, we’re not like these fine jewelry designers, we’re like a boutique shop. We make some bracelets out of shit we found.

Q: Thrift store.

CC: That’s just shit you found, we make something new.

Q: An art flea?

CC: Yeah. So, it was liberating to just get in a room with everybody and make noise. Like, if I laughed, I’d know it was on the track. I know which songs that if I listen to only the drums, there will be the wrong lyric, because it came in through the drum mic. I had to punch that one line again, but the fact is that the wrong line’s in there too, and that kind of makes it awesome to me, I don’t know why. What you do hear more of is the hooting and hollering. When Jonathan produced the record, the very first time that Ben and Jonathan locked in, I went “Woo!” and he didn’t press stop.

Q: He left it, and I think fans like to hear it, actually, I think it’s more fun.

CC: I like it when I hear it. When you listen to a band and you hear it, you’re like “Somebody’s working hard.” Like Bonham, if you get his solo tracks, he’s playing and you hear all these snorts and grunts.

Q: Funny you should mention Bonham, I think, is it Physical Graffiti” or “Houses of the Holy” that actually has a track where Bonham and Plant have a little exchange? That’s like my favorite thing on there (Editor’s note: both albums contain dialogue.) I love stuff like that, because it’s real. It was a moment that somebody had that you can never get back.

CC: It was a moment! It was the moment. It wasn’t a bunch of successive moments. So that’s what we’re chasing on this thing, you know? Let’s get the right moment, and also let’s not know the song well enough that we forget the spontaneity, and that was a big part of the record too.

Q: Well said. So, what’s the coolest gift you’ve ever received on the road?

CC: Strangest would be easier.

Q: Strange and cool can be the same.

CC: I get a lot of really well-made versions of me made of perhaps paint or sculptures.

Q: Is that strange, to be presented with your own face, or is it cool?

CC: Yes, it’s both. Here’s one that I think is great: there are these things we use that are little tricks of the trade, like a special tea called “Throat Coat” that singers use.

Q: Oh, I’ve heard of “Throat Coat.”

CC: Guitar picks, strings.

Q: That’s thoughtful though.

CC: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone go “Here, I know that these are the strings you use, I got you a pair.”

Q: That’s cool.

CC: It’s really thoughtful, because not only do you care enough to go and help provide me something, but I really do need this for either you tonight, or someone tomorrow night, to hear this music.

Q: Yeah, that’s badass.

CC: Picks are forever getting lost, you know? Guitar strings break.

Q: I would have never thought of that.

CC: It’s those things that are really thoughtful, like they’re thinking about you. Not just “Here’s this gift that I got you because I care about you,” which is lovely, but “Here’s this gift that’s going to help you be there for us tonight.”

Q: I’m so going to do that from now on, that’s a great idea. Bring everybody guitar strings and picks, love it. So, which project will you be recording next?

CC: I don’t know.

Q: Ooh, you don’t know!

CC: It’d be easy to say Dashboard, because I’ve got some stuff recorded, and it’s really, really good, but I heard a band today – two, as a matter of fact - and it brought me way, way back to some formative years, the kind of bands that led to me being what Dashboard was initially. It was so impactful when I heard those bands that it opened up a floodgate, and washed me downriver with it, and who I happened to meet today.

Q: That sounds awesome.

CC: So, it would be really easy to say Dashboard, but I feel like I’m not sure. Whatever that was, these two bands, when I heard them – and I won’t name who they are yet – they were so similar to those other bands, and that was such a long time ago. These bands may never have even heard of what I connect them to, but it made me feel that same thing for the first time in so, so very long. Dashboard was the result of something, but became its own thing, and suddenly, it might be the result of something again. So, I don’t know. I have a feeling it’ll be Twin Forks again before then, because I’m very passionate about what we’re doing, and it’s not a side project. And further, we (Dashboard) just take so fucking long to make records!

Q: Yeah, especially when you lose entire tracks, right?

CC: These things happen.

Q: I know, I know, I’m sorry.

CC: So, anyway, I don’t know. I can’t make any guarantees, but I’m always working, I’m always tinkering, so something will come.

Q: Well, we’re looking forward to whatever it is!

CC: I am too.

Read up, listen up, catch the band on the road or buy some shit:

http://www.twinforksmusic.com/#

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https://twitter.com/TwinForksMusic

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