EP 16: Mike Dawes on Fingerstyle Microtechniques, Covers as Creativity, & The Algorithm Game

Jesse Paliotto (00:08)
Hello everyone and welcome to the Guitar Journal, a podcast where we love to talk about music, particularly through the lens of acoustic fingerstyle guitar and a bit of jazz guitar. I'm your host Jesse Paliotto I love bringing the best of the music community to you here on the Guitar Journal podcast. I am so excited today to have with us Mr. Mike Dawes. Mike is regarded as one of the world's most creative modern fingerstyle guitar players. think Mike, what strikes me most is you kind of have this incredible technique with fingerstyle tapping, percussion, alternate tunings, which makes

guitarists everywhere melt, but also just a beautiful musicality that makes all the non-guitarists swoon as well. And so really appreciate both sides of the equation that you bring. So thanks for being here today, man. I appreciate it.

Mike Dawes (00:45)
That was very kind of you.

Dude, thank you. It's a pleasure. Yeah, really happy we could do it. I actually recently got back from a very long stint of touring. So it's nice to be back in my home here in Bristol, England and in my hot little underground studio here. you know, once I'm back for a couple of days, I just want to talk about guitar again. So it's perfect timing.

Jesse Paliotto (01:05)
right on. Mike and I were just chatting before we started here that we switched weather. He's got heat in UK and I've got gray rain in LA. So here we are. You know, I wanted to ask a question just as a little bit of background. You can go as deep as you want, of course, but I'm curious, what got you into acoustic fingerstyle guitar? What triggered the descent into the madness ⁓ of all things?

Mike Dawes (01:14)
That's it.

To the dark side.

Yeah, yeah. Well, a lot of people go from acoustic to electric, don't they, in their journey, but I was the other way around. So I was into electric guitar when I was 12. That's when I got my first electric. Just all about the riffs, Green Day, Oasis, all of that stuff. And then that slowly became Shred when I discovered Slash and Guns N' Roses. That then became Iron Maiden. That then became more of the darker.

more European ⁓ shreddy metal songs from the Scandinavian countries. And at some point along the way, ⁓ I discovered sort of fingerstyle music because my godfather ⁓ was slash is the graphic designer for a guitar player named Pierre Ben-Sousan from France. So I would get these guitar tab books that he had designed.

Jesse Paliotto (01:55)
Yes.

Yeah? Yes.

Mike Dawes (02:16)
⁓ for like birthday presents whilst at school simultaneously learning how to sweet pick and you know all of that stuff and essentially I was moonlighting as a dad gad ⁓ novice ⁓ and then sort of discovered the music of Michael Hedges through one of Pierre Ben-Suzan's tunes which was a dedication to Michael Hedges and ⁓ you know back in the day when we didn't have an abundance of access to information like we do today ⁓ we would

Jesse Paliotto (02:16)
funny.

Mike Dawes (02:45)
we would go look through our books, look through our CDs, things like this, and look at every credit. Really read the line of notes, just get all the information we could out of a single thing. And I was seeing Michael Hedges' name pop up again and again. And ⁓ this was around the time that YouTube happened as well. So I got some access to some bootleg videos of Michael. ⁓ then, of course, there was the Candy Rat explosion with Andy McKee and things like this all around the same kind of time. And I think...

I think you could say that what I'm attempting to do is somewhat of a blend of that schoolboy metal shred fun combined with the more sort of ⁓ detailed and kind of nuanced kind of instrumental acoustic stuff. So that's the journey thus far.

Jesse Paliotto (03:19)
Yeah.

Yeah,

there was just that kind of magic moment. felt like sort of, I don't know if it was early 2000s, like when YouTube was, I think, a big contributing factor, so much availability of information where sort of pockets of players that may have been isolated all of a sudden, like, wait, that guy's doing that thing? That's amazing. So feels like that was like the launch pad to today, I guess.

Mike Dawes (03:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. 2005, 2006 was around the time I was at college. it was then I kind of got an interest in this kind of style of playing. I couldn't afford an acoustic guitar, so I was tuning my Les Paul to Dadgad. And it sounded terrible in hindsight. I remember I made a demo CD at my friend Sarah's house, and I wanted to get a little bit of a...

Jesse Paliotto (03:54)
Yeah.

Mike Dawes (04:16)
⁓ Drifting by Andy McKee had just come out, so I wanted to get a little bit of body percussion in there, but we had to overdub her cajon or something like that over the recording of my Les Paul because that solid body just wasn't doing it. ⁓ So yeah, we tried to make do with what we had and ultimately get into the acoustic.

Jesse Paliotto (04:35)
It might be,

it could be my ignorance. I've never heard of a Les Paul being played and dead yet, but that's, it's a thing. Was it all, the un-Les Paul doing it?

Mike Dawes (04:41)
⁓ Led Zeppelin bro Kashmir, you know, was that Led's Paul or was that

was that I don't know if it was a Led's Paul or maybe it was an SG. I don't know. But you know, maybe maybe it's out there.

Jesse Paliotto (04:48)
Yeah, I don't Hey, OK, there we go.

No, it's it's it's it's it's I'm going to go listen to it now. ⁓ Actually, you kind of walked right into a question I'd wanted to ask, which is maybe this is a complicated way to ask it. But I think for a lot of guitar players, they hear what you're doing, some of the stuff from Andy McKee over the years or whatever, and they can kind of see their way to the chord melody thing like, OK, I get it. The bass note and then the but I think the thing that's really kind of blows me away is particularly you're playing is that all the percussive stuff

that you work in around it. ⁓ I'm curious, like, can you talk a little bit, like, how do you think about that? Is it, all right, I have this tune, this is the melody, this is the bass note, there's these gaps, I'll squeeze in some percussion notes where I can, or is it, I have this drum beat in my head and I'm gonna four smash these two things together? Like, how do you process it? You can even tell, like, I'm not even sure how to verbalize that.

Mike Dawes (05:40)
No, I know exactly what you're saying. And I will say that the process has changed from when I first started because when I first started, I was using my eyes to learn YouTube had happened and I was no one was teaching me how to do this particular kind of stuff. It was just from watching, excuse me, these these YouTube videos and

To go right back to the beginning, if we look at something like Drifting by Andy McKee or maybe The Perculator by Eric Roche or some of these early ⁓ kind of what would be now known as modern fingerstyle tunes, mid 2000s, I'm watching someone hit the side of their guitar and that creates a kind of snare type thing. So I'm limited to what I'm kind of seeing and I'm emulating it. ⁓ What happened throughout the writing of my first album though and beyond is trying to...

Jesse Paliotto (06:22)
Right.

