Latest news with #EvanDando
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Lemonheads Preview First Original Album in 19 Years With New Single, ‘Deep End'
Fresh from teasing the release of new album Love Chant last month, The Lemonheads have previewed the upcoming LP with latest single 'Deep End.' Co-written by Evan Dando alongside longtime collaborator Tom Morgan (of Australian outfit Smudge), 'Deep End' features Juliana Hatfield on backing vocals with additional guitar from Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis. Both Hatfield and Mascis make brief cameos in the accompanying video, which was filmed in by São Paulo, Brazil by Surreal Hotel Arts. More from Billboard Andy Bell Confirms His Place in Reunited Oasis Lineup Snoop Dogg Drops 'Iz It a Crime' Album Featuring Sexyy Red, Wiz Khalifa & Pharrell: Stream It Now 'Pink Floyd at Pompeii: MCMLXXII' Live Album Makes Top 10 Debut On Multiple Billboard Charts The black-and-white clip sees Dando walking down an endless sidewalk as he's passed by a series of objects, people, and landscapes, with his bandmates occasionally joining. 'It's never been so painless making a video,' Dando said of the clip. 'Everyone working was really great. The endless sidewalk goes really well with the song.' 'Deep End' is also backed by a cover of Townes Van Zandt's 'Sad Cinderella,' which features backing vocals from Nashville artist Erin Rae. Both tracks will appear on a limited edition 12″ vinyl single that arrives on June 13 via Fire Records. The A-side is set to appear on Love Chant, which will arrive as the band's first album of new material since 2006. The record will reportedly release in fall, though specific details are expected to arrive in the coming months. The Lemonheads first formed in Boston in 1986, with a series of independent albums arriving via Taang! before the group signed to Atlantic for 1990's Lovey. Working with Morgan while in Australia, The Lemonheads found their commercial breakthrough with 1992's It's a Shame About Ray, which reached No. 68 on the Billboard 200. Its success was bolstered by a cover of Simon & Garfunkel's 'Mrs. Robinson,' and helped the group achieve their commercial peak with 1993's Come on Feel the Lemonheads, which peaked at No. 56. The Lemonheads initially dissolved in 1997, though Dando reactivated the group in 2005, with a self-titled record arriving the following year. Since then, two cover albums have been released, with Varshons and Varshons 2 being issued in 2009 and 2019, respectively. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Lemonheads Return With New Song ‘Deep End,' From First Album of Original Music in 20 Years
The Lemonheads have announced their first album of original material in nearly 20 years, with Evan Dando and Co. sharing first single 'Deep End' from their upcoming LP, Love Chant. The Nineties alt-rockers paired the track with a video directed by Carlão Busato and Luigi Parisi and filmed in Sao Paulo, where Dando recorded Love Chant with a roster that includes longtime collaborators Tom Morgan and Juliana Hatfield, as well as Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis, who contributes a signature guitar solo to 'Deep End.' More from Rolling Stone Grupo Firme Level Up With Anticipated Album 'Evolucion' Fuerza Regida Want to Become the Beatles of Corridos. They Might Already Be Fitz and the Tantrums Preview New Album 'Man on the Moon' With Funky Title Track 'It's never been so painless making a video,' Dando said in a statement. 'Everyone working was really great. The endless sidewalk goes really well with the song.' In addition to 'Deep End,' the Lemonheads also shared the single's B side, a cover of Townes Van Zandt's 'Sad Cinderella.' Both tracks will feature on a limited-edition 12-inch vinyl disc out on June 13, with Love Chant to follow this fall. Love Chant marks the Lemonheads' first album of original music since the band's 2006 self-titled LP. In the decades since, Dando has released a pair of covers albums — 2009's Varshons and 2019's Varshons 2 — under the Lemonheads moniker. In recent years, Dando has hinted at new Lemonheads music with non-LP singles 'Fear of Living' and 'Seven Out'; it's unclear if either track will ultimately appear on Love Chant. The Lemonheads will hit the road this week with a tour of Australia and New Zealand, followed by a European trek later in the summer. A North American tour is also promised, with those dates being announced soon, along with further Love Chant details. Until then, here's Dando reporting news of his imminent return in the most Dando way possible: Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
Sydney Morning Herald
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The Lemonheads' lead singer thought he'd be dead by now. One person changed all that
