Fine And Dandy

“I’m actually off to Europe tomorrow morning for the last European show, then a couple of weeks of downtime before we come by your way,” guitarist Peter Holstrom says. “It’s, well, good. It’s good to be working.”

they’ve maintained a sincerity and energetic edge that keeps fans flocking to them year after year, album after album, tour after tour.

For all intents and purposes, working is what The Dandy Warhols do best. This year marks two decades of the band’s existence, and through the kind of high and low points that would make anyone stop and go, ‘Hey, wait a minute…’ they’ve maintained a sincerity and energetic edge that keeps fans flocking to them year after year, album after album, tour after tour. But, as it is with everyone who’s just doing something for the fun of it, counting the years doesn’t really enter into the equation.

“You know, it doesn’t really seem like a huge amount of time,” Holstrom says. “Actually, it does when we do actually look back and see photos of us when we started, and all our friends – so many bad hairstyles. But yeah, it is actually pretty amazing when you think about it. None of us ever really imagined that it would go on for this long. When we started, I always thought like, ‘Yeah, maybe five years, that’ll be fine.’ Because that’s the longest I’ve ever done anything in my whole life. I don’t think I’ve even lived in one location for longer than five years. So I definitely had that mindset at the start. And we don’t really spend that much time looking back at anything, but it is a pretty crazy feeling when you do and go, ‘Fuck, 20 years!’”

Over that time, The Dandy Warhols’ live show has come from support slots in their native Portland to a finely tuned, well oiled machine of garage-rock splendour. Meanwhile, their casual, nonchalant attitude to making music means they could’ve been playing a bar stage back home. “We don’t really think about those kinds of things on stage, and I don’t think we ever have. We’re at the point now I think where we don’t usually notice much on stage between us, unless something goes horribly wrong or the show is perfectly amazing, which both at this point are pretty rare. There always seems to be once or twice on a tour where something happens that has never happened before, and everybody’s just blown away by it.”

And maybe every now and then I’ll blow a riff that sets the whole thing back.

That’s saying a lot for a band who first came to attention thanks to their nudity-filled shows. “Yeah, well, there’s always something new,” Holstrom laughs. “That’s the great thing about music, especially the way we do it. You know, we’re never really trying to recreate anything live. It’s always the best possible thing we can do with, you know, how our instruments are operating at the time. And there’s always the jam sections, where we can go a little bit crazy. That’s usually when new things happen, and in those moments you’re thankful for the whole thing. And maybe every now and then I’ll blow a riff that sets the whole thing back. But I like to think we’re experienced professionals these days and we thankfully avoid too many mistakes now.”

The whole idea of ‘seeing what happens’ pretty much sums up the Dandys manifesto. From those standout moments in live sets to the fluid, almost spontaneous vibe of Dandys albums, a habit of changing things at the last moment pervades their music, and arguably gives it the magic touch. “We all have really short attention spans,” Holstrom chuckles, “and we tend to get bored easy. So things have to change all the time, here and there. Even if it’s a subtle change, it makes it all more interesting.”

One of those changes was last year’s Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia tour, on which they played the seminal 2000 album, in full, around the US. It led to a live album earlier this year, another Dandys first. Holstrom says it’s all fuel to the fire of new material. “I mean we’re always working on new stuff between us, but the tour and record were new experiences. It’s refreshing to have something like that now and then.”