“That was from 25 years ago,” announces Dandy Warhols frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor, by way of reminder, after the applause from tonight’s packed crowd dies down in the wake of the group’s epic “Godless,” the opening track from his band’s 2000 breakout LP, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia.
Twenty-five years. Jesus Christ. Where did all the time go?
“One thing that became clear with the release of Thirteen Tales is that the Dandys—in contempt of critics and, occasionally, themselves—have gelled into God’s own songwriting machine. The album defies any effort to dislike it: It’s a slobbering, tail-wagging, Golden Lab of a record, filled with more good-time party music per minute than anything else released in 2000,” I wrote in this very magazine, that very year. It’s a strange feeling: The Dandys were Portland indie-rock mainstays (if bucking against the run of play from the “cooler than thou” critics of the moment, back then) during a moment when Elliott Smith, Modest Mouse, M. Ward, Built To Spill, Sleater-Kinney and Stephen Malkmus’ Jicks dominated not only the local scene but had experienced international-level recognition. The Dandys were never really critical favorites but, rather, the people’s band: The shows were sold-out, could be counted upon for a raging good time and featured a group you saw on MTV and, occasionally, heard on the radio. I feel like I grew up with the Dandys, and clearly, so did a thousand other people at the Crystal Ballroom this evening.
So I stand here tonight as the classic-era Dandys—Taylor-Taylor, guitarist Peter Holmstrom, keyboardist/bassist Zia McCabe and drummer Brent “Fathead” DeBoer—take their assigned places onstage in front of a sold-out hometown crowd of friends, family and super-fanboys/girls to celebrate 30 improbable years of togetherness and ratty rock ’n’ roll. And if we weren’t having such a goddamn good time dancing, singing along and jumping up and down on the Crystal Ballroom’s infamously wobbly “floating” dance floor, we might even get a little bit emotional thinking about it all.
McCabe has long served as the band’s spokesperson from stage, and she periodically takes a moment between songs to add some background color to the proceedings: “The moms and dads, the boyfriends and girlfriends, are all here tonight.” (Most of the band’s immediate family is actually seated in a narrow lane directly in front of me, and they are very busily snapping photos of the Dandys and one another on this momentous occasion.) “I’m not even sure that my daughter knows that this song was written about her father, who is over there, running around tuning guitars,” she laughs of the song “Search Party” from 2016’s Distortland, which was written in honor of her ex-husband and the group’s tour manager. Tonight’s show has a celebratory feel and an intimacy, too: This is the Dandys’ town, it has been since their inception, and their songs often feature bits and pieces of Portland ephemera recognizable to locals.
The night prior to this show, guitarist Holmstrom could be found beneath his signature slouchy hat serving as bassist in the band Sun Atoms during a label showcase for Little Cloud Records, a Portland-based psych-rock concern. The acts last evening—Tremours (a sort of a Telescopes-like project), LSD And The Search For God (My Bloody Valentine acolytes) and the aforementioned Sun Atoms (the midway point between early Mercury Rev and Black Angels)—were all considerably noisy, indier and much more Velvets-indebted than the Warhols, which is ironic considering that the Dandys are named after Uncle Lou’s first patron and had an early tune called “Tony (This Song Is Called Lou Weed”).
Holmstrom has always been the music lifer in the band. He’s played in multiple side projects over the years (including Rebel Drones and his own Pete International Airport; the group taking its name from an ambient track from the Dandys’ 1997 major-label debut, The Dandy Warhols Come Down), can occasionally be found manning the counter at Portland’s Black Book Guitars and has consistently served as the muso member of the Dandys responsible for its most outre moments. He’s essentially a younger Peter Buck (have guitar, will travel), and his playing with the Dandys this evening ranges from EBow droning (“Godless”) to violin-bow swoops, Eastern-flavored solos and fills (the rollicking “Every Day Should Be A Holiday”) and all manner of signal-bent, effects-laden chords and runs in between.
Then there’s Dandys frontman and captain Taylor-Taylor: the group’s visionary and primary songwriter, whose deceptively simple tunes and tongue-in-cheek lyrics always gave the Dandys the outward appearance of playing dumb for the cheap seats but with enough of a wink to make sure you knew how smart it all was. Taylor-Taylor majors in louche stories from the morning after. His sardonic humor is peppered throughout the band’s catalog and is on full display this evening as the group winds its way through 30 years of music ranging from “Ride” (from 1995 debut Dandys Rule OK) to hits such as “We Used To Be Friends” and “Boys Better” to the more metallic, scruffy music featured on this year’s Rockmaker. The group makes an especially game effort at covering AC/DC’s “Hells Bells,” stepping aside so that Sun Atoms multi-instrumentalist Mars de Ponte can play the song’s melody on trumpet.
Taylor-Taylor is something of an entrepreneur. He started the band’s own record label (now folded), has turned the group’s clubhouse-cum-studio/rehearsal space the Odditorium into a party place for hire (including a fantastic wine bar open to the public called The Old Portland) and seems to have something of a sixth sense about the zeitgeist. (He’s also taken pains to point out how bad the band is at actual business: “We don’t know what we’re doing—it’s like trying to have children run a household”). But when McCabe and Fathead temporarily leave the stage for a moment mid-show, Taylor-Taylor immediately fills the gap by whipping out a solo cover of Kristin Hersh classic “Your Ghost”: flawless, no notes, 10/10, indie cred fully on display.
By the end of the evening, we’ve been treated to everything this deceptively crafty crew is capable of doing after three decades of collaboration: top-of-the-pops Dandys (calling-card-for-greatness “Bohemian Like You,” “Solid”), shoegaze Dandys (oldies “Best Friend” and “Ride”), heavy-metal Dandys (yes “Hells Bells,” but also new track “I’d Like To Help You With Your Problem”) and even Christmas-carol Dandys (a twinkling cover of “The Little Drummer Boy”).
The Dandys have entered a kind of regency period as the young Rolling Stones of their generation: elegantly wasted, songs for days and as many ways to interpret them as you have small-batch bourbons behind the bar. They’re earned their rightful spot at the altar of “great Portland music” (hell, just “great music” period), and tonight served as a two-hour-plus musical case study explaining why and how that happened.
Dandys (still) rule, OK? Dig!
—Corey duBrowa
