Everything That Led To The Grammys
Pt. 3 The Grammys
The Plan
I found out we were being asked to perform at the Grammys on January 20th while driving on the 101 freeway on my way up to Ojai, which is where my family and I were staying for a few weeks. Our manager Brian Scwartz had told me that morning that he had a call scheduled with someone at the Grammys and he was hopeful it might represent something meaningful, but he didn’t wanna get ahead of himself. It could have easily been someone kindly sending their condolences. It was a fairly regular occurrence at that time. His call was at 10am. At 10:40 he texted Griffin and I - “I need to talk to you both ASAP.”
When he explained what the Grammys envisioned, I was pretty emotionally overwhelmed. Like I said in the first post about this whole story, I had hardened myself to anything having to do with the Grammys. I respected them and secretly slightly envied anyone in their orbit, but I was perfectly happy with the idea that our tiny little corner of the culture didn’t overlap with theirs (…and never the twain shall meet). So to be told we were being asked to open the show was absolutely incredible and even a little disorienting at first. It felt too big to be true. Brian told us we’d have a zoom call with the producers a few hours later that day.
Of course, my denial stepped in as a kind of defense mechanism to keep my hopes from getting too high. In the hours before the zoom call, I had cooked up all sorts of theories - “Maybe we’re just singing offstage over a bunch of images of the fire’s devastation, the way they do it during those memorandum sections”, “Maybe I misunderstood and we’re playing at the opening of the actual show but not during the televised part”, “Maybe there are a lot of guests onstage at once and we are just a small part of the big group”…thoughts like this. And mind you, any of these ideas would have been a thrill and an honor. Brian had already given me a general sense of what they had in mind but I just wouldn’t let myself accept the magnitude of what was being told to me.
On our call we met Ben Winston, Raj Kapoor, Patrick Menton, Jeanna Rouzan-Clay and David Wild - the producers of the Grammys. All incredibly kind, seemingly wildly cool under pressure considering that the show was less than 2 weeks away. Ben explained how they pivoted from what kind of show it was going to be before the fires. Initially, there was talk of postponing or even cancelling the whole thing. He quickly (and rightly, in my slightly self-interested opinion) decided that the show must go on. Not only did it give them an opportunity to celebrate the city, bring more awareness to what really went down with the fires, even raise some money…but the event also employed thousands of people - everyone behind the scenes: drivers, staffers, folks building the show, crews behind the camera, people working at the venue. And a lot of these people were directly affected by the fires and a job at a time like this was absolutely essential in their steps forward.
Ben lives in LA himself and while he was coming to these conclusions, he was listening to I Love LA by Randy Newman over and over as he drove around the city. He felt like, if done right, this could be the perfect song that honors the solemnity of the moment, but also celebrates the love people have for this city and maybe even suggests and emotional path forward. When considering who could play the song for this moment, he hit up one of his dearest friends - Brandi Carlile - for some perspective. Now my understanding is that, at this point, Ben had seen our Kimmel performance and that the band Dawes and our accompanying stories dealing with the fire were already swirling around in his universe. He thought there was a chance we might be the right ambassadors for this tune and for this moment. When he floated this idea to Brandi, she helped drive it home like the friend and the badass that she is - “YOU HAVE TO GET DAWES FOR THIS!” We had the endorsement from a true heavyweight and that’s when Ben locked it in and started looking into how to get a hold of us. (I need to say this to her directly…but just so it’s on public record - Brandi, I was already forever indebted to you for facilitating so many amazing musical memories in my life, but this really took it over the top. If there is anything you could ever need from me or Dawes, it’s yours. And it STILL would never be enough to account for how much you have done for us and our band. Thank you. We love you very much.)
Once Ben explained what the moment would be and what he was trying to accomplish it was time to talk musicians. He said we’d be putting together a group of top shelf artists to support us and round out the band. We quickly landed on an otherworldly batch of all-stars - Brittany Howard on guitar, Annie Clark (St. Vincent) on synth, Sheryl Crow on bass, John Legend on piano, and my dear friend Brad Paisley on guitar.
Once we had our marching orders, I texted Brad “We’re about to have our coolest conversation ever. Call me whenever.” I shouldn’t have been surprised but when I spoke to him I came to understand that he had a little wind of this even before I did. One of his oldest friends is David Wild - the head writer and one of the producers of the Grammys. David had discreetly shared with Brad that this Dawes idea might be coming through and again we had a friend going to the mat on our behalf. Brad told David, “That would be perfect. It’s gotta be Dawes.” So then to be calling him, and not only confirming that this became a reality, but asking him to play guitar with us felt like it was meant to be.
The last person we got onboard was Mike Elizondo to produce the segment. Griffin and I knew him from when he used to live in LA. He would play bass at Largo with The Watkins Family Hour and we all got friendly when we would end up there together. But his resumé went way beyond that. He had songwriting credits (and production credits if I’m not mistaken) on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. He went on to produce Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine and has done so many incredible records since. He now lives in Nashville. We’ve always wanted to make music with him in some form and this felt like the perfect opportunity.