Mike Dawes (06:30)
not play in between the musical elements, not playing in between the chords or the melody notes or anything, but how can we use particularly the right hand to do all this stuff in conjunction with all this stuff? So I'm thinking really like almost like a producer, like a pop producer, where it's just what are the drums doing? What's the bass doing? What the chords doing? What's the melody doing simultaneously rather than trying to shoehorn anything into a gap? It really is.

Jesse Paliotto (06:34)
Right.

Mike Dawes (06:59)
And I think doing a lot of arrangements and covers over the years is kind of, ⁓ it's beautifully restrictive doing covers because the notes are the notes and you can't really change them, right? Whereas a composition, you can just do whatever you want. Exactly. So what that essentially means, ⁓ so the net result is I have to figure out a way to get this snare with this chord, with this melody note, with this bass note in this tuning. How can we do that?

Jesse Paliotto (07:11)
Mm-hmm. Right, you have an easy out.

Mike Dawes (07:28)
then you explore, then you find a way to do it. That then just gets learned as a technique. It gets thrown into the memory bank. And over the years of being forced to find these solutions to these problems through various covers, it then comes out pretty naturally. And when I'm composing, it becomes a lot less restrictive. So it's almost like you learn, I'm calling it micro techniques, meaning the combination of a percussive element and a melodic element.

So, you know, if the video is going to get seen by people, one classic example, yeah, one classic example would be, okay, if I rest my thumb on the bass string and pick it, that's just a bass note, I'm just picking a bass note. But if I rest my thumb on the bass string and then rev my hand like a motorbike, that is a kick drum and a bass note together. So that would be a microtechnique, right? So that then becomes something learned and absorbed, just like a hammer-on or a slide or a harmonic, just becomes like breathing, like walking.

Jesse Paliotto (08:03)
Yeah, yeah, well.

Mm-hmm.

Mike Dawes (08:27)
and then it gets implemented musically only. You're not thinking about that stuff, you're just writing and you've just given yourself greater tools to do that.

Jesse Paliotto (08:36)
Yeah.

There you have a course on I think of a number of courses, but I watched the one on jam play where you walk through this. Hey, there we go. Yes.

Mike Dawes (08:43)
Boom. This one. Literally,

this is my favorite thing ever. It's a little guitar. Hello. And it's a USB stick. And that's the jam play course. it's, yeah, it's all of that stuff.

Jesse Paliotto (08:57)
Because just for that thing, you buy that, that gets physically shipped to you, you plug it in and it's all the content or.

Mike Dawes (09:03)
That's exactly and more and there's a tabak on there and all sorts of loads of songs. That's my most popular thing. ⁓ It's a gift box obviously, but I think people, especially acoustic music fans, we like real tangible things. ⁓ it's acoustic, it's real, it's wood, it's wire. Whereas I know in the electric guitar land, there's all these courses that people get that are just like little just...

I don't know, streaming links or download links, it's not something that you can own. And you might be able to tell by my messy studio, I like to own things. So that's my version of owning a physical thing, you know. I like it.

Jesse Paliotto (09:38)
Yeah, I feel

like there's this, there's a divide. It's sort of mimicked in the piano world by acoustic piano players versus keyboard players. You're like, do you like the real world? Do you like the feel? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and I would fully recommend the course. I went through the content myself. It was super inspiring because you break down. Let me make one comment. I don't want to come back to it for a second, but the other thing that you were talking about was. ⁓

Mike Dawes (09:45)
right

Sometimes it's nice to have an upright piano.

thanks man.

Jesse Paliotto (10:06)
you the value you get is these sort of micro learnings or micro techniques, I think you said. And it's a helpful thing because I got to interview Alex Miscoe. Yeah. And he was talking about like, why do so many fingerstyle guitar players learn covers? And a lot of it, we were talking along the angle that it's a good marketing technique because it allows people who may not be familiar with the style be like, but I know that song. Okay. I'll listen to this. And then they, you know, it's a gateway drug to like,

Mike Dawes (10:10)
Techniques, yeah, yeah.

yeah, I Alex. Good lad.

Jesse Paliotto (10:35)
you know, stuff that they may not be familiar with. But I love the other angle here. Like the reason to learn covers is it builds your library of micro techniques.

Mike Dawes (10:37)
Yeah.

That's why I did it, Honestly,

I mean, the covers that I've done over the years, some of them aren't really gonna get you any fans. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't think anyone's hearing my cover of Periphery's Scarlet and rushing to buy a ticket. I hope they do, because that's one of my favorite arrangements I've done. you know, there are songs for more, like, ⁓ know, Stevie Wonder and...

Jesse Paliotto (10:53)
Yeah.

Mike Dawes (11:10)
you know, giant artists and obviously doing that is going to appeal to a lot of people. mean, look, if I arranged a Beatles song, it would probably get a lot of eyeballs, right? Unless I did it badly, or it would get eyeballs for the wrong reasons. But yeah, yeah, I think one of the things I think that is true. ⁓ I wouldn't call it a marketing technique, but it's it definitely helps people discover this, this style of playing.

Jesse Paliotto (11:23)
You would get eyeballs, yeah.

Mike Dawes (11:37)
⁓ 100%. I was talking to this with a videographer friend earlier today. ⁓ I feel like a lot of people come to my concerts because of maybe a moment. ⁓ So it's like, I'm a moments guy. So someone might have seen and really liked a video and that's been enough for them to like buy a ticket to a show, for example. And a lot of those times they are the covers for sure. And then, yeah, but there are some songs that are... ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (11:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Dawes (12:05)
where it's vice versa. But I think, you're right. Especially, I mean, I know Alex has had tremendous success with his Careless Whisper cover, which is just brilliant. I got some banjo tuners on one of these guitars back here. That's such a ⁓ wicked use of ⁓ saxophone mimicry to get the bending of the notes with ⁓ banjo tuners. Yeah, he's a great guy, Like, he was over here, actually. We did a couple of tracks together on my couch over there. ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (12:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

He's wild, yeah.

nice.

Mike Dawes (12:32)
Yeah, love him. We've rarely played, we played a show together in China once in Beijing. And that was, it was really fun. We did, ⁓ we did ⁓ one by Metallica, ⁓ but as a duo. ⁓ But unfortunately we tried to learn some Mandarin ⁓ to kind of add some Mandarin kind of crowd work into it. And... ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (12:37)
⁓ it's kind random.

Yes.

Mike Dawes (12:55)
I don't know you've ever yelled anything with the passion of a football fan at a room full of a thousand people and then had complete silence as the response. And then it's just one, two, three, four, the tapping, know, at the end of the song. So yeah, we are good. I love him. Yeah, this just on that point, the great thing about this particular genre is there's so few people actively doing it that we it's like a scene. It's like a family. It really is a scene.

