It’s a Shame About Ray, the Lemonheads’ 1992 magnum opus, is melancholy and gorgeous. Take its jangly title track, where singer-guitarist Evan Dando laments the disappearance of a vague fictional character, or the acoustic “My Drug Buddy,” a junkie ballad more tender than the average love song.
This was always the conundrum with the Lemonheads. Dando’s lyrics revealed tumult, sure, but his honeyed vocals and earworm melodies – and his movie star looks, which pushed him from the Boston punk scene into Reality Bites and People magazine – nearly washed the weight of his words away.
Nearly.
Dando outlines his struggles with substance abuse, including the less-than-flattering performance videos that inspired him to quit heroin in 2021, in his new memoir, Rumors of My Demise (Gallery Books). On the phone with the Chronicle, he offers more meandering, yet equally enlightening, anecdotes about Love Chant, the Lemonheads’ first album of original material in nearly 20 years.
He wrote “Roky,” Love Chant’s penultimate track, while in Austin as a tribute to Roky Erickson, for instance. The Lemonheads played since-shuttered Red River venue Barracuda the night the 13th Floor Elevators singer died in 2019, and Dando came up with the song’s riff at soundcheck.
Years later, “Nick Saloman from the Bevis Frond helped me finish it,” Dando says. “He was like, ‘No problem. I’ll have it done in half an hour.’ And then he did! He can just write a song in half an hour, every time. He’s really wild, that guy. I love him.”
Saloman is one of many contributors to the highly collaborative artist’s new LP. Longtime co-writer Tom Morgan, credited on Ray and its 1993 follow-up Come on Feel the Lemonheads, also worked on Love Chant, as did Adam Green of the Moldy Peaches, John Strohm of the Blake Babies, and others.
Lead single “Deep End” reintroduces the band with a tumbling, asymmetrical drum beat and jagged guitar chords, paired with Dando’s famously quippy lyrics: “Tell me, can you keep a secret?/ Can I keep your cigarettes?” Former Lemonhead Juliana Hatfield backs him up in the verses, while J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. scrawls a sleazy, languid solo in between their harmonies.
“It’s just amazing,” Dando says of his cohorts. “I’m so lucky because I can call on these people and they never let me down.”
Inspired by minutiae-probing works ranging from Seinfeld to My Struggle, Dando soundtracks “stupid little everyday stuff” with a genius pop sensibility, roughened by raucous delivery and the very real possibility that the wheels could fall off at any moment. (Though he’s sober from hard drugs, the songwriter still drinks and takes other substances.)
This precarious balance, to Dando, is why his music has endured, and inspired the next generation.
“When [bands are] too good it sucks sometimes, and when they’re not good enough it sucks, so we get the right exact quality level to go, ‘Fuck it, that looks fun,’” he opines.
“That’s why I wanted to be in a band,” Dando continues. “I saw the Replacements – I saw Tommy and Paul having a joke where no one could hear it – and I was like, ‘That looks like fun.’”
Backed on the road by bassist Farley Glavin and former Radish drummer John David Kent, the Lemonheads are in the midst of an extensive North American tour. Live shows haven’t always gone smoothly for the performer, but calling from the road, he’s in good spirits.
“I’m just trying to stay busy,” Dando says, revealing that he has both an album of Townes Van Zandt covers and another original LP ready to drop next year. He’s also been painting; he aims to sell his pieces at the Lemonheads merch stand. Drugs, or the artist’s abstinence from them, feel top of mind when he offers an analogy: “Busy restaurants are always the best, you know? You got to work. Human beings gotta do something. … If it stays busy, it stays clean, and it stays working.”
“It’s like dogs dancing,” Dando reckons. “It’s not that great, but it’s amazing it happens at all.”
The Lemonheads perform at Mohawk on Friday, Dec. 12.