The Preparation
The next step was going to be rehearsals. The show was on a Sunday. We would rehearse on Friday evening at a rehearsal studio in Burbank, and then Saturday on site for a production rehearsal, and then Sunday morning for a final dress rehearsal.
Getting to the rehearsal in Burbank was a cute moment because a lot of us didn’t know each other and yet were about to do something really special together. I knew Brad and I knew Brittany from touring with the Shakes years ago, but I was meeting everyone else for the first time. After some brief introductions and conversations, we got to work. One deceptive quality of this song, considering what a hit it was, is that it’s VERY hard to play. It’s not a particularly intuitive arrangement and everyone has to be on their toes at all times - the guitar riff at the beginning never returns, the pre-choruses are totally different each time, the first chorus ends with a specific interlude that changes the key a step and a half, and the guitar solo is on a brand new set of changes. This combined with needing to have an encyclopedic awareness for which beats are pushed and which ones are not gave us a lot to remember and focus on. Looking back, I actually feel like this quality of the tune helped save me from getting too caught up in any nerves during the actual performance. There was so much I had to get right that I didn’t have the bandwidth to think about anything else. Every time we got it right as a band was a triumph. Initially it felt as impossible as making a halfcourt shot but after a handful of times and Mike helping us figure out wasn’t working we all had it under our fingers.
The next day was the production rehearsal on site. It was the first time I was in the space and got a sense of what it was really going to feel like. It was also a chance to see Ben in action as the producer of the Grammys. We played on a little circular stage out in the middle of the audience. It wasn’t quite big enough to fit all of us, so initially they just had Griff, Annie and John on the stage along with all of our amps, while the other 4 of us played from down below. It didn’t work for Ben so, as cool as can be, he started having amps and bodies moved around until the configuration included Sheryl and I back on the stage while Brad and Brittany stayed below. At that point it looked and sounded great and we were ready.
We arrived back to the crypto.com arena the next morning to give it one more run through for the dress rehearsal. They were doing the whole show so it was full of fans that were going to give producers a sense of how long moments of applause might last. Trevor Noah was also there to go over his role as MC for the evening. We got set up and the show got started. It was the first time we heard his opening monologue. He honored LA very beautifully and really put into perspective just how extensive the devastation was. Until I heard him say it I wasn’t able to admit to myself that it was “one of the biggest natural disasters in all of American history.” Then, after saying that they wanted the night to be, in part, a celebration of the community, he started talking about Dawes. He went really deep on who we were and what we had lost it was just so much more airtime than Griffin and I had ever thought we’d take up in the opening monologue of the Grammys. And then all of the sudden Griff was counting off the tune and we all jumped into it. We nailed it, the crowd was up on its feet, and I started noticing a lot of people crying. And this was just the run through! I realized a lot of these people in this filler crowd were dealing with the same stuff Griffin and I were and this song was hitting them in the guts. It actually made me emotional as well. Tearing up and thinking to myself, “I CANNOT cry during the actual performance.” All that is to say, Ben’s vision for what this would be was really proving that it worked. After this Griffin and I walked to a nearby hotel to meet our wives and get ready.
The Performance
We got back about an hour before we went on. They trailers for all the artists and their teams right outside and around the back of the venue. Since our performance was going to be a surprise and because we were playing first, there was no reason to go to our seats before the show started. So we waiting til we were called down to the stage. Once there we gave hugs and wished luck to all our band mates. Annie kindly fixed my jacked that was getting rumpled from my guitar step. And then the camera man started counting things down. We listened to Trevor’s monologue and then ripped into it. It all felt like a blur. But we knew we nailed it. I loved seeing some comments insisting that there were tracks accompanying our performance. But everything you hear is absolutely live and produced by those 6 humans on stage. We had to hustle offstage quick while the crews started preparing for the next segment. From there it was some photos and some interviews. We were able to watch some of the show after that from our seats and then headed home knowing our kids were all gonna start waking up at 6am if not earlier. Since it had been a secret, almost none of our friends and family knew, so our phones really started blowing up. That was pretty fun. We were even able to keep it a secret from our dad, who was watching it live having no idea what was about to happen.
I know I’ve said this in several ways, here on Substack and also out in several interviews, but this was easily one of the greatest things that has ever happened to us as a band and to us as human beings. Between feeling so much love and support and being put into a position to potentially inspire and heal others on some version of this same trip with us…ALL while getting to live out a lifelong dream of this magnitude…There’s really no way to express our gratitude. But thank you guys for being interested enough to read about the What, How, When, and Why of it all. I hope it was enjoyable enough.
I promise the posts will go back to being shorter after this. Excited to start sharing old demos from the AYFB days now that we’re approaching the 10 year anniversary. Love you guys a lot. Thanks for reading.
For paying subscribers, I’m including a cover of a different Randy Newman song - Memo To My Daughter. I recorded it some years ago on a piano backstage at a show on tour. It was to celebrate a the arrival of a friend’s baby girl. But now it can be for Lou. She just turned 6 months old yesterday.
Talk Back soon.