Dawes Artistfacts

2009-
Taylor GoldsmithLead vocals, guitar2009-
Griffin GoldsmithDrums2009-
Wylie GelberBass2009-2023
Lee PardiniPiano2009-2023
Tay StrathairnPiano2009-2010, 2011-2015
Alex CasnoffPiano2010
Trevor MenearGuitar2016-
Dawes is a California folk-rock band who debuted with the album North Hills in 2009. Founding members Taylor Goldsmith (lead singer and songwriter), Griffin Goldsmith (drummer), and Wylie Gelber (bassist) were members of the post-punk act Simon Dawes until their guitarist, Blake Mills, quit a couple years earlier. They regrouped under the name Dawes, adopting a vintage style reminiscent of the mellow acoustic leanings of the Laurel Canyon sound of the '70s in the vein of Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith are brothers. Their dad is Lenny Goldsmith, who fronted the band Sweathog and was briefly the lead singer of the Tower of Power during one of their tours in the mid-'80s.
Taylor Goldsmith has been married to singer/actress Mandy Moore since 2018. They met a few years earlier after Moore expressed her excitement over Dawes' forthcoming All Your Favorite Bands album in an Instagram post.
Dawes is Taylor Goldsmith's middle name and was also his grandfather's first name. After the breakup of his first band, Simon Dawes (Simon is his former bandmate Blake Mills' middle name), he didn't know what to call the new band. One of the other members suggested Dawes so he wouldn't lose his fanbase. He also wanted to honor his grandfather, who was a big part of his musical education.

"So the name was a combination of paying tribute to him and my crassly wanting to keep any old fans that I had," he told Spin in 2010.
Before settling on Dawes, the band considered the name Old Shatterhand, who was a recurring character in a series of Western novels by German author Karl May.
In 2014, producer T Bone Burnett invited Taylor Goldsmith to join The New Basement Tapes, a supergroup assembled to record recently unearthed Bob Dylan lyrics from 1967. Other members included Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons, Rhiannon Giddens of Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Elvis Costello. The result was the 2014 album Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes. Taylor sang lead vocals on the track "Liberty Street."
Griffin Goldsmith is one of the percussionists on Iron & Wine's 2024 album, Light Verse.
One of Dawes' most popular songs is "All Your Favorite Bands," the title track to their 2015 album. In the lyrics, Taylor Goldsmith offers the hope that "all your favorite bands stay together." In 2024, he told Songfacts he'd matured enough to understand why bands call it quits, but he'd probably be bummed if an act like the indie-folk band Big Thief split up.
Bassist Wylie Gelber, one of the founding members of the band, left Dawes in 2023 to focus on his custom-guitar company, Gelber & Sons.
Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith helped open the Grammy Awards in 2025 with a performance of "I Love LA" backed by Sheryl Crow, Brad Paisley, Brittany Howard, John Legend and St. Vincent. They were chosen because of their efforts to help victims of the recent Los Angeles wildfires even though Griffin was a victim himself - his house burned down along with all his equipment.

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