He Must Connect

If there’s one word you wouldn’t expect Chris Carrabba to use to describe himself, it’s “jaded.”

Carrabba’s rabid audience finds him the epitome of earnest, open, soul-baring sincerity. His albums--2000’s “The Swiss Army Romance” and last year’s “The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most”--are expressions of emotional pain, and his concerts are group-sharing sessions, with thousands of young people singing every word to every song, often louder than Carrabba, who records and performs under the name Dashboard Confessional.

It’s public catharsis presided over by a slight musician whose songs of heartbreak and emotional displacement include such lyrics as “Kiss me hard ‘cause this is the last time I’ll let you,” and whose motto, emblazoned on a banner hanging behind him, is “Fight the Good Fight.”

But “jaded” is the word that the Boca Raton, Fla.-based Carrabba uses about his state of mind.

“It’s a facet of everybody’s life,” says Carrabba, 26, “a point where you go through thinking, ‘What does this all mean? What’s important about this?’ When I say ‘jaded,’ I don’t mean I hate everything. But I’m cataloging what’s important, and when I say that I’m jaded, [I mean that] much less seems so important to me than when I was 18.”

For Carrabba, what really matters is the same thing that has been central to his art since he launched his Dashboard identity in 1997. It was a solo, acoustic alternative to the punk-rooted but equally earnest fury he’d been delivering with bands called the Vacant Andys and Further Seems Forever. Dashboard sounds something like an unplugged Blink-182--minus the juvenile silliness--and Carrabba found an audience that listened intently to his songs, something he relates to his concurrent experience as an elementary schoolteacher and administrator. (He still manages to work part time in that role.)

“When I was younger, I’d think having your name in print was the most important thing. Now it’s being there with kids and interacting. That’s all that’s important. Writing songs that mean something to me is all that’s important. Some of the songs I’m writing lately kind of center on that. It’s so easy to get away from what’s really important. I’m determined not to do that.”

That determination may be tested if his career continues to develop as it has recently. “The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most” stands on the threshold of a breakthrough. The album was released more than a year ago by Los Angeles independent label Vagrant Records, home to Saves the Day and Get Up Kids, other young acts in the hyper-sincere “emo” (for emotional) movement of rock. With Carrabba building his audience through intensive touring (more than 300 dates a year), word-of-mouth started to spread, and he started to get breaks.

Fred Birckhead, music booker for “The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn” on CBS, discovered Dashboard last year while looking through his younger sister’s CD collection. Birckhead went to a concert and was so impressed by the audience involvement that he booked Carrabba on the show.

“The appeal for me was instantaneous,” Birckhead says. “It was acoustic, but it brought up the resurgence of punk music I was listening to as a teen, like Bad Religion. And he has mainstream appeal.”

By the end of the year, the album was at the 100,000 U.S. sales mark and accelerating. Now MTV has embraced Dashboard, playing the video for the song “Screaming Infidelities,” and Carrabba and his three bandmates have just taped an “Unplugged” session for the channel--the first “MTV Unplugged” by an artist without at least a gold record (500,000 sales). Some influential rock radio stations, including L.A.’s KROQ-FM (106.7), have also started giving the music some air time. In addition, a deal is being discussed by Vagrant and major power Interescope, and if it comes about as expected, it could further propel Dashboard into the mainstream.

That’s a lot of developments in a short time, but so far Carrabba’s keeping the new distractions at bay.

“The MTV thing, I guess it would feel different if I sat around waiting to see it on MTV all day. It’s not important. The concerts are the experience I embrace. All the shows I’m doing now sold out before it started getting played on MTV. It’s grown incrementally at the same pace, every show since the first show I did. Every show seems to build on the last show. The thing that’s strange currently is that people outside of our music scene have noticed--people at the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Alternative Press.”

Joe Levy, music editor of Rolling Stone, sees a bigger picture. “Dashboard is just one example, but we’re seeing the subculture recharged, bands crisscrossing the country and creating a national network of fans that want different music and have great passion,” Levy says.

“This is someone who two years ago was a virtual unknown and has built himself up as a touring act, exactly the way that you’re supposed to, the way a band like the Police did back in the late ‘70s, or a band like Nirvana did in the ate ‘80s and early ‘90s. Can what happened to them happen to him? I would say no, but I would have said the exact same thing about the Police and Nirvana.”

Carrabba himself cites two other role models: Elvis Costello and Neil Young.

“What I really admire about [Costello] and model myself on is the fact that he has challenged his audience and been challenged by his audience,” he says. “And he’s done it without alienating the people who first fell in love with him. I know my fans will let me push the envelope. Sometimes I play alone, sometimes with a band, sometimes with electric guitar. We have many tricks. Let’s get them all out there.

“I watch Neil Young, who’s been doing this for countless years, and every time I see a video or record, I think that this is a dude who must freak out every time he writes a song and plays it for a friend and actually feeds off the audience. I know it happens, or he’s a great actor. But I think it’s real.

“To me, that’s the exciting part. It’s standing in front of people and having them blow my mind, even though I’m the supposed focal point. So if that goes away, I don’t think I want to do it anymore. That’s something I’m not jaded on. I think it’s the sharks surrounding those kids I’m jaded on.”

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Steve Hochman is a regular contributor to Calendar.