Jesse Paliotto (13:12)
love that they're all looking at each other like, what did he just say? I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Dawes (13:25)
⁓

So yeah, I hope that people who discover this or discover the covers or the originals or whatever ⁓ discover everybody in the community because people out there are doing some amazing stuff.

Jesse Paliotto (13:38)
So yeah, it's, like the internet and stuff is not a meritocracy. There are people doing amazing things who you have not heard of and going and digging into it and finding them is worth it.

Mike Dawes (13:49)
Well,

to that point, ⁓ and talking about Alex in particular, because this was something that we spoke about, ⁓ you'll get people ⁓ commenting on covers, saying things like, I wish he'd play originals. And it's like, bro, there's like, four times as many originals out there as covers. It's just your algorithms giving you the covers, bro. Like it's kind of on you to go and seek it out because it's there. But it used to be that things would get ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (14:01)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yes. Yeah.

Mike Dawes (14:19)
If you followed someone or subscribed to someone on the platforms, you would get shown their output. But it's not really like that now. It's like if there's like a moment that takes off, that's what everyone gets, you know? So Alex has some beautiful original music that I implore everyone to check out because it doesn't get served up as much as, you know, the Careless Whispers or the Somebody That I Used to Know or whatever it is, you know?

Jesse Paliotto (14:29)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, they'll just show you the next cover. ⁓ Let me jump back for a second on the the percussive side of things. So I just wanted to ask sort of a practical question, which is for like an intermediate guitar, acoustic guitar player who says, ⁓ you know, I want to try this. Do you any recommendations for how somebody would step into that? Like they're they're competent enough player. They know the scales, know the chords. They could even mess around and dadgad a little bit. I know the jam play course. I think you talk about a grid system, so I don't know if you still recommend that, but I'd love to hear.

Mike Dawes (14:46)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Well, that's that's, I'm so glad you said that man, because yeah, I mean, you pretty much shut the words out of my mouth. I mean, what you're referring to is the idea of ⁓ how to kind of lay out these kind of micro techniques in your mind. So if you imagine sort of an x axis and a y axis, on one axis, you have sort of all the percussive elements, kick drum, snare drum, bongo, whatever. And the other axis are all the musical elements, bass note, chord, upstroke, downstroke.

And if you can just fill that in in your mind and figure out ways to combine these things, know, kick drum with a bass note, like I said, or a down stroke with a snare drum, internalize it and do that. That's a great way to learn that kind of stuff. But I really, really think that just arranging a cover is the best way to start and do it again and again and again. And bear in mind that grid system idea. ⁓ But just do that and have fun with it because there's really no rules.

Jesse Paliotto (15:55)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Dawes (16:08)
You know, and I'm discovering guitar players on Instagram all the time that are doing amazing things I would have never have considered. And that's because they're just enjoying that process of self-discovery, you know, and coming up with really interesting things. So I think there's no substitute for just working on something, arrange a cover, give yourself that restriction. So you can't, you have to get the notes that you have to get. You know, trying to do a literal cover, not an abstract interpretation, something that's getting it all in there.

Jesse Paliotto (16:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Dawes (16:38)
and you'll discover things for yourself and that becomes your sound and then you won't sound like everyone else. There's plenty of fingerstyle players out there that sound exactly like Andy McKee. Why? There's no need for that because the world has Andy McKee, you know? So doing something, you know, on your own steam and using your own, you know, your own boredom and self-discovery is the way to go. Yeah. But give yourself some restriction like a cover. Yeah. That's what I'd recommend, I think.

Jesse Paliotto (16:49)
They learned. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Creativity thrives under constraints, I think.

Mike Dawes (17:08)
Absolutely.

100%. That's why I use all the shitty bootleg graphic design programs. I don't know how to use Photoshop, but you know what, I could be quite creative with something that has like three functions. It's so true.

Jesse Paliotto (17:18)
Right. Yeah.

So I got product idea. This is the next course I want from Mike Dawes. Learn the grid system and you will check fill in all the boxes by learning these three covers.

Mike Dawes (17:25)
Mmm.

Ooh, that's interesting. Okay, so you want my suggestions of covers and ones that I have done or haven't done.

Jesse Paliotto (17:37)
Right?

Well, I would want ones that are different enough that they'll force me to fill in different bingo squares on the grid system. Homework for me, and I'll just make it for anybody else in the same boat, which is I know enough to get through his chord melody, but I cannot do what Mike does.

Mike Dawes (17:49)
Okay, so this is homework for you is it? Okay.

Okay.

Okay. Well, then it's all about timeless melodies. So choosing a cover song for this kind of style, it's really all about the melody and the harmony, I suppose, because there's a reason that I haven't arranged a rap song. And that's because that wouldn't translate instrumentally on a stringed instrument, because the melody would just be me tremolo picking a string, it just wouldn't wouldn't make sense.

Jesse Paliotto (18:14)
Great.

Mike Dawes (18:24)
That being said, there are Linkin Park songs that would be fabulous for a fingerstyle guitar. ⁓ there's like numb or crawling, things like that. They're kind of contemporary kind of rock songs that are very melodic because they're four chord songs, they're quite simple, but there's a nice melody there. Okay, so that's something that could be interesting to try. I've never done that, but that would be interesting to try.

Jesse Paliotto (18:28)
Mmm.

Okay.

Yeah.

Mike Dawes (18:51)
Honestly, I think I hit the jackpot with the very first song I did, which was a cover of somebody that I used to know. Because that song, it's, dude, it's honestly, it's got a melody like a mountain range. So linear, so easy, and it's two chords, except for the chorus, which is three chords. And it's in D minor, and someone who plays in Dada, I mean, it couldn't be more perfect. So I hit the jackpot with that one. A third cover, I'd say,

Jesse Paliotto (18:56)
Yes. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about that when you're talking about covered.

Mm-hmm.

Mike Dawes (19:21)
something to ⁓ help people figure out their way around perhaps an open tuning or even standard tuning. know what seeing Tommy Emmanuel do his Beatles medley every night is pretty amazing to see how many Beatles songs are just so effective as instrumentals. So anything like that Lady Madonna, Daytripper, something like that ⁓ or a Stevie tune, know, something like that ⁓ or a Michael Jackson tune, know, some things that are timeless, timeless groove but have timeless melodies. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (19:31)
yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mike Dawes (19:49)
So let's just let's just say Tommy's Beatles medley. That's the third one. Yeah, learn the hot look. Easy. Yeah, it's just Yeah, no problem. The entire Beatles medley played by the greatest guitar player of all time. Yeah, no, just do it. Just do it. Yeah, don't be a wet blanket.

