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Dashboard Confessional's Chris Carrabba, On Twin Forks And The Luxury Of Starting Over

Tristan Casey

Chris Carrabba was a defining voice of the emo scene that blossomed in the early 2000’s. 

In his interview with WUWM, Carrabba explains why he refutes the damaged persona often associated with him and his band Dashboard Confessional.

“I was not a sad sack sitting around on the coach not leaving the house,” he says. “I had a perfectly fine outlet for if I felt a little down.”

As the emo subculture rose to the mainstream, it took Carrabba and his intimate, acoustic-driven songs with it. After a platinum-selling MTV Unplugged CD/DVD, tours with Bon Jovi and U2 and penning the theme song for Spiderman 2, Carrabba and band took a step back “for fear of getting to the point of phoning it in.”

With his new band, Twin Forks, Carrabba explores his earliest musical influences free of the pressures involved in being a major label artist.

“I had held back on one thing. I kept one thing sacred and that’s that music that I came up with in the very beginning of my education as a music fan,” he says of artists like Steve Earle and Fleetwood Mac. Taking cues from these inspirations and modern acts like Mumford and Sons, the songs of Twin Forks exist in what Carrabba sees as a happier state of mind.

“As a blanket statement, it was thought of as a somber scene,” he says of the emo movement. “This does give us a license to look at life through a different lens, filter that down into our songs and have that reflect a whole different side of your personality.”

Approaching 40, Twin Forks has offered Carrabba a rare chance to start over in the music industry.

“To do it without expectation is a strange thing to get again in your career when you’ve been in the limelight for a while,” he says. “There’s no lease for this project and it’s incredibly liberating.” 

Twin Forks performing live at WUWM.

  

Twin Forks performed the following off their self-titled debut:

1.      “Kiss Me Darling”

2.      “Cross My Mind”

3.      “Back To You”

Trapper Schoepp
Trapper Schoepp became Lake Effect's assistant producer in August 2019.