On The Cover - Evan Dando

Gigwise is beckoned into a smoky hotel room with weed paraphernalia and booze strewn all over the table (come on, I’m hardly ruining Evan Dando’s squeaky clean image here!), Joni Mitchell playing quietly in the background.

Suddenly, there he is. The boy wonder of brilliant Indie pop with the Midas touch for melody, smiling beatifically and strumming along on his acoustic guitar. So, which Evan Dando will we get today? The perpetual stoner? The allegedly difficult interviewee? The grunge-era survivor still stunning audiences across the globe with those brilliant songs and unpredictable covers at idiosyncratic but excellent live shows?

Well, speaking of the covers he immediately pick up a copy of the artwork for forthcoming covers record ‘Varshons’ and intently explains that the entire idea for the record, featuring covers of everyone from Gram Parsons to Wire to Leonard Cohen, came from this painting. So, what we really need to know is: why a covers album and why now?

“I had this painting, which is done by a contemporary of ours, he does Op art and I hadn’t quite finished my own record so I just thought ‘**** it’.

“Now I have to make great haste with great honor because I don’t think I‘ll make fine hand pickings for the handmaidens of Odin” he adds with a wry grin, referring to getting on with his next original record.

Speaking of handmaidens, Evan has some unlikely collaborators on this record in the form of celebrity friends Kate Moss and Liv Tyler.
“The Harpies. They are both godparents of the same child and I’m the godfather. I was in a movie with Liv in 94, Kate and me got real close at a christening. Kate was perfect for ‘Dirty Robot’ (originally by Dutch techno artists Arling and Cameron) she has the coolest, meanest voice“.

The Godfather of Indie rock? It somehow fits. Gibby Haynes, ringleader of the demented Butthole Surfers provided the inspirations for many of the covers by making Evan eclectic mix-tapes and serving production duties on ‘Varshons’. Evan speaks enthusiastically about his inspiring friend: “Gibby is actually really smart. What’s sanity, what’s insanity? He opens up that question. I perform with Gibby, we’re called the Time Whales”.

He starts singing one of their songs, A cappella: “I feel lucky tonight, lets get stoned and take someone’s life, hard liquor and a rental car, gonna hold up a bank, Inhale deeply and beat up whores”. What?? That sounds more like the vapid hedonism and casual misogyny of mainstream hardcore rap but it turns out to be a bit of a running joke to confound the expectations of the audience. “We’ve been doing some gigs at hipster venues and everyone is horrified. We’ve made tons of records on cassette”.

Moving on, Evan realises that I’m from ‘Up North’ as his wife is originally from Newcastle upon Tyne. We digress, discussing North East metal titans Venom and Penetration. “They inspired this generation of homicidal Norwegians,” says Evan, not entirely serious.

He tells me that the current line- up of Lemonheads, featuring the original drummer from hardcore group Zero Boys and John Perry (guitar / backing vocals), on loan from his day job in The Only Ones are touring in May, returning to the UK this September.

Somewhat inevitably, talk turns to his illustrious past as a celebrated pop songwriter and kind of druggy poster boy during the so-called Grunge era. If the past is a foreign country then it is one that Evan is comfortable traveling to, for the most part. To oversimplify, The Lemonheads arguably blossomed with ‘It’s a shame about Ray’: an album of perfect, concise and affecting pop songs in an age of predominantly masculine traditional grunge and rock.

“I was kind of rebelling against that. Grunge was just like (Lemonhead’s first record) ‘Hate your friends’ but with sexier drumming. Those guys did it better.Even my Mother was horrified when I played her ‘It’s a shame about Ray’ she was like ‘Where’s the loud guitar? It’s just getting popular'. I have that perverse thing, I had to go the other way and my real strengths were somewhere else”.