Dashboard Confessional is back on the road, and the fans are right there waiting for them

For much of the early 2000s, Dashboard Confessional was arguably the sound-defining band of the emo rock scene that was exploding in popularity.

And for 10 years, the band never toured less than 280 days a year, said frontman Chris Carrabba. But after years of belting out classics like "Screaming Infidelities" and "Vindicated," they were just worn out.

"At some point, after a decade of that kind of schedule, we looked up and realized that we had gotten really close to phoning our performances in," Carrabba said in a recent phone interview.

"We knew if we ever got to the point where we just began going through the motions as a live band, we'd never be able to recapture the audience," he said. "If we had any hit songs that made it onto radio, I suppose maybe the excitement from hearing those live could have hid the fact that we were so tired, but we weren't sure if we could come back as a band if we ever began to fake it onstage. So instead of risking that possibility, we took it upon ourselves to take a break."

And to their surprise, the fans were right there waiting for them when they released their new album, "Crooked Shadows," last month — their first record of new material in more than eight years. The album so far has peaked at No. 4 on both the Billboard Rock album and Alternative album charts.

"We assumed, once we came back from our break, that we would rightfully have to build ourselves back up from the smaller venues to the larger venues again," he said while walking down a windy Montreal sidewalk last month during a break in the tour.

"The most amazing thing about our fanbase is that they were all still there, so we started becoming a touring band again."

The tour will come to The Ritz in Raleigh March 26.

Not only did the band need to recharge, but a gap in artistic productivity was needed to offer fans something Carrabba felt was worth recording for posterity.

"I had a nagging feeling, however, that I had better not write a record until I was ready to write one that I felt like had to be written," he said. "The (temptation) is to put out new material in order to just say thanks to those who were gracious enough to be there for us upon our return as a band. But we needed more time to find an album that felt important enough to make.

"In both cases — the break from touring and recording — I'm glad that I listened to my instincts, and in both cases I think my accountant was very unhappy," Carrabba said with a laugh.

Now that the band is back on the road, the fanbase continues to surprise Carrabba, not just for their numbers, but for their range in demographics as well.

The band assumed they'd be taking the stage in front of an who had grown older with them. But instead they've found a sizable portion of the crowd are younger fans who have discovered the band's music during the group's break. The songwriter says this new segment is evidence of the new avenues of music consumption that younger generations have embraced — streaming, YouTube videos and the like.

It harkens back to the days of the band's debut, a success facilitated by their exposure through major file sharing sites of the time.

"I found out before the new album was even recorded that (our) original fans had been sharing our older material with this new generation of listener," he elaborates. "It didn't just work sideways, where they were giving our music to peers. But it was being passed down to younger brothers and sisters.

"When we came back, we saw people that were the ages we were expecting, but we also saw people that were the same age as we were when we first created the band," he said. "It was like a time warp, where what felt like the same 22, 23-year-olds were showing up at the venue to watch us play."

Dashboard's re-emergence seems to coincide with other musical trends, where "genre specificity is starting to go away," Carrabba said.

"It ever goes away entirely, but we'll scan the crowd and kind of think, 'That doesn't look like a guy who should be at one of our shows,' but then you notice so many of these guys in the crowd that you realize that they actually do belong there," he said. "Everybody can go to any show now, and that's something I really love about the music scene today."

Details

Who: Dashboard Confessional with Beach Slang and Kississippi

When: 6:30 p.m., March 26

Where: The Ritz, 2820 Industrial Drive, Raleigh

Cost: $33.60

Info: 919-424-1400 or RitzRaleigh.com

This story was originally published March 24, 2018 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Dashboard Confessional is back on the road, and the fans are right there waiting for them."