Dashboard Confessional draws sing-along punkers

By Chris Jordan
Gannett News Service

Chris Carrabba, songwriter and lead vocalist for the band Dashboard Confessional, polished his rapport with youths as a teacher in Florida. Gannett News Service photo

That's been the case of Chris Carrabba, whose band Dashboard Confessional has been selling out at clubs and theaters around the country.

Carrabba's previous life as a teacher in Florida helped him develop a rapport with younger audiences.

"You have to be truthful and honest all the time," Carrabba says.

His delicate, ultra-sensitive and emotionally moving songs — often featuring only Carrabba's voice and an acoustic guitar — are redefining terms for punk music.

Dashboard Confessional shows attract a punk and indie-rock audience, but instead of mosh pits, there are sing-alongs.

The band, currently on tour, will be featured on "MTV2 Presents Unplugged 2.0: Dashboard Confessional," set to air June 16.

In addition, the band recently released a four-track CD titled "Summer's Kiss."

Carrabba's music is the antithesis of the rage rock and rap-rock of bands like Limp Bizkit. On the album "The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most," Carrabba's songs are odes to heartbreak and heartbroken, but never to the heartless. Unlike those of Limp Bizkit's ilk, Carrabba's protagonists never seek revenge, instead they take their rejection stoically.

"As for now I'm going to hear the saddest songs and sit alone and wonder how you're making out," sings Carrabba in the band's MTV hit, "Screaming Infidelities."

Carrabba, who was previously a member of the emotional-core band Further Seems Forever, wrote most of his Dashboard Confessional songs after a series of bad relationships.

"I've always been writing in my journal," he says. "I didn't know how it would be received."

But not necessarily all of Dashboard Confessional's songs are about breaking up. On the last track of the band's latest EP, "So Impossible," Carrabba actually (gasp!), gets the girl.

"It's an openly happy song," says Carrabba of "Hands Down." "I don't think I'm strictly a one-dimensional songwriter."