48 Hours in the Studio with Evan Dando, Jason Schwartzman and Tom Petersson (Cheap Trick)
To say that Evan Dando has played a big role in my life and personal mythology is an understatement. My first single, “I Wish I Was Him”, written and released at 14 years old in 1992, is a pubescent ode to rockstardom and Blake-ian enlightenment (road of excess/palace of wisdom yada yada) as embodied by the alterna-hunk of the moment, Mr Dando himself.
All art is of course an act of manifestation, and every song I’ve ever written was a secret wish for the next adventure that I was begging the universe to unfold before me. This song not only set the tone for my entire career (cheeky, romantic, pop culture literate - the 90s version of “extremely online”) but also led to a friendship and collaborative relationship with Evan that would span decades and give me all type of strange and wonderful experiences.
One day I’ll write a memoir full of juicy details, but that moment isn’t now…magical disparate moments spring to mind: jamming onstage at Maxwell’s supporting Alex Chilton, touring through the South when a cute pair of indie rock ladies offering the two of us a thrilling night of group sex (I excused myself, Evan stayed), taking psychedelics on many occasions, jamming, double-dating with Winona and Claire to go and see The Crucible the week it came out (“You get the seats, we’ll get the treats” sung-spoke Winona), Evan’s fun and wild wedding to Elizabeth Moses in the gorgeous Central Park Boathouse…
NYC was a playground in the late 90s. I took this photo of Evan at the iconic club Don Hill’s one night. Were the Moldy Peaches performing? I don’t remember a whole lot about that night…
Evan is a profoundly complex and misunderstood person. Many people recognize the big puppy dog aspect of his personality, the bounding, gregarious, fun life of the party. But his darkness is deep too. His poetry exists somewhere in the tension between these sides of him. The peace-n-love hippy meets the unpredictable wildman. Evan’s fascination with destructive 60s figures like Charles Manson makes a lot of sense when you realize that he has balancing his own extreme personality dichotomies his whole life.
After spending years getting to know Evan, which involves a process of falling in love with him, and then hitting periods of intense frustration, and looping these experiences over and over, I got the chance to write in Evan’s voice on his album “Baby I’m Bored” on two songs “All My Life” and “Hard Drive”.
My friend, the artist Dustin Yellin, founder of Pioneer Works, once called Evan a “sensation addict”. That’s where that line came from; “I’m so impatient, for a new sensation” in “All My Life”.
The song HARD DRIVE that I wrote for that album really took on a life of it’s own. I meet young songwriters all the time that say it’s one of their favorite tunes. Bruce Springsteen had it on a pre-show playlist. Phoebe Bridgers covered it too.
We wrote lots of songs together. It was always fun. Hanging with Evan was like pulling a tarot card. You never knew exactly what you were going to get. But it was always revealing.
We wrote a tune called “Dead or Anything” that started from the Hemmingway short story “Hills Like White Elephants”. You know that bit where he says “all we do is look at things and try new drinks”? We both loved that line. So depressing, so decadent, so romantic.
So we had that one and another ditty called Love Song, and discussed recording them. He brought in Bryce Goggin, who had produced Pavement, and Tom Petersson from Cheap Trick. I brought in Jason Schwartzman on drums. We planned two studio days to try and capture the magic.
I don’t know what went wrong exactly. Thats how it is with Evan sometimes. He is like lightning; it can illuminate the entire sky or be a terrible, ominous sign of destruction.
I know we fought. He got in a bad mood about a guitar sound or something. Bryce tried to intervene. The entire atmosphere was awful, like a fog. I resented the way Evan’s moods dictated the entire quality of an experience. Now that I have raised teenage daughters, I can articulate the feeling more clearly than I could at the time. It’s like one person’s volatility holds the entire house hostage. The ebb and flow of their emotions dictate everyone’s emotional reality.
Jason and Tom were the consummate diplomats, focusing on peacekeeping and forward momentum. All better than me at accepting the heavy vibez of the session for what they were, exemplars of non-attachment, while I felt myself drowning in my friend’s emotional turbulence.
It was a tough session, but we got it done.
A small indie label in Australia called Trifekta put out a 2 song CD single. They sold out. The tracks have never been up on streaming…
It’s funny listening back to these. I hear the joy of collaboration, the beauty of creative personalities learning about each other, the tension in the air, the love of songwriting and music and friendship that transcends all of it.
Evan Dando…I still love the guy. He answered my call manifesting him as an IRL friend, took me under his wing and taught me so much about how complex and strange and beautiful human beings can be.
Here are the two tunes we released as “Dando Lee Petersson Schwartzman”…please enjoy…