See Devin Dawson’s Urgent ‘Asking for a Friend’ on ‘Seth Meyers’

Devin Dawson made a return visit to Late Night With Seth Meyers on Monday, performing the single “Asking for a Friend” from his debut album Dark Horse.

With its muted opening verse accented by simple acoustic strums and an otherworldly, reverb-heavy lead guitar melody, it’s one of California native Dawson’s most straightforwardly country compositions. On the Late Night stage, this translates to a restrained vocal delivery that almost mirrors the character’s trepidation over approaching this person he likely wronged. As the band builds steam, Dawson’s character begins to find his footing, offering a mea culpa and proposing a conciliatory drink to apologize, without actually saying the words, “I’m sorry.” It’s a rich character sketch typical of the songs on Dawson’s Dark Horse, and doesn’t offer a clean resolution.

“That was one of those songs – it was more about knowing what goes where,” Dawson told Rolling Stone Country. “Where do you start and where do you end up and how much do you give away? The last line of the song is, ‘Do you think you could ever love him again?’ Because you’re thinking the whole time, he’s met her, and the story goes along and the story goes along, but it never says does she take him back. There’s not a resolve, and there’s not really an exact what did he do wrong.”

This summer, Dawson will warm up the crowds on Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s Soul2Soul World Tour before joining up with Brett Eldredge’s Long Way Tour beginning in September. This weekend, he heads to Grand Junction, Colorado, to pay a set at Country Jam.