When Dallas Green was in High School he had met with Ralph Serravale his religion and guitar teacher frequently to just play music or talk about what he planned to do with his life. Green had told him he wanted to be a musician and probably couldn’t see himself doing anything else with his life. Serravale had told him to follow his dream and to do what he loved doing and Green took that to heart and did just that. He had joined a Post-Hardcore band called Alexisonfire shortly after high school and was the lead guitarist and clean vocal singer for the band that had a very aggressive style and live show. The band had gained some very quick recognition from their Math Sheets Demo and were quickly signed by Indie label Equal Vision Records in 2003 and put out their self titled release. The band’s sound has been referred to as a joke from the band as two Catholic school girls showing up for a knife fight, so the first album cover pictured just that. The album received some pretty decent recognition from the hardcore scene so a follow up quickly emerged in Watch Out! which is a album that more closely resembles their sound today. The album featured more of Green as a vocalist instead of just backup and really emphasized his amazingly high notes that he was able to hit, an attribute not very common in this type of music. Songs like “Side Walk When She Walks”, “Control” and “Happiness By The Kilowatt” are perfect examples of Dallas Green type singing in Alexisonfire then and now. Always interested in Folk music because of his idols such as Neil Young he decided to do a small side project by himself that would incorporate a folk music style with very slow and sad lyrics that emphasized his musical style. He decided to hide his name by giving it a pseudo title simply called City and Colour after his name Dallas Green.
His first single that he was released was entitled “Missing” and was about his guitar teacher who had recently passed away. The song was a tribute to his life and how Green would have to move on without him and thanks him for everything that he had given him when he was young. After much praise for just the one single he started putting together and album that would later be released as Sometimes, the first City And Colour LP which included amazing tracks in ”Hello, I’m In Delaware”, “Day Old Hate”, “Sam Malone” and “Comin’ Home”. While touring mostly in his native Canada he did play a select amount of shows in the states to support his album. As Alexisonfire started to grow bigger and bigger in fan base more people started hearing about City and Colour and Green was selling records strongly in both bands. Alexisonfire in the past few years has released Crisis which didn’t receive as much positive reviews as it’s predecessor but had one of their best tracks that utilized the harsh vocals of George Petit and the harmonic vocals of Dallas Green. The song was called “This Could Be Anywhere In The World” and tends to be considered one of their most popular tracks as a band. Recently after the release of that album Green quickly went to work on his follow up to Sometimes called Bring Me Your Love which featured more upbeat tracks with usage of more harmonica, banjo and slide guitar then just acoustic. He had some huge mainstream hits with “Waiting…”, “Body In A Box”, “Sensible Heart” and “The Girl”. “Sensible Heart” being a favorite personally of mine is an amazingly well written song about unreasonable circumstances happening to someone and just being able to be sensible about things, with the lyrics “Behind this emotion, there’s a sensible heart” it really grabs you the entire song and if you want a more raw stripped version of the song I suggest checking out the live version off his DVD.
With a new Alexisonfire album called Old Crows/Young Cardinals you have the band going more towards their roots with a perfect mesh of their first two albums and incorporating all three singers in the band. With Green finishing up some headling tours with the band it is almost eminent that he will be releasing more work under City and Colour since he has just recently played three new songs at recent concerts this past winter. I can only hope the album is just as good as the previous two and he continues to create music in both bands with his amazing vocals and instrumentation he provides for two different realms. From head banging to heart felt songs about love, life and growing happiness Dallas Green sure does provide his fans with something to choose from. A clip of one of his fan favorites is posted below entitled “Comin’ Home” a beautiful love story about a long awaited reunion with his loved one.
