The Lemonheads tickets and listings

The Lemonheads will be playing the album Its a Shame About Ray in its entirety alongside other Lemonheads songs at The Venue in Derby on Saturday 21st April 2012.

Evan Griffith Dando formed The Lemonheads with two high school buddies in late winter '86, in their senior year at Boston's tiny Commonwealth School. A few months later, they spawned what is now one of the most sought-after punk relics of the 80s, the indie EP Laughing All the Way to the Cleaners. In 1990 Atlantic Records took notice of the massively expanding Lemonheads fanbase in Europe and America by signing the band and releasing their well-received LP, Lovey. A 1991 tour brought Evan to Australia, where by chance he met songwriter Tom Morgan and future Lemonheads bassist Nic Dalton. Their collaboration made all the difference for the next Atlantic release; It's a Shame About Ray (1992), a concentrated blast of pure pop perfection that clocks in at just under 30 minutes. Thanks to songs such as "Confetti", "My Drug Buddy", "Rudderless", and "Ceiling Fan in My Spoon", Dando hit a whole new audience. Atlantic released a smash follow-up, Come on Feel The Lemonheads, in October 1993. The album brought Dando a genuine charting single ("Into your Arms") as well as instant classics such as "Great Big No", "Down About It", "Being Around", and "You Can Take it with You."

Two years of brutal touring for The Lemonheads followed and they managed to crank out a defiant 1996 release Car Button Cloth, with some of their best melodic pop/punk to date: "It"s All True", "If I Could Talk I"d Tell You", and "Tenderfoot". After a year promoting the record, Dando announced at the 1997 Reading Festival that he was disbanding The Lemonheads. Atlantic released a Best of The Lemonheads album in 1998, and a lot of geezers surmised that that was that. Once married in 2000, Dando started to come alive again, a 2001 live album Live at the Brattle Theater/Griffith Sunset, and then in 2003 a solo LP, Baby I"m Bored. In 2004 Evan Dando found himself fronting the MC5, the most incendiary rock band of 1960s America, as lead vocalist in a 41-show tour. And it was hard to miss Dando during 2005 and early 2006, as he toured widely in North America and Europe. In 2006 came The Lemonheads, released on Vagrant records and recorded with Bill Stevenson and Karl Alvarez of The Descendents. Stevenson co-produced with Dando, and wrote or co-wrote three of its eleven songs, while long-time collaborator Tom Morgan added another two. There were cameos from bassist Josh Lattanzi ("Poughkeepsie", "Rule of Three", "In Passing"), Garth Hudson (of The Band, who plays keyboards on "Black Gown" and "December"), and some real foot-on-monitor guitar work by Dinosaur Jr's J. Mascis ("No Backbone", "Steve's Boy").

Profiles of artists at this event:

The Lemonheads