Dashboard Confessional and BOYS LIKE GIRLS Team Up for New Single, “Watch the Fire”
Photo Credit: Josh Beech
Today, tourmates Dashboard Confessional and BOYS LIKE GIRLS team up for the new single “Watch the Fire.” Recorded in Nashville, the track is cinematic and sentimental in a way that perfectly blends the hallmark sound of each band. Weaving in orchestral elements throughout, it’s a healing, cathartic tale of having to tear things down in order to restart.
Speaking to the natural draw he felt with Martin Johnson of BOYS LIKE GIRLS, Chris Carrabba shared,
“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.”
Reflecting on the lifelong influence of Dashboard Confessional, Johnson remembers,
“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."
ABOUT BOYS LIKE GIRLS
BOYS LIKE GIRLS have enjoyed a meteoric rise after forming as teenagers in 2004. The band was forged from the very beginning in the damp basements, garages, and VFW halls of the Massachusetts coastline over tattered lyric books, guitars, drums, and a collective dream. A half-billion Spotify streams later it‘s clear this was a fairy tale in its first act. Their self-titled debut album [2006] is nearing Multi-Platinum RIAA certification, while its chart-topping successor Love Drunk [2009] bowed at #1 on the Top Rock Albums Chart and Top 10 on the Billboard 200. A slew of successful singles abounded, including Platinum-certified hits “The Great Escape” and “Love Drunk,” as well as Gold-certified hits “Hero/Heroine” and “Thunder.” There was the Platinum-certified, BMI award-winning Hot 100 duet with Taylor Swift: “Two Is Better Than One.” There were sold-out shows, international tours, and unforgettable moments from Madison Square Garden to Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia.
By 2012 lead singer and song-writer Martin Johnson was beginning to feel the universe pulling him into a new arena, where he crafted hits for Swift, Ariana Grande, Pentatonix, and more. That led to a years-long hiatus for BOYS LIKE GIRLS.
But in 2016, the band would return to the road for the 10th Anniversary tour of their debut record.
While fans across America were ecstatic for the reunion they’d been waiting for, internally it felt more like a farewell. But it wasn't.
In 2019, BOYS LIKE GIRLS plotted another return to the road Down Under. Those plans were delayed due to the global events of 2020. After making good on their promise to return in 2022 and punctuating the tour by playing both weekends at the lauded Las Vegas When We Were Young Festival, BOYS LIKE GIRLS meant more than ever not only to the band’s members, but to the fans as well.
It’s for this reason that BOYS LIKE GIRLS started releasing new music again, their recent Weekend At Foxwoods (Fearless/Concord) , a massive global collaboration with KPop artists Twice, and their cover of “You'll Be In My Heart” on Disney's A Whole New Soundcollaboration. The band spent 2023 and 2024 touring the world in support.
ABOUT DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL
Initially founded as an acoustic solo project by singer-songwriter/guitarist Chris Carrabba, Dashboard Confessional stands tall at the vanguard of an entire musical scene, adored for its groundbreaking sound and respected for its unwavering candor. Dashboard Confessional made an immediate impact with 2000’s The Swiss Army Romance, earning the Florida-based Carrabba applause and a passionate fan following for his intimate and intensely heartfelt songcraft.
Carrabba expanded Dashboard Confessional into a full-fledged band with the following year’s RIAA Gold-certified The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most. The album proved a national breakthrough, fueled by seemingly nonstop touring as well as the now-classic hit single, “Screaming Infidelities,” the companion video for which received the influential MTV2 Award at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards. Dashboard Confessional was suddenly a sensation, with high profile late night TV appearances and a string of increasingly bigger headline tours. 2002’s MTV Unplugged 2.0 furthered the band’s rising popularity, garnering them their first RIAA Platinum certification and first #1 album on Billboard’s “Heatseekers” and “Top Independent Albums” charts.
Dashboard Confessional ascended even higher with 2003’s A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, a Scar.The album – which made a top 3 debut on the overall Billboard 200 – saw Carrabba developing his singular sound with more expansive arrangements that earned praise from such outlets as Rolling Stone, which hailed it as “easily the toughest, most assured music Carrabba’s ever made, summing up the vulnerable charisma that has made him a cult idol for fans who crave the kind of emotional realness that has totally disappeared from the mainstream-rock assembly line.”
With the wind at his back, Carrabba drove Dashboard Confessional through a series of chart-topping and critically acclaimed studio albums, soundtrack contributions, festival appearances, and sold-out headline tours. The band’s legacy was explored on a number of deluxe editions, re-recordings, and career-spanning greatest hits collection, 2020’s The Best Ones of The Best Ones. But after two extraordinary decades, Dashboard Confessional almost came to a screeching halt following Carrabba’s near-fatal motorcycle accident in the terrible summer of 2020, leaving him unsure of his band’s future. Thankfully, Dashboard Confessional’s ninth studio album, 2022’s All The Truth That I Can Tell, proved among their finest yet, both as a cathartic achievement of Carrabba’s vision and a vital burst of artistic clarity. The band celebrated with multiple tours (including hugely successful co-headline runs with Jimmy Eat World, Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness, and Counting Crows), global live streaming events, and top-billed performances at such festivals as Las Vegas, NV’s first-ever When We Were Young.
The summer of 2024 saw Carrabba and Dashboard Confessional continuing their unstoppable calling with a fresh round of ceaseless roadwork, with “Once More with Feeling(s) The Dashboard Confessional Emo Superjam” at Manchester, TN’s Bonnaroo and a number of headline festival performances culminating in a triumphant return to When We Were Young for a full-album performance of 2006’s beloved fourth studio album, Dusk and Summer. And in the fall, Dashboard Confessional will embark on a headline tour with support from BOYS LIKE GIRLS and Taylor Acorn.
Dashboard Confessional and BOYS LIKE GIRLS, joined by Taylor Acorn, are currently on a fall tour across North America. The shows in New York City and Anaheim sold out well in advance, with many other dates following close behind.
