Entertainment
DANDY WARHOLS
Wed, Dec 03, 2003 3:29 pm
Story by Jon Forunato
Last August 14, the Dandy Warhols came to New York to perform a song from their new album, Welcome to the Monkey House, on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. But then, at 4:11 p.m., the lights went out. The band, like millions of New Yorkers, spent the rest of the night dealing with the sudden blackout.
"We walked through Times Square with the lights off," says the band’s front man, Courtney Taylor-Taylor. "People were all outside the hotels. Families were on the sidewalks complaining instead of having a good time, which is what we did."
The band ended up at a local watering hole, Siberia, drinking until 5:00 a.m. A month later, the Dandy Warhols are back in New York for two shows at the Bowery Ballroom. It’s 3:00 p.m. the day after the first show, and the Dandys’ diminutive keyboard player, Zia McCabe, is nursing a hangover at the Tribeca Grand Hotel.
Guitarist Pete Loew sits down next to McCabe. He’s not hungover. In fact, Loew’s the straight man in the group. "I swore off all drugs halfway through high school," Loew says. "Then I wanted to find out what I missed, so I went through a year of trying everything."
Loew and Taylor-Taylor met in high school in Portland, Oregon. McCabe and Taylor-Taylor had mutual friends who knew her when she worked at a coffeehouse in town. Drummer Brent DeBoer (who replaced Eric Hedford) is Taylor-Taylor’s cousin.
McCabe grew up in Battle Ground, Washington, about 45 miles north of Portland. "We had our own log cabin, horses, and ducks," she explains. "It was pretty hippie. Now I live in the ghetto, but Pete lives in the up-and-coming Pearl District, where ex-hippies grew up and became responsible."
Creating neopsychedelic music in the clean, floral-accented, pristinely renovated city along the banks of the Willamette River became a serious passion for Portland’s daring Dandy Warhols, who came together as a band in 1994 and released their formative first album, Dandys Rule OK?, on the Tim/Kerr indie label a year later.
"We try to do what no one else is doing," Taylor-Taylor says. "The way to do that is to find something obsolete or unfashionable or at least not what current trends dictate. We have a signature feel but not a signature sound."
COMPLETE STORY IN JANUARY 2004 HIGH TIMES
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Last August 14, the Dandy Warhols came to New York to perform a song from their new album, Welcome to the Monkey House, on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. But then, at 4:11 p.m., the lights went out. The band, like millions of New Yorkers, spent the rest of the night dealing with the sudden blackout.
"We walked through Times Square with the lights off," says the band’s front man, Courtney Taylor-Taylor. "People were all outside the hotels. Families were on the sidewalks complaining instead of having a good time, which is what we did."
The band ended up at a local watering hole, Siberia, drinking until 5:00 a.m. A month later, the Dandy Warhols are back in New York for two shows at the Bowery Ballroom. It’s 3:00 p.m. the day after the first show, and the Dandys’ diminutive keyboard player, Zia McCabe, is nursing a hangover at the Tribeca Grand Hotel.
Guitarist Pete Loew sits down next to McCabe. He’s not hungover. In fact, Loew’s the straight man in the group. "I swore off all drugs halfway through high school," Loew says. "Then I wanted to find out what I missed, so I went through a year of trying everything."
Loew and Taylor-Taylor met in high school in Portland, Oregon. McCabe and Taylor-Taylor had mutual friends who knew her when she worked at a coffeehouse in town. Drummer Brent DeBoer (who replaced Eric Hedford) is Taylor-Taylor’s cousin.
McCabe grew up in Battle Ground, Washington, about 45 miles north of Portland. "We had our own log cabin, horses, and ducks," she explains. "It was pretty hippie. Now I live in the ghetto, but Pete lives in the up-and-coming Pearl District, where ex-hippies grew up and became responsible."
Creating neopsychedelic music in the clean, floral-accented, pristinely renovated city along the banks of the Willamette River became a serious passion for Portland’s daring Dandy Warhols, who came together as a band in 1994 and released their formative first album, Dandys Rule OK?, on the Tim/Kerr indie label a year later.
"We try to do what no one else is doing," Taylor-Taylor says. "The way to do that is to find something obsolete or unfashionable or at least not what current trends dictate. We have a signature feel but not a signature sound."
COMPLETE STORY IN JANUARY 2004 HIGH TIMES
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