Jesse Paliotto (19:53)
Yeah, just learn that, yeah.

You got time tonight,

You'll be fine.

find somebody in a depressive state about seven days later just ⁓ I'm meaningless and worthless. ⁓

Mike Dawes (20:12)
huh.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, by the way,

you can see it live. I'm going to be out with Tommy in November in Europe. So any Europeans listening slash watching, come, come and see that and show Tommy what you've been working on.

Jesse Paliotto (20:22)
All right on.

Yes, I love it. ⁓ Quick question. Any fun backstories, touring with Tommy? Because you were doing a huge tour with him over the last... This is just me picking this up from Instagram, so I may be getting this wrong, but it feels like over last year or so.

Mike Dawes (20:36)
Oh,

Yeah, well, I've been touring with Tommy on and off, which is a pleasure, obviously opening for him and playing a few tunes at the end as he does with people since just pre COVID, I think. kind of 20. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe maybe one or two tours a year, something like that. And we have a record together. We did an EP together, which is five five covers. And that was that was a beautiful thing. You know what?

Jesse Paliotto (20:51)
wow. OK.

Mike Dawes (21:05)
a fun behind the scenes thing to show you how great great Tommy is. ⁓ We recorded these four tracks in Studio City in LA and it was ⁓ it was supposed to be we're supposed to have a concert but it got cancelled because of COVID like the venue shut down it was during that Omicron kind of time and ⁓ we did each song in one take which as a millennial was terrifying I didn't want to do that that you know I'm used to 30 gazillion takes

Jesse Paliotto (21:15)
Mm-hmm.

All right.

Mike Dawes (21:34)
It

was just, there was no click. was just me looking at Tommy, Tommy looking at me. I had mics on me. He had mics on him. And we had the acoustic panels between us like this. So all I could see to keep me in time was Tommy's head just, just, just grooving. And I was trying to keep it together. I was trying to not laugh. So yeah, yeah. my God. But he'll look at me as if to say, check out this lick I'm about to do. And then laugh when he does something ludicrous. So we get through it. And then he says, look, we need, I want to do one more song. Do you have anything?

Jesse Paliotto (21:48)
That is his vibe with that shit, yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Dawes (22:04)
and I had something cooking. It was a 1975 arrangement. I have it on my new album actually, it's a solo version. So I just sat down and recorded it. Again, I tried to keep to the one take rule and he'd never heard it before. So then he just goes, okay, bounce me that recording. I'll go get the coffee and I'll listen to it. So he goes to Starbucks, comes back with some coffee like 10, 15 minutes later, says, okay, I think I've got it. And then without touching the guitar, just picks up the guitar.

then they hit record and that's what's on the record. Yeah completely serious. Like that's that that is what's on the record. It's it's there's harmonically it wasn't the hardest song but there is some there are some odd changes thrown in there and he was just like yeah yeah I know it's gonna it's gonna come that that one bit where it goes goes major and weird it goes to the kind of G sharp. ⁓ yeah I mean what

Jesse Paliotto (22:36)
Are you serious?

But the level of

confidence to just walk in and be like hit record. Like that's.

Mike Dawes (23:01)
But the thing is, the thing is with Tommy, he's not thinking of it like that. He's thinking of it as, don't like wasting any time whatsoever. But that's his whole outlook on life is, why are we waiting? Like genuinely, he's like, like I had a photographer come to a venue, a friend of mine, Kate, she was gonna photograph us for the artwork. And we're sound checking and she just walks on stage and she's carrying like, you she's like a mule, you know, carrying all these bags of gear and she's quite little.

and and Tommy's like oh you're the photographer okay let's do it and then he just like puts his arm around me and just stares at her like posing and she's like oh god juggling with lenses and he's like come on come on let's go come on like it's it's uh and and i think i think that's that's um you can hear that in the way he plays and you know it's it's like no time wasted um just get get to it get get the job done

Jesse Paliotto (23:36)
Yeah.

With respect.

Let me ask you, I'm gonna bridge back to a technique thing, but with Tommy, because I actually got to meet him when he was out a couple years ago playing in Malibu and got to like, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Mike Dawes (23:58)
Wicked. yeah, Pepperdine. Was I

there then? Because I did one show with him at Pepperdine, but then there was I think he came back more recently.

Jesse Paliotto (24:07)
No, you know, it was, I'm saying a few years, this was pre, it was right before COVID because the next concert was canceled when everything shut down. So this would have been 2019.

Mike Dawes (24:14)
Okay, so yeah,

so the next time he went to Pepperdine I was with him. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (24:20)
Yeah.

And one of the things like he did, which is kind of cool, is we were sitting down and he's like, he's like, I don't play that loud. And then he just played in the room.

Mike Dawes (24:29)
I'm sorry. He plays quite loud. He plays quite loud.

Jesse Paliotto (24:31)
What is that, PS?

Well, that's what I'm like, because he's just playing across me and he's like, it's the sound system that does it all. And then you go into the room and he blows you away and I'm like.

Mike Dawes (24:39)
Yeah, relatively

speaking, yes. mean, I think I just mean he plays lot louder than I do with my dainty little fingers. ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (24:48)
Okay, so that was

what I was going to ask you was like when I was watching the jam play thing and you're doing the combined techniques of hitting and plugging. I'm like either you're playing you have to play very light and it's a very refined movement or somehow you've built up some crazy strength and some weird movements. Okay.

Mike Dawes (25:03)
No, it's the prior. Yeah, it's a

very refined thing and balancing the dynamics of the different elements for sure. And ⁓ it sounds different on every guitar. My kunts that you see behind me and my main guitar, I think there's another one there. ⁓ They're quite quiet guitars because there's some extra bracing to keep it secure and to keep it a solid thing. So as a result, the top flexes less, less sound gets projected. So it's a little quieter.

Jesse Paliotto (25:23)
Okay.

right.

Mike Dawes (25:32)
Which actually helps when balancing a lot of those percussive elements, you because it means I I don't need to hit it loud, you know ⁓ the one downside Yeah, those are the one downside is is you have to when you're getting the backbeat sound the click the when your thumb hits the bottom string that always is a certain volume because you have to Hit it hard enough for the for it to connect with the fret wire to make that click sound So that's the hardest one to make quiet

Jesse Paliotto (25:37)
Yeah, right.

It's almost like a, sorry.

⁓ right.

Mike Dawes (26:02)
So usually that controls where the dynamics sit when I'm trying to play something with quote unquote self compression, you know? That dictates the minimum. And then I can kind of tear into it and be loud when I need to be. But I play very lightly. I don't wanna break a nail. I'm quite introverted when I play. So I play quite quiet and let the pickups and the PA do the work.