This story is part of the May 10 edition of Good Weekend. See all 14 stories. Evan Dando looks like he's in paradise. He's walking around the yard of the sprawling house where he lives, as fluffy clouds hang in a bright blue sky, palm trees sway gently in the breeze, colourful parrots fly overhead and his four cats – one of whom is called Marc Jacobs ('named after a friend of mine') – frolic with each other. This is in the town of Maripora, in the lush Serra Da Cantareira hills above São Paulo in Brazil, a place he has called home for the past couple of years. The singer-songwriter of the Lemonheads is now 58, which is a miracle in itself. Newspapers were preparing his obituary decades ago. His appetite for drugs was certainly no secret, but then it took over his life, derailing his creativity and reliability. His live performances over the years have suffered as a result, numerous reviews have been written about him squandering his talent, and there has not been an album of original songs from him in almost two decades. 'I was just going for the 'Ultimate Slacker' award',' he says, laughing and shrugging it off. 'I did a covers record, then I took another 10 years to put out another covers record. I couldn't put out an originals record. Well, I could, but it would have been a bad one.' Things are about to change. Love Chant, the first Lemonheads album of originals since 2006, is set for an October release. A month later, his memoir, the appropriately titled Rumours of My Demise, is due to follow. To say Dando has fallen on his feet is an understatement. This cat had well and truly used up his nine lives, and he knows it. 'I always joke that I died in the fentanyl epidemic and went to heaven,' he says, waving around a large joint that he will smoke over the next hour. 'I guess I was a nice person when I was on Earth.' In the 1990s he became a pin-up boy for alternative rock, a blond, beautiful guy from Massachusetts singing songs that tapped into Gen X ennui, loneliness and a desire for connection. He was a Zelig-like figure in that decade, seemingly always in close proximity to an array of famous folks: getting chummy with Angelina Jolie, Chloë Sevigny and Johnny Depp in various Lemonheads videos; swapping spit with actor Adrienne Shelly on the cover of Spin; falling about onstage and off with everyone from Courtney Love to Oasis. Today, Dando is more reminiscent of Jeff Bridges' The Dude in The Big Lebowski in look, bearing and speech. He's craggier and heftier, his beard is frosted with grey and his voice is lower in register and more husky in tone. I have interviewed him many times over the years going back to 1990. The conversations are rarely linear. There are lots of digressions, flights of fancy, word association games and unrelated anecdotes. At one point in this interview, in the space of a single answer, he quotes James Joyce and later offers the opinion that people who didn't grow up watching Gilligan's Island don't seem to get it if they watch it now. He's well- read, a pop-culture sponge and a musical savant. He's also an inveterate but entertaining name-dropper. In the course of an hour he will tell me stories involving Nick Cave, Amber Valletta, Michael Hutchence, Thurston Moore and Keith Richards' son Marlon. Dando's connections with Australia are strong. He first toured here in 1991 and fell in love with Sydney's inner-city music scene. 'I was only 24, but I already felt really old. I thought it was all over. Australia brought me out of that with all the experiences I had and the people I met.' He gravitated towards Half A Cow, a seminal record, comic and book store in Glebe, owned by musician Nic Dalton, who would go on to play bass in the Lemonheads for a few years in the '90s. He also became fast friends with Tom Morgan, the singer and songwriter with indie-rock trio Smudge, and the two would go on to co-write many of the Lemonheads' best-known songs. Dando is currently touring Australia with the latest of the many incarnations of his band, and they are playing his two most popular albums, 1992's It's a Shame About Ray and 1993's Come on Feel the Lemonheads. The former in particular is littered with songs inspired by people he met in Sydney back then – Alison's Starting to Happen is about Alison Galloway, drummer with Smudge; My Drug Buddy is about Morgan's girlfriend at the time and set in a phone booth on King Street, Newtown; Rockin Stroll is about the infant son of Robyn St. Clare, bass player with The Hummingbirds (Dando would go on to cover her song Into Your Arms). 'The motivating force in both those records is Australia,' he says. 'Those people were like my family for a while there. A big gang. It was a special period. You go through phases like that where you have a great bunch of people around you.' He pauses, then adds: 'Usually when you're not doing heroin.' Dando is a remarkably open book, willingly bringing up his problems with drugs without being prompted and never saying that anything is off the record. He relates his experiences with a mix of humour, horror, self-deprecation and a genuine sense of wonder that he got through it. He reached his nadir a few years ago, when he was living in a trailer in Martha's Vineyard. 'People were trying to outdo each other with their badass drug behaviour around me to impress me or something. One guy was storing kilos of coke in my trailer, and he'd wake me up at 4am with all these people needing to buy. One guy hid his gun in my refrigerator. Four or five of those people from that time are dead now.' The reason he's alive is video-maker Antonia Teixeira, daughter of well-known Brazilian singer-songwriter Renato Teixeira. The two met in 1994, when the Lemonheads were on tour in Brazil. In 1997 they dated briefly, but it was only about four years ago that they reconnected. 'I remember the first time she came over to see me,' he says of their reunion. 'Some of my friends were sitting around my trailer, with drugs all over the floor. She wasn't even judgmental. She just knew I could do better than I was doing. She was persistent, too. I wasn't very nice to her sometimes. I knew I wasn't ready for a relationship, so I felt like I was helping her out by being a jerk. I was thinking, 'You don't want to get involved with me right now.' She waited, though.' 