Interview: Brent DeBoer from The Dandy Warhols
Get ready to unleash your inner bohemian because Portland psych-rock legends The Dandy Warhols will be hitting Australia very soon for their highly anticipated ‘Distortland’ tour. In April we caught up with drummer Brent DeBoer who revealed all about their new album. This time we thought it was only fitting to discuss tour life, hilarious impromptu stage moments, and the three things one should always bring to a ‘Dandy Warhols show.
It’s only a couple of months until the rest of the Dandy Clan join you in Oz. How long has it been since you’ve last seen the others?
It’s been about a week and a half now since I landed back in Melbourne. We did 4 shows down the West Coast and a couple of festivals so I’ve been home for 12-13 days. Before that I was home for about 2 weeks because we had just been in Europe doing some festivals there.
I leave again for Denver, Colorado soon. We have one show, The Riot Fest, in Denver and then I fly back to Melbourne. I’m home for about nine days before I fly back to Portland to start our North American tour, and then I fly back from the end of that tour, October 15th. Then I’ve got about five or six days till the first show in Perth of the Australian tour. And then as soon as that’s over I’m flying back to America (laughs).
Wow, that’s insane! I assume you’ve accumulated a lot of frequent flyer points?
It is insane! Oh god yeah, I have so many I could probably…well I don’t think I’ll be paying for an upgrade soon, lets just say that (laughs).
How does living in Melbourne compare to living in America?
Well America has so many different regional identities there’s no way to really generalise on that because somebody born and raised and living in LA is an entirely different organism from a person born and raised living in, say Brooklyn or Minnesota or Dallas, Texas. These are all completely and utterly different people – as different as someone born and raised in Mexico City to somebody in Peru, I mean it’s just different. All the cuisines are different, and the accents and the people, their moral positions, their political views.
You could be in New Jersey and everyone is talking a certain way – I can’t do it but they’ve got that Jersey thing right? And then you take three or four subway stops and everyone is talking entirely differently. It’s as if you’ve just gone through a time machine to some other entire situation. It’s just bizarre! So that’s America for you. But I can compare Melbourne, Australia to Portland, Oregon. I think Melbourne is especially similar to Portland in many ways. Melbourne’s like a gigantic flat version of Portland with way more traffic. And really expensive drinks! (laughs)
Oh, really?
Yeah, in Portland they’ll free pour you. They’ll just be chatting to you with the bottle upside down until the cup is basically full with whisky to the top and you’re like, “ah did I just order half a bottle of whisky or what just happened here?”. Then they say,” oh would you like a beer back with that?”. That just means a free pot of beer. You’re like, “Okay sure, I’ll take a beer back,” and they give you a chaser. So that just comes free and then they go, “Alright, that’s $4!”.
I’ve worked it out: Say you order a Scotch neat and you can hardly see it on the bottom? I sort of counted my way up a Scotch neat in Portland and counted about 9 Melbourne shots and so if you’re allowed to order 9 shots in one cup, which probably isn’t allowed here, you’d probably get arrested…it would be like $100! So they’ll pour you $100 worth of Scotch and then give you a free beer and ask for $4.
How crazy! I think I need to visit Portland, Oregon!
If you like booze…I’ll tell you, when my wife moved there and we lived there for a couple of years she was just gone because she doesn’t drink beer and so she’s always ordering a vodka with this or that or whatever. She had no tolerance for it. She was like, “I need to leave,” and I’m looking at my watch, like, “Um…it’s 10”. And she was like,”I need to get out of here”. So she started just drinking soda water. So if you travel to Portland get prepared! Other than that though, Melbourne? Very similar to Portland.
What are you looking forward to most about this Oz tour?
We always just do the best we possibly can whether we’re playing in a little pub in the middle of nowhere or the Royal Festival in Music Hall, London. You just make it as trippy as possible for however many people are there. So every gig is different but we approach it the same in that we want to kill it. So yeah, just the gigs really. And I’m excited about having my Portland gang and the Dandys’ crew in my home country. We have a few days off in Melbourne so hopefully we’ll hit a couple of these nice restaurants and if the weather is good maybe sit around in my backyard and have a barbeque or something, so I’m just looking forward to that.
The classic Aussie experience!
That’s right! That’s exactly right (laughs).
Melbourne aside, is there any part of Australia you’re especially excited to visit?