Jesse Paliotto (26:26)
Yeah, yeah, I would say that's, you know, that feels like part of the head game as a player, you know, is do I get a bunch of adrenaline from the show and start playing hard and my technique goes to crap? But maybe you can talk about that.

Mike Dawes (26:39)
Well,

yeah, and it's a problem because I'm very empathetic to the vibe. ⁓ And I am a serial speeder-upper and I am a serial play-too-louder and if the vibe is the opposite, I'm the opposite. And I've considered this a lot and I'm almost aware of it when I'm doing it, but I almost don't care. And the reason I almost don't care is because...

I'm not in the business of trying to replicate the record every night or replic... I'm in the business of creating ⁓ a moment for people, a memorable moment for people. that's not to say I'm okay with playing bad. It's not that, but it's... People want to see someone on the edge, you know? And that's why live performance is so thrilling versus doing a curated Instagram clip or something like that, like...

Jesse Paliotto (27:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Dawes (27:33)
I wanna be like on the fucking edge, excuse my French, like, you know, and if it sounds like that in the moment, it's probably for a reason that there's an energy in the room that everyone's feeling and then when you end the song, everyone will just go nuts. know, it's, I don't wanna hold back from being honest. When you're on stage by yourself and you're playing something like instrumental acoustic guitar, you know, if you're not completely honest, it's such hard work. It's such hard work. Like think of...

It's like lying. There's so much to remember, you know? Why not just let it all be? again, that's not to excuse being sloppy. It's just to not feel guilty about just going with the flow a little bit, you know? Like there's no click tracks. There's, all my friends in bands, they play with click tracks and laptops and Pro Tools and samples and all this stuff. This ain't that. And I like that it's not that. So I don't want to hide the things that make that different.

Jesse Paliotto (28:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think.

Yeah, right. Just let it be what it truly is, which is a live experience.

Mike Dawes (28:33)
You

Yeah,

when you're with Tommy and he says, I'm gonna kill them tonight. And then he walks on stage and opens with guitar boogie at like 1.3 speed. You know, that's a special moment for everyone. And he's not thinking, no, I did it wrong. No.

Jesse Paliotto (28:41)
Ha

No, that's been something that's come up a few times talking with folks about ⁓ performance and guitar is like this idea like there's a right way. Like your point, there is a sloppy way and there's a play a way of doing it competently. But you know, 99 well, maybe in your case where there's a lot of guitar players probably in the audience. But for a lot of people like it's not like. He did it wrong. He did it awesome. It blew my mind like it sounded great like I don't have this thing in my head like he I heard him speed up at the you know.

transition from the course to the bridge. Like I don't think most people are processing that.

Mike Dawes (29:28)
No, I hope not. I hope not. Yeah, no, I have to ditch quite a lot of live bootlegs because I'm like, damn it, again, slow down, But, you know, it's honest.

Jesse Paliotto (29:29)
Yeah. Right.

Yeah, right.

Speaking of click tracks and all that stuff, ⁓ can you talk about ⁓ effects for a second? ⁓ I think you probably still use the Tonewood amp I've heard you recommend.

Mike Dawes (29:50)
Yo, actually,

I've got the... Where is it? I'm using the Tonewood Amp 2 now. I don't know if you've heard it. Dude, it is insane. it's literally... I just did a demo for it for Guitar World and it's obviously the Tonewood Amp I've had for ages, but it comes with an app that looks like this and you can control the signal chain and all the effects in real time via Bluetooth and it's just insane.

Jesse Paliotto (30:12)
yeah.

Mike Dawes (30:19)
Like it just sounds so good and that's, I don't really play guitar without it. So I'm going to try and do some more videos for them because I don't feel like they're the best at promoting it and getting the word out. I mean, they're the best as humans and it deserves to have the word put out about it, but I cannot stress enough how just fricking awesome it is. Like it's just the best. Yeah. As was the first one, but this is just night and day. Yeah. It's insane.

Jesse Paliotto (30:41)
Yeah, they took it to the next level.

Well, and I'm thinking, is it on Euclid, which I believe is your most recent single that you dropped? If I'm remembering rightly, there's a moment in the song where like there's this like crash of reverb and distortion. And I'm like, is that right?

Mike Dawes (30:48)
Mmm, it is, yeah.

⁓

You mean that there's that yeah I get some distortion in there there's ⁓ like some call and response like quiet loud quite loud big riffs and stuff yeah yeah there's a lot in there.

Jesse Paliotto (31:06)
Yes.

I was listening to it a week or two ago, so I'm not pulling up the exact second. But I'm like, wait, did he just throw distortion on the reverb alone, but not on the main? But is it the ToneWin app that's doing it?

Mike Dawes (31:14)
So so so

I know

what you mean. I know exactly what you mean. So no, so I don't use the tone with amp in the studio. So in that kind of environment, what that was, the amp, I think it was either the high gain or the mid game amp on the Neural DSP Pliny plugin. And I ran my magnetic pickup into that. So my magnetic sound hole pickup into that. And I had it on a...

Jesse Paliotto (31:45)
⁓

Mike Dawes (31:49)
obviously in the studio we're automating it, but live I have it on a volume pedal, like an expression pedal, but it's before a delay. basically I'm, it's not, it's not, mean, it's by, it is also going to be in the reverb because the reverb is at the end of the chain anyway, but like when I'm kicking on that distortion, it's bringing, it's bringing that sound in, but then when I kick it back off again,

the distortion is going through a swell delay. So I do this on slow dancing in a burning room as well. So there's a delay on the striman which doesn't have any front end. So there's no like tap, tap, tap. Instead it's like a wah, wah, wah kind of thing. Right. But you're only hearing, you're hearing distortion go into that and then it gets reverbed. Yeah. So yes, you're hearing it correctly. ⁓ But that's the signal chain. It's basically

Jesse Paliotto (32:19)
Yeah, yeah.

Yes, yes, yeah.

Yes.

Interesting.

Mike Dawes (32:42)
Distortion getting live. I use a tone X one with a really great amp on it's a wonderful pedal by IK multimedia but in the studio it was the quad core. It was the Pliny neural DSP archetype plugin

Jesse Paliotto (32:54)
that is epic. I'm going to go look, listen to those now and be like, piecing it together now more clearly.

Mike Dawes (32:58)
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah. if you go on YouTube, there's a live version of me playing Slow Dancing in a Burning Room by John Mayer. And if you go to the guitar solo, you'll hear the same thing. You'll be able to hear what I'm talking about. Like I'm fading in distortion into a swell delay. It's like a, sorry, a smear delay. That's what it's called. Yeah, yeah. And that's what creates that sound.

