It’s hard to believe but it’s twenty two years since Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Peter Holmström formed The Dandy Warhols.
Teaming up with keyboardist Zia McCabe and drummer Eric Hedford, the band found mainstream success with their second album The Dandy Warhols Come Down. Which featured the catchy singles Not If You Were The Last Junkie on Earth and Everday Should Be a Holiday.
Hedford was replaced in ’98 by Brent Deboer and the line up has stayed the same ever since. The band had had s a string of successful albums and hits with Bohemian Like You, Godless, The Last High and We Used to be Friends.
Later this month the band will be back in Perth playing their popular hits and songs from their most recent album, their ninth studio product, Distortland.
Graeme Watson spoke to Peter Holmström ahead of the band’s Australian tour.
What was it like recording Distortland, was it a slower process that your previous albums?
It was about average. It was a long break between this one and the last album, mainly because we did a re-issue of Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia, and we toured that doing the whole record live.
Then we put out the live version of that album and then got onto recording Distortland. I think the overall process was roughly the same. It’s defiantly not the longest time we’ve spent on an album.
What’s it like when you get to go out and play a whole album from start to finish, is it more rewarding than having to play the greatest hits?
It was interesting at first, it was definitely an interesting exercise. Trying to re-create the record every night was hard to find artistically satisfying. We, as a band, have never tried to do anything exactly like the record and once the novelty of that wore off – it became difficult for us. We’d never tour it again, we might do one offs… maybe.
One of your band mates Brent Deboer now lives in Melbourne, meaning we can claim you as being 25% Australian, but does that make it hard to work as a band?
Honestly, you’d think it might, but the way everyone’s lives are. I don’t think if he lived in Portland we’d be any better rehearsed. It would just be easier to schedule the rehearsal.
How do you like to spend your time when your on tour and in a city, what do you get up to?
It depends on the city. I like running around and looking at shops and museums. Mainly guitar shops, but I like to see local shops. It’s fun being able to buy whatever you want to!
I used to buy a lot of music but now you can buy music from any where in the world. So that’s become less interesting to me when I’m in a city.
You’ve spoken recently about how development in Portland is making the city lose some of it’s character.
Yes, that happens everywhere. They tear down old buildings and put up new ones. The new ones are never as interesting as the old ones. In Portland it really seems that the skimp on the design on things, there’s all these ugly new buildings.
The people who move to Portland though, they general have brought with them their skills as human beings so we have lots of cool new restaurants and stuff.
Tell me about your photography, what kind of things do you take photos of.
I don’t know where that came from and how it got to be in our official bio.
Is it not true, that you’re a photographer?
I went to art school and did painting and sculpture and all sorts of different art forms. I’m into visual art forms and I still like all that.
I’ve dabbled in photography, i had some photos up in an art show. They were photos I shot on an iPhone. I still take photos on my iPhone but I don’t know how it got into our bio – once it’s there you can;t take it back.
I always take photos of buildings. My old phone had this weird effect that would make anything cool. You could take a photo of garbage can and it would look good. I have thousands of photos of my phone.
Courtney Taylor-Taylor recently mentioned in an interview that you once went to the movies with David Bowie.
Yes I did. My wife was on the tour and she had nothing to do, because she wasn’t playing or anything. So she started teaching yoga to some of Bowie’s band.
We had a day off in Brussels. Some of Bowie’s band wanted my wife to give a yoga class, so we stayed in Brussels instead of going on to the next town.
We were at the hotel, I sat around while my wife taught the class, then afterwards she came down and said “Do you want to go see the second Matrix film with Sterling (Campbell) and everybody?”
I was like “Sure, yeah that will be fun.” Then Bowie came down too. The whole experience of going to the movies is different when a celebrity like Bowie goes with you.
You don’t go through the front door, your met out back and then they usher you upstairs through these hallways and then all of a suddenly you’re in the theatre. Then people arrive with armfuls of popcorn and soda pop for you.
Then the movie was in French with subtitles, Bowie left about half way through, but I thought the whole experience was fascinating.
I didn’t realise at the time, but because I watched him perform every night of the tour, and listened to his sound check every day, I’ve seen more Bowie shows than anyone else. I don’t think I’ll ever seen anyone as many times as I saw Bowie.
Do you think there’ll be a time when the Dandy Warhols aren’t on tour all the time?
Yes, because we’re getting pretty worn out. But no, because it’s how we make a living. You don’t make money off record sales anymore and you don’t make as money from licencing, because it is cool for bands to do, it’s not considered selling out anymore, so there’s more competition and they don’t pay you as much now. So we’ll probably always be on tour as long as the band exists.
Why do you think Australia loves The Dandy Warhols so much?
I don’t know, I’ve never figured it out. Obviously we connected somehow, especially with Thirteen Tales, but even before that. You guys just haven’t let go like some other counties have. It seems every record gets given a good chance in Australia.
The Dandy Warhols are playing Metro City on Wednesday 26 October, tickets are available now.
Graeme Watson
