Come On Feel The Sunset: Evan Dando and Knowing Just When To Say Goodbye
by Howard Cressi-Stallworth
The age of the used record store has gone by faster than a grade in a school year. I spent my youth in plenty of them skimming lightly dust caked and yellowed Rykodisc CD cases and even deeper amber colored cassettes trying to find those albums of bygone years that suited that week's emotional feeling whether it was ‘90s lo-fi, ‘80s college rock, or ‘70s punk. Most music of the ‘00s that I loved I downloaded, and wasn’t often something I found in used record stores. If it came from the ‘00s, it was often brand new (often too new to be tossed aside and considered used). It wasn’t until I was much older that I finally saw used copies of ‘00s era Radiohead, Outkast, and Burial CDs in stores, but I didn’t see many of them because by that point they had started closing and people stopped buying CDs.
But before most of them starting closing off however came a trip in high school to a mixed used CD /vintage clothing store/kitchen sink style store that you swore came straight out of a mid ‘90s Chicago apartment block, all brick and open air with a woman in the store who looked like Janeane Garofalo's baggage handler. If the dream of the ‘90s wasn’t alive in Portland it sure was here.
Amidst old clothes thrown aside and price hiked and written up as “vintage” and other chatty hipster types was a small yet thin and tall bedside stand filled with CDs stacked on top of each other, the kind of stand you’d spot in your first college girlfriends apartment with pictures of her recently departed high school friends and a family member that looks nothing like her. This stand too was filled with memories of those long gone unseen, among them Natalie Merchant CDs, Sonic Youth singles, and Money Marks debut all lumped together like a CMJ editors wet dream. It was the kind of display clearly placed to get rid of items (it was right next to the entrance) but also to show that they had range. However among them were a few CDs I would come to love throughout the summer all for $2 each. The Beatles’ debut Please Please Me, The Misfits’ Walk Among Us, George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, and an MTV CD compilation of live performances on 120 Minutes.
While I loved all those albums (some even to this day) the MTV compilation intrigued me the most. It gave me an insight into how forgotten and remembered a decade can be. Those that lived in the ‘90s will tell you it wasn’t all grunge and boy bands and this compilation reminded me “holy shit The Verve Pipe was totally a thing” and “Victoria Williams, which member of Pearl Jam hyped her up?” That there were bands that were huge pushes to an audience that either didn’t catch on or were huge but somehow became forgotten was an interesting lesson in understanding context and history of an era.
While I enjoyed the understated and underappreciated Kimberly Austin by Porno For Pyros and the fantastic semi-unplugged version of Aeroplane by Bjork my personal favorite was Evan Dando’s acoustic version of It’s About Time. Evan Dando and The Lemonheads were huge for a brief moment in Alt Rocks heyday, not just to the ever growing indie/alt audience but among regular fans of music as well. Their cover of Mrs. Robinson was a huge rock radio hit and Evan graced more covers of magazines than Eddie Vedder certainly did, often with his tall frame and chiseled looks garnering him the swoons of men and women everywhere. Although I certainly didn’t know any of that at the time since no one I knew talked about The Lemonheads.
Even before I bought that CD I had known about them and loved a lot of their music. They were the perfect middle ground between where REM and Husker Du started and Nirvana ended, a group still enjoying jangle guitars and heavy drums without ever sacrificing songwriting taste and enjoyability. They perfectly soundtracked those roams around the hall in school bored but also late night jaunts with friends you barely knew on those seemingly late night strolls through people's backyards. The Lemonheads made music for those moments even if they were well into their late 20s by the time you grew up with them.
It’s About Time was released originally on Come On Feel The Lemonheads the followup to the very successful It’s A Shame About Ray, the sweetest and most tuneful of all the Alt Rock albums. No scary distortion and flannel here mom just good looks and comfortable melodies. It was no surprise Evan and co caught on so well. It was also no surprise Evan caught the eye of
one Liv Tyler and fellow Bostonite and one time writing partner Juliana Hatfield. It was a combination of those good looks, tunefulness and timing that allowed them to reach such success.
But amidst all of that it’s almost as if Evan knew when to leave. The alt rock gen x slacker stereotype was pushed so hard by the press and overall media they had to pin it on someone. Kurt Cobain bore the brunt of it and while no one truly believed a man with a handful of albums and singles under his belt was a slacker, Evan Dando at least looked and sounded the part. And none of that was more clear than on It’s About Time. Announced from the carpeted and totally ‘90s 120 Minutes studio in a basso's voice, Evan slowly croons on a slightly tuned up Gibson acoustic guitar the various lines of the song.
“Bite my tongue
And I won't say a word against anyone
But I don't wanna get my fingers wet
Unless it's an accident
I fell out on the street
Now I'm watching my shoes and I grit my teeth
But I don't have to look that way
If I had half a say
It's about time
It's about time.”
