Callous Daoboys Singer Says Band Is Ready to Make Their Mark

If you listen to Callous Daoboys latest album, I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven, and you’re not moved, then the band may not have succeeded in their goal.

Singer Carson Pace told Full Metal Jackie on her weekend radio show that he was keenly aware of recognizing audience reaction when making their latest album and set out to make a record that would stir a response, either good or bad, that would leave people talking.

“I think the mindset for this album was we’re going to make something so undeniable and so just out there and good that it’ll be impossible to ignore. And these people will remember us and whether they like it or not, they’ll remember that we were around and we were a band and we made our mark,” says Pace.

The singer later told the radio host, “I’ll always say just the goal is to make a million other people play music. I hope that this record is so good that someone is inspired to pick up a guitar or write their own songs or their own lyrics or whatever. That is ultimately my hope,” says Pace, before adding, “Or to think it’s so bad that they’re like, I could do this. This is easy. This band sucks. And then they go on and make a band that sings about pirates, you know.”

Pace and Callous Daoboys have definitely made one of the more personal albums of their career and one that continues to push boundaries as they grow as a band and creators. The singer discusses opening himself up as a songwriter, building an extra layer to the music that fans can engage with and how much attention he pays to what is being said about his group.

The singer also discusses the milestone of their first-ever U.S. headline tour and what he’s learned about the music industry.

Check out more of the chat below.

It’s Full Metal Jackie and with us on the show this week, the Callous Daoboys singer Carson Pace. So the Callous Daoboys latest album, I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven. I understand this was a very personal album for you, one that is very specific to your experiences of the last few years. Why was now the right time to put more of yourself out there? And how has it been as you start to get feedback from the fans?

Now wasn’t exactly the right time. But I think it’s always been the right time to do it. At least for me. I think I was maybe too afraid to say what I wanted to say or say something crazy that would make me lose a friend or something like that by saying what was actually on my mind.

In my mid-20s, I feel like so many things were happening to me. Everything that could go wrong was going wrong. It just felt like I was having every experience possible instead of hiding behind a metaphor or trying to tell someone else’s story or what have you. I just decided it’s time to just drop the facade and say what is actually on my mind.

The Callous Daoboys, “Two-Headed Trout”

Carson, being in a band is not the easiest life. It’s something you have to commit to. You’ve spoken about “Distracted by the Mona Lisa” essentially being about being married to your passion above everything else. At three albums in, you’re at the point where you’ve probably sussed out for the most part of what this life is. Is this what you expected when you first got into music and what type of discussions have been had amongst the band and feeling out how this works as a career?

I was speaking with a friend about this who’s looking to expand his horizons beyond his 9 to 5. And I think that the reason why going into this seems scary is because there’s so few instances of it actually working.

You and I know people that have succeeded in it because we’re in it, but a normal person, like I wonder if my sister knows anybody who even knows how to get their music on Spotify beyond just me.  So I think that when I got into this, it was certainly easier just writing music in a basement or whatever. I think that that was a much easier time in my life.

But the things that we’ve encountered on the way up in the eight or so years we’ve been touring for, it’s so different from what anyone would expect it to be.

I think that my parents think I’m partying and a lot and stuff like that. That’s just not the reality of what’s going on at all. I’m mostly just tired all the time. And especially when you’re in a small band like us, we have people who work for us and we do have people who are on the payroll, but we’re mostly doing everything ourselves.

I write all the music video treatments. I handle the bank account. All of us run merch. We don’t have a merch person. Yet. In reality, when you get into this, you’re like, “Oh, I’m a singer for a band.” That’s what you tell people when someone asks you what your job is. But in reality, it’s like, I’m the singer and also like the chief financial officer and also like a person and a driver. We all do. Everybody in the band does.

I think that I thought it would be so much easier and by now we would have all these people doing it for us. But still, it’s pretty DIY through and through.

The Callous Daoboys, “Distracted By the Mona Lisa”

Carson, the presentation of this new record, I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven, is a little different. You’ve built this lore around it that the album is an artifact discovered in the future and viewed as a piece of The Museum of Failure. It’s one thing to have the music and the songs, but it’s quite another to build up the story around its presentation for the listeners. As creators how enjoyable is it to build this extra layer for the fans and see where this type of presentation can take you?

