THE DANDY WARHOLS

To the Stars and Back

By Bob Ham

Photos by Ray Gordon

It used to be that bands were looking for their shot at the big time – the big record contract, the big tour bus, the big chart-topping single. These days, the entire paradigm has been turned so completely on its head that it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary to hear a musician make a statement like this:

“It was just a matter of waiting for Capitol [Records] to drop us. The previous president there told me flat-out that we’re never getting off his label and not to have my lawyers call him ever again. The minute he was gone, we were too.”

The musician behind that quote is Courtney Taylor-Taylor, frontman for The Dandy Warhols, and he’s referring to the treacherous waters that he and his bandmates are entering into with the release of their sixth LP, Earth To The Dandy Warhols.

The album will be the first batch of new material released under the band’s freshly created label, Beat The World Records, and for the first time, the Dandys will have complete control over every aspect of their distribution, sales and promotion – a rather mixed blessing according to guitarist Peter Holmström. “Now we have to OK every decision,” he says with a grin. “I have to look at ad mats and go, ‘OK. I like it.’ All this stuff I don’t care about at all.”

Joking complaints aside, it’s obvious that the Dandys are much happier now that they are free from the corporation that guided their career for the past 11 years, even if the initial shock of Capitol’s decision took a while to sink in. According to Holmström, “We had about a week of being upset about being dropped, and then we remembered that we’ve been trying to get off the label for years.”

Looking back on The Dandy Warhols’ career, this move towards releasing their records on their own is really the final step for a band that has been slowly working its way towards complete self-reliance for the last few years. The quartet (Taylor-Taylor, Holmström, keyboardist Zia McCabe and drummer Brent DeBoer) have built their own studio in their hometown of Portland, Ore. (where both Earth and 2005’s Odditorium or Warlords of Mars were recorded), hired trusted friends to take promo photos and film music videos and, when Capitol seemed at a loss as to how to promote the Dandys’ albums, the group went about licensing many of their songs for commercials, TV shows and films.

Although this sort of autonomy helped the band financially (their recording studio was funded almost entirely by the money they received from licensing deals) and with their profile around the world (the use of the song “Bohemian Like You” in an ad for Vodaphone in the U.K. and New Zealand helped boost that single into the Top 5), it eventually came back to bite them.

“We did everything the way that we liked it,” says Taylor-Taylor of the period surrounding the release of the Dandy’s third album, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (which featured “Bohemian”). “Over the next four years, that record probably made Capitol between 10 and 15 million dollars profit. Before our next record was finished, now that we were ‘big,’ they started meddling. They would mix our songs without us and have photos retouched to make us look tan and shit like that.”

Now that they have control of the mixing and the photos and everything else concerning the band, the Dandys can concentrate on Earth and getting it out into the world in all its hazy, sexy rock glory. The new disc is one of the most adventurous of the band’s long career. Earth jumps from the new wave/disco leanings of “Welcome To The Third World” to the shoegazing melt of “Wasp In The Lotus” to the clattering country/glam hybrid of “The Legend Of The Last Of The Outlaw Truckers” with the jouissance and intelligence that fans have come to expect from the band.

Holmström says the genre hopping was simply an extension of the group’s maturity and comfort level with the recording process and their instruments. “Our skill levels get better and our understanding of music gets better with every record. We know what to do to make things more rockabilly or more disco.”

Earth was planned and mostly recorded with the thought that it was to be their last for Capitol, a point that Holmström claims lent the sessions a sense of direction that would help them go out on a high note. “It really needed to be as focused as Odditorium was not,” he says, also noting that the band used it as a way to “clean house,” finally putting the finishing touches on songs that have been sitting around for years. “There’s a song on it that’s one of the first seven songs that The Dandy Warhols ever wrote.”

Taylor-Taylor explains, “Sometimes it takes me a long, long, long time to finish [the songs]. Sometimes it takes weeks or days or years. Or like 10 years. I mean, come on – I want them to be perfect.”

What the Dandys’ frontman wasn’t concerned with in his songwriting was how his former benefactors would feel about the finished product. “We were never concerned with pleasing a major label,” he says. “Can you even imagine? Sitting around with knitted brows, worrying and asking each other, ‘Do you think they’ll like it?’ That’s the difference between art and entertainment: art is made for oneself, entertainment is made hoping that someone else likes it.”

Not that the band has any real worries about pleasing music lovers, having steadily increased its fan base over 15 years with many supporters coming from Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Although the Dandys aren’t hurting for followers here in the U.S., Holmström attributes their large success overseas to faster word-of-mouth promotion in smaller countries and their alternative radio models. “Here it’s all controlled,” he says. “It’s all Clear Channel or whoever, with playlists and certain things that get put on the radio because it will sell advertising space. In England, there is no advertising. It’s not about that, so there’s a much broader musical spectrum of what’s heard.”

