THE DANDY WARHOLS
The SiS Interview by Rusty Roberts

In the summer of 1997, your favorite writer was 13 and a band from Portland was about to come into his life. It was on a hot summer night that Matt Pinfield introduced me to one of my all-time favorite bands. Before the video started, before the first snare was hit, I knew I'd love The Dandy Warhols based on their hip sounding name alone. And when that three-minute feel good hit of the summer "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth" was over, I was sold. My life as I knew it was forever changed by a song about heroin being passé.

Flash forward eleven years, and the band is still at the top of their game. Freed from major label conundrums, the band used their Beat The World imprint to give the world their most ambitious album to date in …Earth To The Dandy Warhols… One listen is all it takes to realize Earth is not just the album they’ve been wanting to make for years, but quite possibly the best album of their career. As they packed up their gear and hit the road in the states this week, bassist Zia McCabe took the time to answer questions about their new album, their lives on the road, and questions only a fan like me would think to ask.

SIS: How liberating does it feel to be on your own now, free from the confines of a major label? How did you guys come to work with World’s Fair to distribute Beat The World?

ZM: It feels great. These are really exciting times for us, lots of freedom but even more work. We have never been so busy. And we we're looking for a company to work with that was smart, progressive and willing to structure the partnership in a creative way. World's Fair best fit our needs.

SIS: You guys are following an up and coming trend of releasing records digitally before a physical CD would be available in stores. What was the inspiration behind this method and the subscription service you are offering to your fans?

ZM: Well typically the music for an album is done long before all the artwork and credits and such are turned in. We were feeling very impatient about getting our music out there and all you need is the music for a digital release. We are always looking for creative ways to run our business and having the advantage of being on a major label all those years it's important for us to try new things, new ways of getting our music, merchandise, whatever to our fans, to help blaze the trails and set examples for other up and coming artists, the way we looked to Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead for ideas.

SIS: Was their anything different about the recording process for Earth as opposed to how you guys recorded previous efforts?

ZM: The recording process was the same: we have songs, we go in the studio, we come up with more songs. It was getting the album out that was so different.

SIS: I know the majority of songs have been written by [singer] Courtney [Taylor-Taylor], but does the rest of the band have any influence on the songwriting process?

ZM: Usually, Courtney comes to us with something he wrote at home - some chord changes, a melody and sometimes some lyrics. Then we play it all together and flesh the whole thing out. I would say we have the biggest influence on arrangement and of course we write our own parts so a lot of the hooks and solos are ours.

SIS: “And Then I Dreamt Of Yes” was once known among fans as the greatest song that went unreleased, until now that is. What was your inspiration for including it on Earth?

ZM: It's a cool thing that we've been around for so long that we can look back over our career and our catalog of songs to find what got left behind. This was the first record that's got songs that were written over 10 years previous to their being recorded.

SIS: In a recent interview I watched with XFM, Courtney had mentioned that Earth was as close to a perfect record as he had ever come to making. Would you agree with that, or do you prefer another one of your albums have that title?

ZM: It's too hard to compare a new album to an old album, it's much easier for me to compare (1995’s) Dandy’s Rule OK to (1997’s) ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down. For me Earth is just too fresh to look at objectively. I sure had a hell of a good time recording it and now performing it.

SIS: Over the last few years, members of the band have gotten married and I know you had baby Matilda. Does being married and starting a family have any sort of change to the band’s touring dynamic? Do spouses and family members come along on the road?

ZM: Yes of course it changes things, we have all sort of turned away from the party life and shifted more towards family life. Having Matilda on the road turned out a bit different than I expected but in a good way, I really like how the band and crew are influenced by having a child on the road. It seems that people want to be and do their best around her. And some of these people have accepted the fact that they may never be parents. We are truly capitalizing on the theory of 'it takes a village to raise a child' and we are doing our best to raise an intelligent, privileged and unique individual. And beyond my family, we have the 'wives' out for portions of the tour, which is refreshing and keeps the boys from getting too homesick.

SIS: What are the band’s tour plans for Earth when it comes to what you’ll be playing? Will you be mixing the set up every night, or do you plan on sticking to the same set more or less?

ZM: What usually happens when we tour behind a new album is we start out playing close to the entire album and as the tours go by it balances out to about the same number of songs of each album we keep around the ones that are the most consistent live. We are always looking to improve our setlist and keep it fun, sometimes it will be working so well we'll keep it the same for a while but there is always a discussion about it before each show.

SIS: I know you guys have signed some other acts to your Beat The World imprint, including The Upsidedown and Spindrift. How big of a roster do you predict Beat The World having? Do you wish to keep it small and just bands you are friendly with in Portland, or do you wish to expand upon that?

ZM: We're not really sure at the moment. I know we won't be signing any more bands than the five bands we've been talking with. Beyond that I think it would be wise to keep it fairly small, maybe four new acts a year maximum.

SIS: Now that you are your own operation, from label to recording studio, to place to shoot videos and do who knows what else - can we expect future releases from you guys a lot quicker? I know that among the fan community there has been talk and speculation of lots of things (a 10th Anniversary show DVD, The Dandy Warhols Are Sound), can you divulge any information as to what may be in the pipeline for the near future?

ZM: I'm not exactly sure which releases I'm supposed to talk about but I can promise you that yes, now that we are doing everything ourselves we will be able to produce and release our various projects much faster. I can also promise that there are several projects in the works. Stay tuned.

SIS: From the perspective of a lifelong fan (11 years and running), I felt that (2005’s) Odditorium or Warlords of Mars seemed, while having good moments like “All The Money Or The Simple Life Honey” and (personal favorite) “Love Is The New Feel Awful”, that overall the record seemed a bit unfocused. Would you say it was to fulfill a contract with Capitol, or were there other factors that went in to the making of that record that affected the outcome?

ZM: I think the fact that we had a contract to fulfill with a company that didn't really seem to be behind us gave us the opportunity to experiment. I wouldn't want to be in a band the suffered from too much pressure to release albums with too many expectations. We are artists after all and deserve freedom to record and release whatever we want. Don't you agree?