It was so fun and interesting to come up with all that stuff. I had a great time with it. I will probably never do it again. It’s not necessarily a concept album because it’s still me saying things that have happened to me. Autobiographical, if you will.

I hate concept albums. They make me roll my eyes so hard, or like theme bands. If your band only writes lyrics about pirates or something, I just absolutely hate that. Unless you’re really into pirates, I mean, but I’m not so it’s just not gonna. It’s not gonna translate.

For me personally, I had so much fun with putting together every idea that I had for it, but I. I’ve spoken on this a few times. Originally, the concept with the museum and everything was going to be like a movie I was working on that had nothing to do with the band at all. So I just kind of took the concept and figured out how I could splice it into the packaging and into the narrations that are on the record and the transitions too. I thought it was such a cool idea.

Also, I’ve never heard a record not be a concept album, but be presented conceptually. So I thought it was really cool to do something I’d never heard done before. I had so much fun coming up with it. It was such a blast. It was such a unique experience. And I’m really proud that everyone’s connecting with it and I’m really proud of how it was executed.

We’ve got Carson Pace from the Callous Daoboys on the show with us talking about their new record, I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven. And you’ve talked about there being some trial and error. It’s a natural part of the growth for a young band while trying to find the right balance. How much attention have you given to fan response, whether it be through social media or live shows, and how much is still about what pleases the band first?

What’s funny is you caught me at a time where I’m really trying to ignore it. I think that right now, I’m trying to consider that stuff is unimportant. I’m glad that everyone really likes the record. It seems like it’s been mostly positive feedback.

Before going into this, that was kind of something that I obsessed over a little bit. People saying various comments of that we sounded too much like The Dillinger Escape Plan or whatever.

The trial and error part of things is so internal to me. When something works or doesn’t work, it’s usually retroactive that I figure that stuff out. We’ve had a couple songs on our previous two records where when we play them now, I’m like, “Oh, man, this just does not work”. And people still connect with those songs because that’s kind of a matter of opinion.

But the way that people have perceived our band as like this guy’s not screaming properly, or you can’t hear the violin in the mix and all this stuff. I think that those are definitely notes that we’ve taken and been like, “Okay, well, let’s make the violin more prominent. And I need to stop sucking at singing, I guess. I don’t know.” I try and tune that stuff out so much.

In listening to this record, I have to say I felt a little thrown by “Lemon,” but in a good way. There’s a soulfulness you don’t often hear in this style of music that makes it stand out a bit. I get that fans or critics may try to lump you into a genre as a way to describe your music, but hearing “Lemon” makes me wonder if there’s anything out of bounds for this band. It feels like this was more intentional. More of an intentional way of keeping things fresh.

I think that the way that we approach our band is that there is very much nothing out of bounds. Maybe a zesty polka track is out of bounds. I don’t really want to do that, but maybe one day it works out.

“Lemon” is one of my favorite songs that we’ve ever made. I think our execution of it and the way that we figured out how to throw that into an album and make it work is something I’m really excited by.

As far as the future of the band goes, it really does feel like we can do anything. The fans are, for the most part, on board. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining that that song is too long. And I’m like, well, it’s because you’re used to us doing two and a half minute mathcore, grind, core tracks.

So in some ways, I would call it intentional. We knew it was going to be a single the second that we had the demo finished. And we were like, this has to be special. We can’t hide this. We can’t just let this sit in the middle of the record. This has to be a statement.

I think when the album came out and people realized oh it wasn’t fully a pop rock album, that it has these dips and dives in genre and style and stuff like that. I think that the newer people that had discovered our band were really excited by that. And I think our older fans were very happy that we hadn’t fully abandoned our roots.

But I have only seen positive stuff for “Lemon.” It’s absolutely intentional to just get these metal heads to listen to something else.

The Callous Daoboys, “Lemon”

Carson, there are milestones in every band. For Callous Daoboys, one is coming up this year with the first ever headline North American tour. What does it mean for you to reach this step in the band’s career? And what are your thoughts on the bands that will be supporting on this run?

