The Lemonheads

“car button cloth”

* Evan Dando – guitar, vocals
* Murph – drums
* The Legendary Bill Gibson – bass, guitar
* plus special guests

car button cloth

“In second grade we were told to go home and fill up our tub and put things in it and see what floated and what sank. I had a race car and it sank, I had a piece of cloth and it sank, and a button. They all sank. I wrote that all of these things sank. It was an experiment in school.”

Meet today’s Lemonheads Murph (rhymes with Smurf) – The unsung hero of Dinosaur Jr. finally getting the critical recognition he deserves following the release of “Martin & Me.”

The Legendary Bill Gibson – one of Australia’s finest exports, Gibson previously played with both the Eastern Dark and the New Christs, two of the best bands of the ’80s Aussie punk explosion.

John Strohm – They just can’t seem to lose this guy. Three-time Lemonhead Strohm holds the distinction of being the seventh, tenth, and thirteenth Lemonhead, originally as the drummer and now as guitarist. Strohm has sublet his apartment for the next three years and will be on the bus on October 1st.

Name-drop section In addition to dozens of the world’s most glamorous supermodels and starlets, Mr. Dando knows quite a few brilliant songwriters, and he collaborated with several of them on the new album: Eugene Kelly (Eugenius/Vaselines), and Epic Soundtracks (Swell Maps/These Immortal Souls). Tom Morgan (of Smudge and Sneeze fame, not to mention Godstar) will be cashing royalty checks for two songs. And yes, you are absolutely correct: the piano on “C’mon Daddy” is played by none other than Spacehog’s Royston Langdon!

The mad genius producer Bryce Goggin (soon to be a household name) sports a resume including the likes of Pavement, the Breeders, Spacehog and about five dozen Elliot Sharp and Zeena Parkins albums. Not only did Goggin produce 14 album tracks and 12 B-sides, he snuck out to get married and honeymooned on Block Island while the band was tuning up. On “car button cloth,” Goggin rewrote the producer’s textbook with new techniques like “Lead Singer Lying On His Back Under The Console” and “Hide Murph’s Drums In The Control Room Where He’ll Never Find ‘Em.”

* The Marketing Plan
* Great video
* Catchy radio single
* Info-mercials
* Stax/Volt boxed sets for all the rock critics
* No vacations for anyone at TAG or Atlantic this year
* Tour starts October 1st

Hey Ladies… He’s alive… He’s single… He’s got a new record!

Between 1991 and 1994, it seemed like EVAN DANDO was everywhere. His face was everywhere, his voice was everywhere, and virtually every minute that he wasn’t touring, he was either recording or getting into some nutty gossip column incident. After two gold albums, countless magazine covers, video smashes and hundreds of live gigs, Evan sat a spell and took a rest.

“I was on the road for almost three years,” he says, “and that sorta took the will to do music out of me for awhile. We worked so hard for so long that I just needed to take a break. When we started the band it was like a hobby, but then it became bigger: press and videos and photo shoots, and that kinda burned me out, too. On the last album, all of that stuff even seeped into some of the songs, so I started to think about living a regular life, so maybe then I could go back to writing songs for their own sake.”

Yeah, he’s a celebrity and he’s kinda cute, but listen to the songs! “I always thought all of that stuff was really funny. I didn’t expect it, but I was up for it – I mean, I really enjoy performing and I like it when people hear our music. I never thought that it could actually detract from people’s perception of me as a serious musician. I never thought that things like getting my picture taken by Bruce Weber could make people think, ‘He must not be a good musician if he does that.’ I don’t regret it; it was just a funny period in my life. I had my fun, and then it got really ugly, and I split for awhile.”

Songs? Fourteen of them, that after just a listen or two bob to the surface of your brain. Distinctive hard-edged pop songs like “It’s All True,” “If I Could Talk I’d Tell You,” “Something’s Missing,” and “One More Time” (which, according to Evan, was written in a dream – he woke up and recorded it in his pajamas). Then some intensely dark rockers: the majestic “Break Me,” “Tenderfoot,” and the turbulent epic, “Losing Your Mind.” Darker still are the inexorable “6ix” (ref. Gwyneth Paltrow’s severed head in Seven), “Hospital,” and Dando’s arrangement of the peculiar and disturbing traditional country song, “Knoxville Girl.” (Evan recommends the Louvin Brothers’ version on their late ’50s album “SATAN IS REAL.”)

No two songs are even near alike. Dando’s songwriting ranges from reverence to irreverence, from folk prettiness to aggro… even within each track there’s an overlay of light and dark, each rising to the surface when you least expect it. Rock and country and soul all mixed up, and in totally unpredictable proportions. Effortless hooks, and lyrics that are instantly memorable but head-scratching when you stop to think about ’em. “car button cloth” is a record that redefines the direction of one of alternative rock’s most consistently bold and soulful artists.

A decade of Lemonheads

Long story made short A teenaged Evan Dando formed The Lemonheads in high school in 1986, and that summer the group put out their first self-released record, “Laughing All The Way To The Cleaners.” Since then, the Lemonheads lineup has been continuously volatile: more than a dozen different configurations over the years, all sorts of bit parts and cameos, with Evan as the only constant. If you add in Evan’s numerous side-projects, the Lemonheads family tree takes on the appearance of a very large Gordian knot.

Very short Following three indie releases in three years (including a chart-topper with a cover of Suzanne Vega’s “Luka”), Atlantic signed the Lemonheads in 1990 and released the much-praised (but little purchased) “LOVEY.” Within a year, Evan Dando was the only original Lemonhead.

The big breakthrough It came in for Evan in 1992, the year his smash cover of “Mrs. Robinson” brought the brilliant album, “IT’S A SHAME ABOUT RAY,” deserved acclaim – 800,000 sales, top of the college charts, CMJ’s “Album Of The Year,” and the beginning of a beautiful relationship with MTV’s “Buzz Bin.” The 1993 follow-up, “COME ON FEEL THE LEMONHEADS,” brought another hit, “Into Your Arms,” more media frenzy, relentless touring, blah, blah, blah…

So what’s he been doing since then? During his hiatus, Evan did a solo acoustic tour last year (’til he lost his guitar), sat in with Ben Lee, appeared in the movie Heavy (which garnered awards at Cannes and Sundance), guested on albums by Mike Watt and Kirsty MacColl, and cemented his alternative cred with a duet on Tony Bennett’s MTV Unplugged…

Thrills to come… Simply put, this is the most potent Lemonheads lineup ever, and “car button cloth” is quite simply a super fucking album. Crank up the stereo and hide your daughters: The Lemonheads are back…

* LEMONHEADS SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY*
* Laughing All The Way To The Cleaners EP (Huh-Bag) 1986
* Hate Your Friends (Taang) 1987
* Creator (Taang) 1988
* Lick (Taang) 1989
* Lovey (Atlantic) 1990
* Favorite Spanish Dishes EP (Atlantic/City Slang (Eur.)) 1991
* It’s A Shame About Ray (Atlantic) 1992
* Come On Feel The Lemonheads (Atlantic) 1993
* car button cloth (TAG/Atlantic) 1996