The Dandys’ have played pretty much every major city in Australia, we’ve even played in some very remote places. At the very top of the country we played a festival but I can’t remember the name…it was old salt mines or something? Way the hell up there.
I play guitar in this Melbourne band Immigrant Union and we get to play all of these boutique country festivals like Boogie Fest and what’s that one…The Hills Are Alive. I would love to do one of these with the Dandys’. (Keyboardist) Zia McCabe would love it, everybody would love it. It’s the best vibe. Those kind of medium to smallish country festivals in Australia are pretty much my favourite thing ever, I just love them. I’d love to do that someday but I think this time we’re hitting all the major cities again, which is great too. But someday it will be fun for the Dandy’s to play out in the bush.
So to all the people living out in the bush, the Dandys’ are coming for you!
Hells yes! I want to play on…Aloo. How do you pronounce that? They used to call it Ayer’s Rock, I think?
Oh yeah, Uluru?
I think it would be amazing to play there! They probably keep it nice and quiet around there though. It’s a national park, isn’t it? We would just play on the top of it. How completely terrible would that be? (Laughs). We’d get in a bit of trouble there, I think.
It would certainly make the headlines! So what have been some of the best performance highlights occurring in the spur of the moment?
(Laughs) Well our 10th Anniversary as a band actually took place in Australia. It was a concert in Melbourne …I think at the Metro? Back then we played 3 hours and 20 minutes each night and we would call it ‘An Evening with The Dandy Warhols’. We would have no opening band or anything; we would just basically play two 1 hour and 30-minute sets.
During the break, to celebrate our 10th Anniversary we had (Travis) Grassman on the keyboards, he’s the shirtless bartender in all of our music videos, take his shirt off and put a towel over his shoulder. They drew the curtain back and there’s a beautiful bar set up on stage. We all had a stool and just went up to order champagne from Grassman.
The idea was he was going to pour us all champagne and we were going to raise our glasses and sing Happy Birthday to the Dandy Warhols with everybody in the room. We walk up there and Grassman squats down to open the fridge and it’s locked. Everyone’s cheering that we were going to pop the champagne and there’s bottles of champagne in the glass fridge but it won’t open and he’s like, yelling to the side of the stage, “Does anybody have the key to this?”.
Everyone’s shaking their head, nobody knows and it’s just about to get awkward but then Grassman just leans up next to the bar and like a horse he kicks his leg back, shatters the glass and pours the champagne out (laughs). And then he pops the top and we all had champagne. I thought that was pretty funny.
Zia’s dove into the crowd a few times and crowd surfed to the back of the room. She’s kind of our wild child…what else?…I got hit in the face with a full can of beer one time…I’m trying to think if anything weird happened on stage. We had half the audience join us on stage a few times. Just 20-30 people up there dancing and going mental (laughs). We like to invite bands we’ve been on the road with to join us for the last song on the last show of a tour and that’s turned into an absolute free-for-all a few times – clothes coming off…antics, y’ know?
Yes, I’ve heard about your ‘clothes coming off’ antics…
Well this was audience members but yeah, back in the day the Dandys used to play naked a lot!
Lastly, what are three things Dandy Warhol fans should always bring to a show?
A zenned-out headspace ready to zone out and have a trip, maybe bring a little bit of extra money to grab me a scotch on the rocks with a twist (laughs), and bring a fat doobie. I probably shouldn’t but am I allowed to suggest people bring something as harmless as Mary Jane to a concert in Australia? I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say that. I mean that’s how the music’s made…and maybe if you’re like me bring a head flask.
But is that another thing I shouldn’t suggest people do? There might be a rise at the venues that are hosting our band, hoping to make money off of drink sales. Maybe I shouldn’t say that either (laughs). Just bring yourself and bring a good attitude because this is not an angsty situation, this is all about beauty and expanding the mind you know? Be prepared!
Read our earlier interview with Brent DeBoer on their latest album ‘Distortland’ HERE and our album review HERE
The Dandy Warhols ‘Distortland’ 2016 Australian Tour
WED 26 OCT
Metro City, Perth
THU 27 OCT
HQ, Adelaide
SAT 29 OCT
Eatons Hill Hotel, Brisbane
SUN 30 OCT
Parkwood Tavern, Gold Coast
THU 3 NOV
ANU Bar, Canberra
FRI 4 NOV
Big Top, Sydney
SAT 5 NOV
Palais Theatre, Melbourne
Get Tickets HERE