I’ll answer the supporting part first. We got Unity TX. Your Spirit Dies and Crush ++. We’ve, known Your Spirit Dies for so long. I feel like we’ve known them for six years now. Maybe a little longer than that. That band is amazing. I’m so stoked to have them out.

Unity is a name that we’ve heard for so long and obviously they’ve been a big presence coming up with us at the same time. I kind of can’t believe they agreed to do the tour. I think that’s really cool and I’m stoked to have them out.

And then Crush ++ is a band from Connecticut that I can’t wait to introduce our fans to. That’s probably the best part of this tour is that we get to bring our friends along and just be like, “Hey, this is dope. You will like this” and have our fans get really into it.

For me, this is a milestone that me and our guitar player Maddie [Caffrey]. Like, this is kind of something that we’ve been dreaming of since we started playing music together. We have been playing music together since we were 17. This was always the dream to be the thing that people buy tickets to and most bands just don’t get there. Most bands do not ever make it to that point to where they get to go play shows that are their shows.

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I assume every day is gonna feel like Christmas or my birthday on that tour. I am just so excited for it. It also every day might be like Halloween. I don’t know.

It is just such a cool thing. I think we played to 10 or 12 people in a garage in Chicago in 2018, and then to come back and have our Chicago show sell out the same night that Turnstile is going to be in town in Chicago is just mind blowing to me. That’s so crazy. I’m smiling real big. You can see me on this zoom call smiling real big just talking about it, Jackie.

He is. I can see it.

Carson. The presentation of this album as an artifact for future audiences got me wondering how you view your own albums. Is there a point where you take stock of what each record meant in the history of the band? Does that ever happen in the moment? Or do you need years of separation before you can truly embrace what that period of time and the response to the music meant? Also, what ultimately would make this record a success for you?

So being able to look at the records in hindsight or thinking about how they live on and stuff, I think that’s something that I wasn’t really thinking about until we made this.

It was absolutely something I was thinking about during the time that we were writing it. Just because it’s a snapshot in time and that’s what every album is for me, at least.

I can listen to our records and know where I was when I wrote certain songs and stuff like that. And I think I have more of an appreciation for our older music because of that. Because of how much I was thinking about what we leave behind and just making the best thing that we possibly can because it’s going to live forever. That was something I was thinking about during the whole process of making this.

Specifically, we were in Europe with the band Tesseract when this record was kind of starting to come together. We wrote “Lemon” and “Tears on Lambo Leather” on that tour in green rooms and stuff like that, in weird hostels in Munich, Germany and whatnot.

So on that tour, the crowds didn’t like us very much at all. They kind of just were staring at us the whole time, and they’re also European, so just inherently they were not expressive people all the time. So I I would just be onstage and we would be playing, but I would be thinking, are they gonna remember this? Are they gonna come back and see us again? Do they like this? Like, what are we doing?

I think the mindset for this album was we’re going to make something so undeniable and so just out there and good that it’ll be impossible to ignore. And these people will remember us and whether they like it or not, they’ll remember that we were around and we were a band and we made our mark.

So during this record, it was such a huge factor. And for me to view the album as a success, I think the only thing that I really want is in order to be a success, I’ll always say just the goal is to make a million other people play music. I hope that this record is so good that someone is inspired to pick up a guitar or write their own songs or their own lyrics or whatever. That is ultimately my hope. Or to think it’s so bad that they’re like, I could do this. This is easy. This band sucks. And then they go on and make a band that sings about pirates, you know.

Carson Pace of the Callous Daoboys with us. The new record is I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven. Carson, it was really great to have you on the show for the first of what I assume to be will be the first of many times in the future, and I wish you the best of luck.

Thank you so much, Jackie. This was. This was lovely. I had a great time.

Thanks to Carson Pace of The Callous Daoboys for the interview. I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven is available now. You can stay up to date with The Callous Daoboys through their website, Facebook, X and Instagram.Find out where you can hear Full Metal Jackie’s weekend radio show here.