I'm hoping that when people hear a live Dawes song on YouTube or at a show and then they get that studio version, hopefully they're excited, rather than saying, "Oh man, I wanted completely new material I've never heard before."

I'm hoping that when people hear a live Dawes song on YouTube or at a show and then they get that studio version, hopefully they're excited, rather than saying, "Oh man, I wanted completely new material I've never heard before."

The one thing I worry about with that is whether or not we're edgy enough for the young kids. You know, does a 20-year-old like the fact that he can play it for his dad? Is that cool?

I know a lot of bands that will make their first record and get to a certain level, and then when the second record comes out, they can start where they left off as a headlining act playing in front of a certain number of people, or they can go back out and make a lot less money and open for people. I feel like if you go out and just go right back into that headlining stuff, you're playing to the converted.

Dawes kind of, on purpose, were like, "Let's realize that we're going to make less money, but let's try to get as many fans from as many kind of demographics as we can." And I feel really lucky that our music exists in this world where we can open for artists like M. Ward or Bright Eyes, and then on the same side of that open for Alison Krauss.

I think that the oversaturation of music market right now will eventually start taking care of itself, where some bands are like, "We just don't want to do it anymore," and other bands say, "Things just keep getting better." It just depends on where you bring your joy out of it. We're lucky because we are happiest when we're onstage.

I understand why some bands don't like test new songs, but for us it's been very helpful and it hasn't really backfired. I was nervous that our second record was - you know, you could hear the whole thing on YouTube before the album came out because we played it all live, but it ended up being something that people appreciated.