'I don't really believe in regrets. I don't see the point. I did the things I did.' Evan Dando They got married on December 30 last year in the yard of their house. Dando was previously married to English model Elizabeth Moses from 2000 to 2010. Teixeira has three grown-up children. Dando says they are considering having a baby. 'I think I'd be a great dad. I'm naturally really good with kids.' Where does he think he would be now if Teixeira hadn't come along? 'Dead or in jail,' he says, without hesitation. 'I remember watching a video of a show I played where I'd get halfway through a song and just stop and tell some story. It was really sad. That's what did it. That's when I went to rehab. It sucked. But it stuck.' He clarifies that he's clean from what he refers to as 'hard drugs'. He stills smokes pot and adds that he has also taken acid a few times, 'but only because it was very good Polish acid, so I knew what was in it'. When I ask how long he used heroin, he holds up the underside of his arm, which bears a constellation of white scars. 'See that? That's 20 years or so. The years fly by, you know?' Loading As for regrets, much like Edith Piaf, he has none. 'I don't really believe in regrets. I don't see the point. I did the things I did. Regretting it's a waste of time. In the end I dealt with it. I regret slamming my fingers in the shutters yesterday. They were heavy and that was ill-advised, and now my fingers are turning black. Those shutters are nice, I really like them, but don't get on the wrong side of them.' Now he can feel his creativity rushing back. He had his first exhibition of paintings and drawings in October last year at London's Farsight Gallery. There's the memoir, the new album and another album that is already written and largely recorded. 'I want to do as much as I can now,' he says. 'At this age I feel better than I did in my 40s. Every show, I go out there and I give it everything. There's something more exciting about things now. My heart has opened up more. And I sleep well every night. That's all it takes to not lose your voice, by the way. Sleep eight hours.' Then there's another one of those Dando-esque pauses. 'And don't stay up doing coke four nights in a row.'
The Age
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
The Lemonheads' lead singer thought he'd be dead by now. One person changed all that
This story is part of the May 10 edition of Good Weekend. See all 14 stories. Evan Dando looks like he's in paradise. He's walking around the yard of the sprawling house where he lives, as fluffy clouds hang in a bright blue sky, palm trees sway gently in the breeze, colourful parrots fly overhead and his four cats – one of whom is called Marc Jacobs ('named after a friend of mine') – frolic with each other. This is in the town of Maripora, in the lush Serra Da Cantareira hills above São Paulo in Brazil, a place he has called home for the past couple of years. The singer-songwriter of the Lemonheads is now 58, which is a miracle in itself. Newspapers were preparing his obituary decades ago. His appetite for drugs was certainly no secret, but then it took over his life, derailing his creativity and reliability. His live performances over the years have suffered as a result, numerous reviews have been written about him squandering his talent, and there has not been an album of original songs from him in almost two decades. 'I was just going for the 'Ultimate Slacker' award',' he says, laughing and shrugging it off. 'I did a covers record, then I took another 10 years to put out another covers record. I couldn't put out an originals record. Well, I could, but it would have been a bad one.' Things are about to change. Love Chant, the first Lemonheads album of originals since 2006, is set for an October release. A month later, his memoir, the appropriately titled Rumours of My Demise, is due to follow. To say Dando has fallen on his feet is an understatement. This cat had well and truly used up his nine lives, and he knows it. 'I always joke that I died in the fentanyl epidemic and went to heaven,' he says, waving around a large joint that he will smoke over the next hour. 'I guess I was a nice person when I was on Earth.' In the 1990s he became a pin-up boy for alternative rock, a blond, beautiful guy from Massachusetts singing songs that tapped into Gen X ennui, loneliness and a desire for connection. He was a Zelig-like figure in that decade, seemingly always in close proximity to an array of famous folks: getting chummy with Angelina Jolie, Chloë Sevigny and Johnny Depp in various Lemonheads videos; swapping spit with actor Adrienne Shelly on the cover of Spin; falling about onstage and off with everyone from Courtney Love to Oasis. Today, Dando is more reminiscent of Jeff Bridges' The Dude in The Big Lebowski in look, bearing and speech. He's craggier and heftier, his beard is frosted with grey and his voice is lower in register and more husky in tone. I have interviewed him many times over the years going back to 1990. The conversations are rarely linear. There are lots of digressions, flights of fancy, word association games and unrelated anecdotes. At one point in this interview, in the space of a single answer, he quotes James Joyce and later offers the opinion that people who didn't grow up watching Gilligan's Island don't seem to get it if they watch it now. He's well- read, a pop-culture sponge and a musical savant. He's also an inveterate but entertaining name-dropper. In the course of an hour he will tell me stories involving Nick Cave, Amber Valletta, Michael Hutchence, Thurston Moore and Keith Richards' son Marlon. Dando's connections with Australia are strong. He first toured here in 1991 and fell in love with Sydney's inner-city music scene. 