THE DANDY WARHOLS
If any band was born ready to break up, it’s The Dandy Warhols. Right from the get-go — the emceed, theme-songed opening of the band’s 1995 debut album, Dandys Rule OK — this Portland, Oregon quartet was addressing itself to the fickleness of pop culture and public favor with an amused cool also embodied by the band’s iconic name choice. In lyric, sound and persona, the Dandy Warhols seemed to establish themselves at a learned arm’s length from the whole notion of band-ness — something desirable, sure, but like any number of relationships examined in Dandy Warhol songs, probably doomed.
Maybe that distancing is the secret to long band life, since, 20-plus years along, the Dandy Warhols are still here, with a new album, Distortland, and a supporting U.S. tour beginning in September. For co-founder and guitarist Peter Holmström, creative spark wasn’t a problem. “I think the artist in you will always find songs to write,” he tells PureHoney in an interview. The issue at “some particularly rough spots,” he says, was co-existence. The band’s original drummer quit after three albums (one unreleased at the time) in a dispute over money — “and that could have been it completely,” says Holmström.
Instead, he and bassist/keyboardist Zia McCabe decided to carry on with frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor. They recruited a new drummer, Brent DeBoer, and that’s been the Dandys lineup since 1998. The unit responsible for the majority of the band’s best-known and most highly regarded output has also managed the downsizing from major label patronage to DIY enterprise in the economic vacuum of streaming services and free content online.
Coping throughout has been a project all its own. Of being in a band, Holmström says, “It’s different than friends. It’s different than work. It’s family. These people are not going away and so it’s like you have to deal with them. And so you just let stuff go.”You also give space, he says, “to let people have their little meltdowns and tantrums and hissy fits. You just kind of let people have their moment and move on.” The payoff for interpersonal improvement is getting to hang on to the best parts of being in a band. “We all really like playing music,” says Holmström, “and the music we make when the four of us are on stage is almost effortless. We all know what to expect from each other.”
The Dandy Warhols also remain in sync on record, their wistful and slightly detached selves surfacing anew on Distortland tracks such as the catchy-moody lead single, “You Are Killing Me.” In the previous decade, Dandy Warhols songs — think 2000’s “Bohemian Like You” and 2003’s “We Used to Be Friends” — became markers of the time as well as the stirrings of a Portland-born alt-hipster boom that would eventually manifest as far away as Brooklyn. The band was also one half of the rivalry depicted in Dig!, an instructive 2004 documentary about them and another smart, artistic rock band, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, that did not experience comparable fame.
The Dandy Warhols
Holmström voices both hope and realism about possible outcomes for Distortland — whether the band’s tenth studio album just winds up presaging another tour, or if the new music really breaks into culture. “You can’t control what’s going to happen,” he says. “It takes long enough to make a record. By the time it comes out, it could be yesterday’s news or it could be what everybody’s going to be excited about in a couple of years.”
He’ll take his chances with the mates he has now. “We keep our internal drama to ourselves,” he says, “and [we] also know that just the fact that we’ve gotten this far with this band, or had any success, is incredibly lucky, and the odds of it happening with another band just get slimmer and slimmer. “We like doing this,” he says. “We want to keep doing this any way possible.”
The Dandy Warhols perform Oct. 1 at the Culture Room, 3045 N. Federal Hwy., Fort Lauderdale, with opening act Savoy Motel. Advance tickets are $20. Doors open 8pm. cultureroom. net. After party at Kreepy Tiki w. DJ Rescue (Zia from The Dandy Warhols) plus live set by Chaucer!
~ Sean Piccoli