Jesse Paliotto (33:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

OK, I'll check this out. love

slow dancing is great. Did you? Yeah, was there a version with Tommy on that one too?

Mike Dawes (33:21)
What a great song,

Yeah, yeah. I

did. ⁓ Well, the first version I did have Nick Johnston, who's now in Mastodon, playing a solo at the end. He's like one of my favorite electric guitar players. And then it became a duet with Tommy on that EP I mentioned. ⁓ So we play it live and we like to end the shows with it because it ends quite beautifully with I kind of I try to Jacob Collier, the audience. So I like split them up into layers and get them singing the harmony. then and then Tommy ends up we just stop playing and then it just they end the show, you know, which is really sweet.

Jesse Paliotto (33:38)
Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Mike Dawes (33:54)
Some nights it's sweeter than others, but as I said, it's always honest.

Jesse Paliotto (33:59)
I love that college Jacob college become a verb. I just Jacob Collier. That's epic.

Mike Dawes (34:02)
Yeah,

I know. Yeah, nothing that complicated. But, you know, two part harmony, and maybe a little bit of rhythm. That'll be fine. No crocs. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (34:12)
That'll work, just go choir director on.

Mike Dawes (34:17)
No crocs bro my feet are too big for crocs I look like a clown

Jesse Paliotto (34:23)
I've got I want to go back to the algorithm thing for a second. I'm going to put you on the spot and if if This is a little too out there in tech land. No worries. We can move on but I'm curious if you If you do you have any thoughts on like Spotify I know like it's a controversial topic with musicians the world of Spotify which They I don't know that Apple or Amazon plays by that much of different rules But the concept of you know music is commodified. They're paying people pennies not even pennies

Mike Dawes (34:26)
Mm-hmm.

dude, I'm a nerd. me.

Mm-hmm.

Jesse Paliotto (34:52)
⁓ The algorithm is kind of ruling distribution. Like is any of that bug you personally or is that kind of like I don't worry myself with that. I'm just gonna you know keep doing what I do.

Mike Dawes (35:02)
Yeah,

it's, I think there's a lot of nuance to the conversation, which is quite uncomfortable for musicians to hear.

And I think part of that is number one, anything can be a good deal if you make a good deal with your distributor and your label or whatever. Like I as an independent individual, I'm getting 100 % of a pie, no matter how small the pie is. know, someone like Don Henley is getting like probably like 6 % of that of that pie. So he's obviously going to be seeing I mean, he's getting more streams, but he's he's, you know, you know what I'm trying to say, like you can make

You can make the existing landscape work for you if you're just smarter about your backend and how you structure your deals first of all. Second of all, ⁓ the algorithm stuff. So there's some friends of mine who make their living from just Spotify. However, they have to game the system and the system is Musack.

Jesse Paliotto (36:03)
Yes. Yep.

Mike Dawes (36:04)
The

system is, you can get a lot of streams if you create music that is very palatable and quote unquote boring. Doesn't mean not good, but what I mean is if I'm gonna put a shreddy kind of wanting to grab, if I'm trying to create something fast and shreddy, it ain't gonna get put on a playlist because the playlists are for coffee shops and for background and things like this. So.

Jesse Paliotto (36:13)
Yep. Right.

Mike Dawes (36:33)
⁓ Some of my biggest songs on Spotify are collaborations with artists who are very present on these playlists. I gave it a go thinking, ⁓ I bet these will do gangbuster numbers. And sure enough, they did. Because I played the game. I tried it with two songs. I played the game. you know, I shouldn't be sharing under the hood like this, but I can tell you genuinely care about this. ⁓ So, however, I'm not making that my thing.

Jesse Paliotto (36:41)
Yeah

Mike Dawes (37:02)
I'm accepting that that is the way it is and ⁓ I make my thing other things. Leveraging an audience that I would get from that into things like guitar lessons or concert tickets and things like that. you you have to understand that no one's entitled to a music career. It's one of the most like competitive industries on the planet. There's no union.

You know, I was just in LA and all my actor friends are complaining about the state of the film industry. Yeah, it sucks. But they have a union at least. you know, there's... So, so on the other hand, ⁓ to be flying the flag for independent musicians, ⁓ it's... The royalties are dogshit.

Jesse Paliotto (37:38)
Yeah, right.

Mike Dawes (38:00)
because it's not a fair distribution system. The royalty is a dogshit because if I listen, if I have a Spotify premium account and I don't listen to any Beyonce, Beyonce still gets paid from my membership. Because the backend deal with Spotify is with the labels, which is you have to pay us X for us to even have your catalogue on your service and you want our catalogue on your service because that's what's going to make people subscribe to your premium tier. That is unfair.

If someone listens to my stuff, I want to get paid. If someone doesn't listen to my stuff, that's fine. I just think it's very unfair that Justin Bieber's getting paid from my Spotify premium membership, whether I'm not listening to him, right? So that's exactly, so there's exactly. However, there is an argument to say that Spotify wouldn't exist without that setup or without a setup where they get that funding. And I'm old enough to remember that before Spotify,

Jesse Paliotto (38:42)
Yeah, major labels are forcing to be subsidized by all listening.

Mike Dawes (38:59)
There was piracy and everyone just got everything for free. So it's like, what's your perspective based on your lived experience? Okay, well, if you grew up doing gigs in the 90s, you're gonna be pissed because you're used to, you've been used to selling a shit ton of records. If you're starting out now, it's probably, it is what it is, it's probably great. ⁓ You might be able to tell I'm conflicted about it. Some days I wanna play the game, some days I'm like, screw you. It depends, yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (39:01)
True. Yeah.

Have you?

Yeah.

It's tough. Have you seen the book Mood Machine by Liz Pelly? It's it's worth reading. She goes deep under the hood on. I mean, you just hit a bunch of like her chapter headings with stuff around like it was Spotify. We came in as a solution to piracy. You know the the back end deals, the way the major labels have really driven the business model, the commodification where it's really about music on playlist. mean, man, you could have written the book, but. ⁓ But it is. ⁓

Mike Dawes (39:32)
I haven't, no.

Mm.

Yeah.

I'm of not a big fan of CEOs getting that much money though. That that's kind of fucked up. However, you know, we see or I see Spotify as a wonderful platform

Mike Dawes (40:11)
and opportunity for smaller musicians to get their stuff out there, it only exists because of the bigger musicians. So that's something to, think, bear in mind. I don't think it's a platform that we're entitled to call the shots on somewhat, but then I don't want to sound like an industry stooge by saying that. ⁓ I think I'm just kind of a...