'I was only 24, but I already felt really old. I thought it was all over. Australia brought me out of that with all the experiences I had and the people I met.' He gravitated towards Half A Cow, a seminal record, comic and book store in Glebe, owned by musician Nic Dalton, who would go on to play bass in the Lemonheads for a few years in the '90s. He also became fast friends with Tom Morgan, the singer and songwriter with indie-rock trio Smudge, and the two would go on to co-write many of the Lemonheads' best-known songs. Dando is currently touring Australia with the latest of the many incarnations of his band, and they are playing his two most popular albums, 1992's It's a Shame About Ray and 1993's Come on Feel the Lemonheads. The former in particular is littered with songs inspired by people he met in Sydney back then – Alison's Starting to Happen is about Alison Galloway, drummer with Smudge; My Drug Buddy is about Morgan's girlfriend at the time and set in a phone booth on King Street, Newtown; Rockin Stroll is about the infant son of Robyn St. Clare, bass player with The Hummingbirds (Dando would go on to cover her song Into Your Arms). 'The motivating force in both those records is Australia,' he says. 'Those people were like my family for a while there. A big gang. It was a special period. You go through phases like that where you have a great bunch of people around you.' He pauses, then adds: 'Usually when you're not doing heroin.' Dando is a remarkably open book, willingly bringing up his problems with drugs without being prompted and never saying that anything is off the record. He relates his experiences with a mix of humour, horror, self-deprecation and a genuine sense of wonder that he got through it. He reached his nadir a few years ago, when he was living in a trailer in Martha's Vineyard. 'People were trying to outdo each other with their badass drug behaviour around me to impress me or something. One guy was storing kilos of coke in my trailer, and he'd wake me up at 4am with all these people needing to buy. One guy hid his gun in my refrigerator. Four or five of those people from that time are dead now.' The reason he's alive is video-maker Antonia Teixeira, daughter of well-known Brazilian singer-songwriter Renato Teixeira. The two met in 1994, when the Lemonheads were on tour in Brazil. In 1997 they dated briefly, but it was only about four years ago that they reconnected. 'I remember the first time she came over to see me,' he says of their reunion. 'Some of my friends were sitting around my trailer, with drugs all over the floor. She wasn't even judgmental. She just knew I could do better than I was doing. She was persistent, too. I wasn't very nice to her sometimes. I knew I wasn't ready for a relationship, so I felt like I was helping her out by being a jerk. I was thinking, 'You don't want to get involved with me right now.' She waited, though.' 'I don't really believe in regrets. I don't see the point. I did the things I did.' Evan Dando They got married on December 30 last year in the yard of their house. Dando was previously married to English model Elizabeth Moses from 2000 to 2010. Teixeira has three grown-up children. Dando says they are considering having a baby. 'I think I'd be a great dad. I'm naturally really good with kids.' Where does he think he would be now if Teixeira hadn't come along? 'Dead or in jail,' he says, without hesitation. 'I remember watching a video of a show I played where I'd get halfway through a song and just stop and tell some story. It was really sad. That's what did it. That's when I went to rehab. It sucked. But it stuck.' He clarifies that he's clean from what he refers to as 'hard drugs'. He stills smokes pot and adds that he has also taken acid a few times, 'but only because it was very good Polish acid, so I knew what was in it'. When I ask how long he used heroin, he holds up the underside of his arm, which bears a constellation of white scars. 'See that? That's 20 years or so. The years fly by, you know?' Loading As for regrets, much like Edith Piaf, he has none. 'I don't really believe in regrets. I don't see the point. I did the things I did. Regretting it's a waste of time. In the end I dealt with it. I regret slamming my fingers in the shutters yesterday. They were heavy and that was ill-advised, and now my fingers are turning black. Those shutters are nice, I really like them, but don't get on the wrong side of them.' Now he can feel his creativity rushing back. He had his first exhibition of paintings and drawings in October last year at London's Farsight Gallery. There's the memoir, the new album and another album that is already written and largely recorded. 'I want to do as much as I can now,' he says. 'At this age I feel better than I did in my 40s. Every show, I go out there and I give it everything. There's something more exciting about things now. My heart has opened up more. And I sleep well every night. That's all it takes to not lose your voice, by the way. Sleep eight hours.' Then there's another one of those Dando-esque pauses. 'And don't stay up doing coke four nights in a row.'