Taylor-Taylor, though, feels they “are about the same everywhere” and that all this talk of their overseas celebrity is nothing more than hype. “Maybe just this once someone kind of made something up that sounds exotic and then a lot of other people wanted to keep it going,” he says. “Not that that ever happens.”

It’s easy to forgive that kind of sarcasm concerning the band’s public perception considering the vast amount of ballyhoo that was tossed about following the release of the documentary, Dig! The film follows the relationship between The Dandy Warhols and their friends and occasional tourmates The Brian Jonestown Massacre, contrasting the success of the Dandys with the relative obscurity of the Massacre, mostly due to the self-destructive tendencies of the latter’s frontman Anton Newcombe. The images of drug use, partying and all manner of rock star-style misdeeds have ended up haunting the Dandys since the film’s release in 2004.

The band has been especially raked over the coals by its hometown press, who seem to revel in Taylor-Taylor’s persona and infinitely quotable commentary. The unfortunate byproduct of these pieces is an odd perception of the band among music fans and hipster elite. Says Holmström, “We have a love relationship with the town; the town has a love/hate relationship with the band.”

This doesn’t extend to the entire music community though, as the Dandys have gone out of their way to support local bands and endeavors, including playing one-off benefit shows for Portland schools, helping out in the studio and onstage (Holmström has, of late, been playing bass for a local singer/songwriter who goes by the name Highway) and signing Portland’s The Upsidedown and L.A.’s Spindrift to their new record label.

The Dandys’ primary concern now is getting their music to the people, which they are doing with the help of World’s Fair, a prominent record label administration company that is aiding the band in finding distribution and marketing help for Beat The World. They are also embracing new technological possibilities, setting up a subscription service that allows fans first crack at Earth before it hits record stores and adding a few bonus tracks and extras as incentives. The new album will also be available to purchase via text message, thanks to a partnership the Dandys are entering into with Amazon (the band is tacking on a cover version of Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” for those folks who buy the disc on their phones). And if that weren’t enough, they are also streaming Earth on their website to, in Holmström’s words, “allow the fans to hear the record before anybody reviewed it so people could make up their own minds about it.”

In spite of their excitement about these new ventures (and the healthy number of subscriptions they have sold already), the Dandys are keeping their expectations low, setting their eyes on a more humble prize. “We’re working toward a dreamy place where the only people who buy our records are people who we would like to hang out with,” says Taylor-Taylor. “But that means we have to reach everyone we would like to hang out with. We’re guessing that’s maybe three million people or so. Who needs to sell more records than that?”

It’s, again, a strange comment to hear the leader of a rock band make, but something that Taylor-Taylor and the Dandys come by honestly, knowing not only that in this world of lagging CD sales and overabundance of music coming from all corners of the internet, stardom might just be the last thing a band really needs to survive.

“We’ve found that fame is the part of success that you don’t want,” says Taylor-Taylor. “To be ignored and anonymous in your life is imperative to the dream of being able to do whatever you want. Who would want fame when you could have freedom?”

www.dandywarhols.com

The Dandy Warhols tour the U.S. with The Upsidedown and Darker My Love this month, returning to the West Coast for a handful of dates in early October.

A WORD WITH

THE DANDY WARHOLS’

NEW SIGNEES,

THE UPSIDE DOWN

As The Dandy Warhols launch a new stage of their career with Beat The World Records, they will be taking a few friends with them. The band already has two other acts signed to the label, both of which are gearing up for their first releases on the new imprint. One group is fellow Portlanders, The Upsidedown, a psych-rock sextet that has been close allies and touring partners with the Dandys. The band has already released its sophomore album, Human Destination, digitally, with a physical release to follow this fall. Jason Adams, The Upsidedown’s frontman, discusses signing to Beat The World and working closely with The Dandy Warhols.

Q: How did The Dandy Warhols approach you about signing The Upsidedown to their label?

A: After the initial brushstrokes of the album [Human Destination], Courtney [Taylor-Taylor] came over and gave a first-impression take on all of the rough tracks that had been laid down and was really supportive and excited about what we had. Peter [Holmström] had been getting us a lot of breaks playing with BRMC and The Black Angels and keeping us in the mix of bands that are close to him. The Warhols have a really great community of artists and musicians and freaks that they keep around them to make sure everything stays fun, funny or strange, and I think we definitely fit the bill.

Q: What appealed to you about putting out records on Beat The World?

A: The single biggest factor in my mind is getting to work with one of the best bands in the world. The Warhols have so many songs that are so timeless, and they are the most fun to be around.

Q: You recorded at the Dandys’ studio, The Odditorium. Did they have a hand in the recording process in any capacity?

A: They definitely gave us a lot of input and great ideas. Courtney gave us a whole day of mixing ideas and just having fun exploring the sounds and layers on the song “Number 29.” Peter gave us lots of ideas and played some feedback swells on some songs. Basically, we were just blessed. We are the first and only other band that has got to record a record there. We just couldn’t be more appreciative toward them.

www.theupsidedown.com