Dude, I'm just happy to be here. I don't know what to say, you know? I'm just happy to be here.

Jesse Paliotto (40:37)
No,

I feel like that's the nature of the whole animal right now is it's a conflicted place. I would say that.

Mike Dawes (40:40)
Yeah, exactly. If

they redistributed the money that the, like Daniel X getting, it's amongst all the independent artists, it really isn't gonna make that much difference. That how many people have music on Spotify every day, it's insane. ⁓ Yeah, we'll see what happens.

Jesse Paliotto (40:58)
Yeah. Yeah.

And I think like part of the issue is, know, there's if somebody had a better solution that could step up, you know, that would be one thing, but I'm not sure there is another model that anybody's really putting out in front right now. So.

Mike Dawes (41:10)
Exactly, it's an open

marketplace. They're welcome to try. I mean they tried the title But at the end of the day, I mean we're in a cost-living crisis almost worldwide. No one's gonna volunteer to pay You know twice three times as much for their music streaming. It just ain't happening

Jesse Paliotto (41:24)
Yeah.

To your comment a few paragraphs ago about having a union, I would say one of the things that's on my mind, I'm bridging into latest news commentary here, but ⁓ there is, think Disney and Warner are suing Chatchie P.T. for OpenAI ⁓ for using their material and then putting up, no, sorry, Mid Journey. I messed up. They're suing Mid Journey, the immigration AI.

Mike Dawes (41:48)
yeah, the graphic design,

Jesse Paliotto (41:50)
for using training on their images and then producing stuff that looks like their characters. ⁓ I would say that what would be interesting on the music side is if the music majors do the same battle to defend the integrity of music copyright, because it'll come out pretty soon where, you know, yeah.

Mike Dawes (41:56)
Interesting.

Well here's the thing

with that. I think the major labels are too greedy because they know that by not doing that they can monetize all their dead artists that they still own the rights to the catalogues to. They can make a new Elvis Presley record, like tomorrow. Why would they fight that?

Jesse Paliotto (42:15)
Yeah.

But

they'll get screwed by Daniel X saying, that's great, because I'm going to train on the catalog of the Beatles and go create a Beatles playlist that's AI created from our company. So screw you guys, because we actually have the distribution and the ears to listen, and you don't.

Mike Dawes (42:28)
Mm.

But surely

there is something about actually releasing something called The Beatles that they couldn't do, you know?

Jesse Paliotto (42:41)
It'll

⁓ be called a 60s mod playlist for the modern hippie or something.

Mike Dawes (42:44)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah.

The Beatles spelt like the bug or something. Yeah. Yeah, it is a crazy time with all that stuff. think I think I'm really ⁓ somewhat qualified to speak about that from the well from the from the point of view of a of an instrumental guitar player. Right. And and I think that my thoughts on that I'm already seeing come to light, which is people the world now.

Jesse Paliotto (42:50)
Exactly. Yeah.

Same.

Mike Dawes (43:14)
creatively in the guitar scene and algorithms and such is that attention is the currency. We all know this, which means output is the most important thing. And I think output over creativity is the most important thing, which means people are going to be prompting songs trained on all their favorite guitar players. They're going to be either quickly learning them themselves and releasing them or just getting a good enough sound to release it.

and that's going to be their equivalent of being a professional musician. And they're not going to be, their intent is going to be to be popular and get people's attention and ultimately monetize that. Their intent is not going to be to create something for themselves. And I this is going to become a huge thing. And I think all your favorite artists are going to be doing this because they can monetize the hell out of that. Like imagine, imagine dragons. Like why would they, they know they can make millions of dollars by releasing a song.

Jesse Paliotto (43:46)
That's weird.

Mm-hmm.

Mike Dawes (44:11)
Why would

they get together or hire an expensive studio for a writing session, spend a month in there trying to make something great when their label can just AI generate something. They could then stick the singer's top line on it, bash, bash, bash. There it is next. Like that, there's no reason why that isn't like that. That is, that is the incentive. So why would that not already be happening? Or if it's not already happening, it'll be happening very soon. ⁓ so the, you know, I did a music, ⁓ college talk.

and I asked, you know, why do people want to play guitar? Like why you here? And about three quarters of the people wanted to learn guitar and they came to my class because they wanted to make gear videos on YouTube. Like that was the end game.

Jesse Paliotto (44:58)
⁓ wow.

Mike Dawes (44:59)
That's

the reason for going to music college. So why wouldn't they... That was their career goal. So why would they not use these things and just create more output? Because they clearly don't have anything to say. So ⁓ yeah, that's the only kind of worry I have, I guess.

Jesse Paliotto (45:04)
Really?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Dawes (45:28)
I don't even know if it's a worry, more of just an observation.

Jesse Paliotto (45:30)
Yeah, right. is. Yeah. And music music is a hard thing to tag a moral level on because so much of it has followed technology. You know, albums following the release of LP.

Mike Dawes (45:40)
Mm-hmm. And

hey, once the genie's out of the bottle, you can't really put it back in.

Jesse Paliotto (45:47)
Yeah. Let me go for a more hopeful or at least a more personal take or question. What are you interested right now? What's got you going in music? What are you excited about? Is there anything either writing or inspo or people you're listening to? What's got you going?

Mike Dawes (45:54)
Mm-hmm.

Well,

right now, it's about collaborations. I'm really excited about collaborations. ⁓ The Euclid Sleep Token cover ⁓ was so fun to put together. And that wasn't a collaboration, it was solo, but that led me to think more about working with artists in the metal world and in the electric guitar space. So I've got a track coming out in a couple of weeks ⁓ that was something I made with ⁓ Bernth and Charles Bertoud, the bass player.

Jesse Paliotto (46:20)
Okay.

Mike Dawes (46:29)
who are, these are like very much in the content creator space, amazing virtuoso musicians. And that was so fun to do. I've got a collaboration with a couple of unnamed musicians that are ⁓ in some of my favorite bands. ⁓ That's gonna be, that's currently being worked on, collaborations with other artists coming later in the year. I'm enjoying doing, focusing on individual tracks and making individual things. ⁓ And I only recently released my latest album.

Jesse Paliotto (46:29)
Okay, yeah.

Mike Dawes (46:58)
which is called Galactic Acid, which I've got on these beautiful vinyls in all these different colors, and I've been touring that. And ⁓ I'm excited to ⁓ be doing these little headline tours throughout the year and early next year in support of that, which I'm gonna be, I've just announced a German tour, which is gonna be in November, which is gonna be fun, a headline German tour. then early next year, we're working on a big US tour.

Jesse Paliotto (47:00)
Yes.

Cool.