Boston Globe
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A wild, winding conversation with newly married Evan Dando
Talking to Evan Dando feels slightly hallucinatory, like chasing a ghost through a garden maze. Just as the Lemonheads frontman, holding an unlit cigarette in his paint-stained hand, is, at last, about to answer a question related to his new record, he turns suddenly and motions toward the horizon. 'Mengele was caught — well, almost caught — over there, about a mile or so from our house,' Dando says, referring to the infamous Nazi known as 'the Angel of Death.' OK, hold on. We should say Dando, who grew up in Boston and authored such indie classics as Advertisement ' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up For about an hour over Zoom, the conversation continues like this, a cascade of tantalizing non sequiturs: a backstage encounter, facilitated by Evan Dando and Antonia Teixiera got married at their home in Brazil in December. João Wainer The pair got married Dec. 30 in a small ceremony at their house in Serra Da Cantareira, which Dando refers to as 'the Topanga of Brazil.' Guests included actress Polly Noonan — that's her 'It's a Shame About Ray' — and Springa, the singer for the pioneering Boston hardcore band, 'I met Springa when I was 16,' he says. 'Me and my friend were, literally, doing lines of Excedrin off the table in McDonald's and he was, like, 'Uh, guys.'' Advertisement Dando wore a three-piece, powder-blue suit; Teixeira's dress, with 4EVAN discreetly stitched into the corset, was created by the Brazilian designer, Helo Rocha, whose handiwork — a Detail shot of Antonia Teixeira's wedding dress, created by the Brazilian fashion designer Helo Rocha. João Wainer Over the years, as the title of Dando's (maybe) forthcoming memoir implies, his heavy drug use not only hobbled his career but led to He credits Teixeira for saving his life. He says she rescued him from Martha's Vineyard, where he'd become involved with derelicts and dealers who wanted to stash drugs at a house he owns on the island. 'She got me out of a hairy [expletive] situation on the Vineyard. She's good,' says Dando, who's been married once before. 'But she gets annoyed at me a lot because I'm annoying.' Teixeira, who has two daughters and a son ranging in age from 19 to 25, went to film school and makes videos. But she knows something about the music business. Her father is Advertisement 'Everybody knows her dad's songs,' Dando says. 'You can sing 'Romaria' in the mall — I tried it! — and everyone starts singing. That's the coolest — to be really big but not known by the rest of the world. That's the real thing.' Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando will release a single in May in advance of the band's Australian tour. Fire Records At 57, Dando doesn't much resemble a 'pin-up with poet's eyes,' as he was once described by GQ. He's paunchier now and his shaggy sideburns are graying. But what of his colossal skills as a songwriter? Dando says he's proud of the new Lemonheads record, 'Love Chant,' calling it one of his band's most 'relaxed' collections of songs. (The title is taken from a 'This just in: aging rocker thinks new record is his best yet,' Dando says. The musician, who graduated from the Commonwealth School in Boston and briefly attended Skidmore College, says writing the book has been a chore. He tried to get it done during the pandemic, but there's still work to do. 'Three years late and 15,000 words short,' he says, with a laugh. Also, the publisher, Simon & Schuster, wanted it to be more personally revealing. 'I guess I didn't put enough slander of myself in there,' he says. Asked to describe the book, Dando pauses. 'First of all, it's in Sanskrit,' he says. Dando spends a lot of time these days painting and playing acoustic guitar on the couple's patio, which is surrounded by flowering trees and Portuguese laurel. 'The birds jam out with me,' he says. 'Like, the parrots are totally down.' (Unprompted, he picked up his guitar at one point and played Neil Young's ' Advertisement He doesn't speak much Portuguese, at least not well, but Dando nonetheless considers himself an 'honorary Brazilian' and has no plans to move back to Martha's Vineyard. He's been watching what is happening in the US politically — 'sounds like a pain,' he says, lighting the cigarette — and thinks he may be better off where he is. Dando is looking forward to the release of 'Love Chant' — it'll be the Lemonheads' first album of original songs in nearly 20 years — but wonders if anyone will be interested. He hopes so. 'America loves a phoenix story, don't they?' Dando says. Mark Shanahan can be reached at
