The confessions of Chris Carrabba

MANILA, Philippines - It’s been seven years since I started listening to Dashboard Confessional. I first heard one of their songs on a television show (now cancelled, or about to be). I looked endlessly for it and, after three hours, finally found it. The song was Hands Down and I haven’t stopped listening to it. Anyway, this is about Dashboard Confessional and the man behind it, Chris Carrabba. And these are his confessions.

Last week, May 26, Carrabba and his band came to Manila to play a few shows. At the meet-and-greet and press interview at Glorietta 4, dozens of girls (and boys) from the ages of 13 to 30 came together to cheer, scream and get to know the group a little more. And Carrabba, just like the music he’s known for, was as honest and as clever in his interview.

On being associated with ‘Emo’

Asked how he felt about being associated with the music genre and culture known as “emo,” Carrabba said: “We don’t really have a preference on what you call us, we’re just happy that you’re listening to us.” He adds, “It’s something I’ve never really understood but I like that we all wear tight pants.”

Luckily, Carrabba and the whole band have been able to outgrow the traps that often hinder bands. When asked how his career started and how the band has grown since then, Chris said, “I started this whole thing by myself and I as traveled around, I met these friends of mine after. It was an interesting way to find the band, although Mike (drummer) and I were in a band together (Further Seems Forever — check out their amazing debut album “The Moon Is Down”) but they kicked me out of it and he followed me here after.

“But the best part was, instead of getting a group of friends from the get-go, I was able to find these people who I thought were spectacular musicians and from our travels, I realized they were also great guys and that’s why we’ve been able to do this for almost 10 years now,” he said.

About the importance of trust, Carrabba confessed: “I think there’s a trust that grows when you’re in a band this long where instead of dictating someone else what or how to play, you know them enough that you trust that they’ll play something better than you had imagined. And that takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of hours playing together before that happens.”

Inspiration, Influences And That First Tattoo

The ever-present question about inspiration and influences arose, which Carrabba was more than happy to answer.

“You don’t really know where your inspiration comes from,” he said. “It comes from real life, the books and movies that you read and see, from girls you date. But usually it comes from the worst times and (you) try to make a song out of it.”

On the subject of his musical influences, Carrabba said Weezer was one of his biggest influences — this was made even more evident the following night during the gig when he covered the Weezer song, El Scorcho.

On his tattoos, the singer-songwriter shared with us the story of how he got his first. He was about 15 or 16, and after his friend bought a tattoo gun online, Carrabba was dared to be the first one to try it. He recalled: “It is to this day the ugliest tattoo I ever got.” When asked to show it, he played coy and smiled, rather than revealing more than he should.

On His Songs And How Much Time He Spent Writing ‘Hands Down’

“That’s a tough question to answer,” answered Carrabba when asked what he thought his most personal song was. “I’d have to say they’re all personal but there’s one called This Bitter Pill, I guess that’s pretty personal to me. But they’re all personal, they’re all like pieces of me from one time or another so it makes it hard to pick one over the others.” He then dared the audience to ask him what was his least personal song. (He was joking, of course.)

Carrabba did reveal that the latest album, “Alter The Ending,” took the longest to make. “This album took a long time because it was split into two sessions and there was a lot of time in between, and so this was the longest time ever we had to spend in a studio,” he says. “The hard part is, you lose the plot if you take too long at it. The more you’re polishing off the roughness of it, you kinda lose the edginess of it. It’s better to have it raw than to have it too polished.”

With Hands Down, though, it was the exact opposite. Arguably his most beloved song and the one that put him on the map, Carrabba says it only took him 10 minutes to write the hit single. “I was writing something else that I just couldn’t finish and when that happens you often have to do something else first then come back to it fresh,” he explained. “With Hands Down, that came about when I couldn’t finish a song so I went down to the piano and just wrote something completely different within 10 minutes, and that was Hands Down.”

On How He Wants To Be Remembered

I asked him whether he prefers performing strictly acoustic or with a band. Carrabba said he prefers both. “I can never decide which I like better and so you see that there’s half of each in our albums and even in our concerts.

“I think that’s the best luxury that I’ve (been) afforded in my musical career--that opportunity to play strictly with an acoustic guitar, and with these guys has been the best. I really hope I’ll never have to choose between one or the other.”

Carrabba confesses that he hasn’t really taken the time to think of how he would like to be remembered. “You know, that’s the thing. We never think about the legacy of it all. That’s something far and away,” he says. “We also don’t spend a lot of time in the past and thinking about what we’ve done. What’s important is that as performers we’re able to connect with the audience and if we’re remembered for that, then I’ll be proud.”