Mike Dawes (47:24)
And then late in 2026, I'm going to be doing my biggest tour ever, which will be in the UK, in my home country. And that's incredibly exciting. So I've got to start thinking about some special tunes to make for that one, for sure.

Jesse Paliotto (47:39)
Come on, that

sounds exciting, man. So much good stuff happening.

Mike Dawes (47:42)
⁓ Mmm. It's nice to be busy, yeah. Thank you.

Jesse Paliotto (47:47)
Just a real quick question on that last one. What will make it the biggest? Just biggest number most number of stops in the UK. OK, I'll write on.

Mike Dawes (47:53)
Biggest venues. Yeah, biggest venues.

And one venue in particular is the Bucket List venue I've wanted to do my own headline show in forever. I've played as an opener a few times there, but yeah, I'm going to work to sell that one out. It's going to be tough, but hopefully we'll get there.

Jesse Paliotto (48:07)
Ha

right on. Let me know, man. I'll be happy to put the word out. ⁓ And then I know we're kind of coming to the end of the time, but a couple just a random question. I'm always curious about what are you listening to right now? Somebody picked up your phone. Maybe there's Spotify on there. What? ⁓

Mike Dawes (48:12)
Yeah man, appreciate it.

Well, look,

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't in the Sleep Token rabbit hole like everyone else. ⁓ I mean, those guys are just a real force. I'm going to see them live tomorrow, which will be fun. Download festival, yeah. I've got really into, ⁓ you know what? I could just tell you. Let me just open my Spotify and tell you. What's a?

Jesse Paliotto (48:35)
Yeah. wow.

Yeah, but this

on the sleep token front, I buddy at work was just telling me is like, you gotta listen.

Mike Dawes (48:52)
Yeah, man, that's that they're they're they're a very unique, ⁓ unique situation. How do I see my reasons? Okay. What do we got? We got a lot of I've got a I've got an album of baseball skills development positive affirmations, which is a recording of somebody telling you that you should be proud of your baseball skills. It sounds like this. I am proud of my baseball skills.

The people around me are impressed by my baseball skills. I don't play baseball, but ⁓ that's on my most recently played. the darkness. You know the darkness?

Jesse Paliotto (49:35)
I kind of want

to ask, but I actually think it's better to leave zero context on that. OK.

Mike Dawes (49:37)
No, don't ask.

Yeah, zero context. It's a band called Don Broko from the UK I like. ⁓ My buddy's in periphery. Lots of metal, honestly, and ⁓ guitar-y stuff. But also I love the band The Midnight from LA. It's like a synthwave kind of band. I'm actually gonna be working on something with the guitar player of The Midnight. Another one of these collabs that's in the pipeline, so we'll see what happens there. And... ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (50:06)
we're done.

Mike Dawes (50:06)
Yeah, not a lot of instrumental guitar, I will say, but yeah, mostly and nostalgia stuff, know, stuff I used to listen to growing up. We all like listening to stuff we listened to growing up. So that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (50:17)
Yeah.

It is funny right now because my high school years were in the 90s and watching people listening to stuff. And I'm like, you're 15. That's my music, bro. What are you doing? Get away. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Go gatekeep on them. Like, you're not allowed to listen to Nirvana. That is.

Mike Dawes (50:28)
Name three songs. Yeah. Yeah,

I was there when the baby's dick wasn't pixelated.

Jesse Paliotto (50:43)
got my Rage Against the Machine album stolen by my dad because he came in and listened to the wrong song.

Mike Dawes (50:47)
Exactly. Nice. Nice.

Jesse Paliotto (50:50)
⁓ On our talk today, this has been so great, man. Is there anything we didn't get to?

Mike Dawes (50:54)
Hey, happy to be

here man, I appreciate your time, it's been fun.

Jesse Paliotto (50:57)
Yeah, is there anything that you're like, I thought I wanted to mention this, we didn't get a chance yet? Anything you wanted to throw in before we close up?

Mike Dawes (51:04)
I mean, honestly, if people are interested in checking out what I do or ⁓ rekindling their knowledge of what it is that I'm doing, the new record that came out, I went on Rick Beato's channel and kind of introduced it to the world and people really like it. I'm so proud that they do. ⁓ It's called Galactic Acid and it's available on my website in various vinyl variants as well as obviously CD.

Jesse Paliotto (51:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Dawes (51:30)
⁓ And there's a bunch of music videos from that record online as well as ⁓ the tuition course this guy Which is which is the the the gateway to fingerstyle guitar craziness really ⁓ as and I appreciate you having ⁓ gone through it and work through it and ⁓ Big thing man US tour in the summer. So West Coast I'm gonna be starting in Seattle and ending at John Petrucci's guitar camp in Vegas so that's gonna be ⁓ late July through to early August and that's

Jesse Paliotto (51:38)
Yeah.

Bye.

Mike Dawes (52:00)
If you want to check out what I'm doing in the most intense capacity, there's no opener. It's just a whole lot of this guy. I'm going to have all of that stuff with me and much, much more as well. So it's going to be fun.

Jesse Paliotto (52:14)
I'll grab links and put those in notes where we put stuff out. I will just do a personal recommendation on the new album I loved all along the watchtower. It's in my favorites repeat mode right now.

Mike Dawes (52:24)
thanks, man.

Wicked. thank you

very much. Thank you. Yeah, I love playing that one. That music video in Iceland was tough. That was cold. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (52:32)
yeah. I thought

that I saw that because in Spotify it comes up and I'm like, is he playing his acoustic in a waterfall? What is going on?

Mike Dawes (52:38)
Yep, yep,

yep, near a waterfall. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that was, my guitar maker was not happy with me.

Jesse Paliotto (52:46)
can only imagine. What the hell? Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much, man. I appreciate you being here.

Mike Dawes (52:46)
Yeah, southern Iceland was pretty cold.

pleasure dude. I appreciate your time and yeah, I'm glad we can make this work and keep doing what you're doing man and maybe I'll yeah, I'm going to be in LA in ⁓ in the end of next month, I think I'll be playing in Venice and in Fontana and Seal Beach places like that. So if you want to come down to the show, just let me know I'll stick on the list.

Jesse Paliotto (53:10)
I'd love it. I'll hit you up and yeah, when I come your direction, hopefully later this year.

Mike Dawes (53:12)
Hell yeah.

Nice man, absolutely yeah, enjoy Bristol, come when it's warm.

Jesse Paliotto (53:19)
Thanks everybody else for joining us today. I'm your host Jesse Paliotto. I love being able to do what we just did today, which is just talk music and hang out here on the Guitar Journal. Have a great week everybody. We'll catch you next time. Cheers.