Like some kids everywhere, and in Beaverton, Portland particularly, Courtney Taylor-Taylor recalled sticking out as a high school teenager. “You don’t fit in if you’re a make-up-wearing weirdo, surrounded by large, clumsy guys and cheerleaders.” He found refuge in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Kurt Vonnegut.
It was there in 1994, he met future Dandy Warhols bandmate Peter Holmström and later joined by keyboardist Zia McCabe and drummer Eric Hedford. McCabe joined the band as keyboardist after Taylor-Taylor saw her working in a coffeehouse. [Hedford left in 1998 and was replaced by Taylor-Taylor’s cousin Brent DeBoer.]
Taylor-Taylor has described the band’s beginning as a group of friends who “needed music to drink to.” Taylor-Taylor has written the majority of the band’s songs. In case you were wondering, yes, the band’s name is a play on the name of American pop artist Andy Warhol.
In 2000, the band released their third studio album, Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia. It was a critical and commercial success, due mainly to the single “Bohemian Like You” being featured in a popular Vodafone advertisement as well as on the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The song has also been featured in the animated movie Flushed Away in a chase scene.
Taylor-Taylor has also co-written a graphic novel entitled One Model Nation, about a fictional 1970s German krautrock band. It was released in 2009. This was accompanied by a studio album titled Totalwerks, Vol. 1 (1969–1977), a fake greatest hits album by the fictional band, released in 2012.
Multi-media exposure has always been a boost to music releases. Taylor-Taylor appeared in an episode of the second season of the TV show Veronica Mars, “Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang,” performing the song “Love Hurts.” He appeared in the 2009 music documentary film “The Heart Is a Drum Machine.”
On January 29, 2016, the band announced their ninth studio album, Distortland. It was their first release for Dine Alone Records. It was released on April 8, 2016, in time for their promotional tour starting in the United States. The track “You Are Killing Me” was released as a single. A music video was produced featuring noted Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro.
On February 11, 2017, the band released a new single, “Thick Girls Knock Me Out (Richard Starkey),” to streaming services. The band has returned to the studio after the end of the promotional tour for Distortland and intends to spend the rest of the year recording new material. On December 22, 2007, Taylor-Taylor married long-time girlfriend Lockett Albritton at the Columbia Gorge Hotel in Hood River, Oregon. Lockett Taylor is a yoga practitioner and instructor. On February 1, 2010, she gave birth to their first child, a son, Ajax.
In May 2023 the (digital) EP The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was released. The title track, originally written by Gordon Lightfoot, was a leftover for the 2004 Black Album sessions. The other two tracks, Untitled 1 and Alien, remained unreleased at the time. IWNSLY is the title of the track released in July 2023. The song is a collaboration with Debbie Harry and NALA. “The Summer of Hate” released September 2023 single from the album Rockmaker.“Teutonic Wine” is the June, 2024 single from Rockmaker.
Artist Website
Discography
Dandy’s Rule OK (1995)
…The Dandy Warhols Come Down (1997)
Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia (2000)
Welcome To The Monkey House (2003)
Odditorium or Warlords of Mars (2005)
…Earth to the Dandy Warhols (2008)
The Dandy Warhols Are Sound (2009)
This Machine (2012)
Distortland (2016)
Videos