Dashboard Confessional and Boys Like Girls have teamed up for a new single titled ‘Watch the Fire’ which they’ve been performing together on their most recent fall tour with Taylor Acorn.
Chris Carrabba says: “Martin and I had bonded over some horrific accidents we’d had and about the recoveries that we had both worked our way through. One of the things you carry heavily when your body is laid up and your spirit is heavy is, inevitably, the past. One thing Martin and I share between us was a desire to put the past down for a while. Maybe for good. I hope so. I guess I do know one sure way of putting the past down, for a little while anyway: Pick up a guitar. Reckoning with your past can be painful and ugly. It can also be rejuvenative and beautiful. I don’t know whether you get to decide. I just know that it’s worth it.”
Meanwhile, Martin Johnson cites Dashboard as a formative influence sharing: “The year is 2002. I’m a sophomore in high school destroying the family PC to illegally download the early Dashboard Confessional EPs off LimeWire. I eventually coughed up enough cash to cop the ‘MTV Unplugged’ CD and DVD at Newbury Comics in Boston and spun it into submission. I heard something interesting on those recordings that I had no idea would alter the rest of my career as a songwriter and guitar player — a certain tuning where all the strings were played open and strummed top to bottom. I studied the way Chris played and the interesting voicings I had never heard before and applied them to my playing.”