Typical suburban angst coupled with the exciting sense of wanting to do something new is met with more disappointment followed with casual dismissiveness. It’s the kind of lyricism that flows endlessly like a series of casual wary “watch yourself” idioms from the nation's foremost poet laureate of suburban slackerdom, slinging the lines like hash with ease. Each line and phrase are closer to catch phrases you’d expect a portrait of Evan to say to various record execs or even friends. It’s the perfect embodiment of what everyone thought Evan was about. He says them with an air of whateverness hovering around him like a recently lit Marlboro or borrowed joint.
“Lick my lips
And I won't hear the end of this
On your knees a reassurance
Buy some time and come back for it
Before long
Before it's gone
Patience is like bread I say
I ran out of that yesterday.”
Each line is more perfect than the last, making every cynical gen x screenwriter hawk more jealous at the fact that he’s essentially writing the perfect beauty for their lesser Hollywood films a la reality bites. Each line causes these Shane Black wannabes to salivate at the fact that he’s just giving away great lines all running together like it's no big deal. Evan Dando just doesn’t give a fuck. The man is playing catchphrase to nobody in particular. Maybe he’s casually letting everyone know it’s time to go. Possibly posing, nodding out, bored, high, or tired of the race, Evan poses for nobody in this performance.
“Touch my leg
It's smooth but there's stubble there
I'll fall back and let 'em go
Only when I know you know
I don't know
Make me sure
Have your people contact mine
And keep your lawyer on the line.”
Some of them are eye rolling for sure, “Patience is like bread I say I ran out of that yesterday” and “Have your people contact mine and keep your lawyer on the line” sound like something you say sarcastically to a record exec when you just played a club at 1am in Portland or to a friend in a similarly successful band that you won’t see for another three months in good humor. In fact it's probably what he or Juliana said. Evan said that the song was about Julianna but he could very well be speaking about himself.
Coupled with the melancholy twilight acoustic guitar and the beautifully relaxed delivery there’s a lot of pain and unsuredness in these songs despite his casual demeanor. It’s that sort of wariness in the song, the kind of person so detached because they don’t want to, yet again, go through more personal pain and hurt. Just because they’re beautiful doesn’t mean they’ve never been hurt.
There’s a consistent note of “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” and “we always have each other's backs” with lines like “I’ll fall back and let em go, only when I know you know; I don’t know, make me sure”. It's just so beautifully unsure yet confident to confide in the one person you love and trust in this world. A person you can look in the eye after all this time while rising up to the top to still be able to say “Hey I got you” but then “wait shit, ok I actually don’t know, please make me sure”. It’s the highest of ironies to have someones back so fully only to still feel insecure that you need their reassurance. If this was Evan and Juliana conversing then it didn’t matter, each line was something surely everyone in the Lemonheads’ audience felt and still feel to this day, looking like they don’t give a shit when they totally do and wanting to just believe in someone as much as they want to be believed in themselves.
It’s these qualities that resonate the most with me about this version. It’s spare in instrumentation but we get a full show from just Evans' vocal performance filling in all the other gaps. The studio version feels too rushed, unfinished, and hurried as a reason to rush release a follow up to the massively successful previous album. Here the song sits naturally as a song could exist.
As each line drifts off you start to quote them in your daily life as sort of pot stained mantras, easily mockable yet just smart enough to stick in a Replacements song. Funny yet playing with societal lingo to the point where it's almost too on the nose. But with each successive line there’s more beauty hanging around them that you reconsider any sort of condescension because of the way you feel every time you press rewind and listen to it again.
The ability to speak like a character is what caused some to scoff at Evan but it’s exactly what endeared us to him in the first place. He may have been disinterested looking but he sure wasn’t disinterested in what he was looking for.
As for Evan himself his career fell off due to drug addiction and commercial bumps such as the dry but still enjoyable listen Car Button Cloth however it quickly vanished into the haze of alt rocks lingering dusk heyday of the mid to late ‘90s amongst Son Volt, Aimee Mann, and Oasis. Evan knew when to leave, whether those suspected he was doing too many drugs or partying with Noel Gallagher, maybe Evan had this planned all along, did he even ever want to be here?
Regardless of the answer he didn’t have to worry about being forgotten. Fountains of Wayne, Jenny Lewis, Matthew Sweet and Buffalo Tom all walked in the large footsteps Evan pressed out. Perhaps his biggest imitator was a young man cleaning dishes in a restaurant in North Carolina, Ryan Adams who very clearly relished in his image of the lazy do nothing yet prolifically talented songwriter. Ryan wasn’t ripping off Gram Parsons, he wanted to be Evan Dando. It takes just a few listens of Whiskeytown’s albums and a glance at a few pictures of a young Ryan to see that.
Cheap imitations aside the real thing eventually returned. Reunion tours and albums followed but Evans' memory and his image still remain strong in the hearts and minds of those who were there in his prime. Even those who were there years after his heyday can still go back and see him for who he was, stuck in the amber of a magazine or video footage or a yellowed CD case waiting to be picked up.