REVIEW: The Lemonheads @ The Waiting Room
JANUARY 26th, 2012
Cool night, good crowd — easily surpassing 30-something as the average age of the 200 or so concertgoers in attendance at the Waiting Room in Benson to see Evan Griffith Dando’s latest incarnation of The Lemonheads, a poster-wrothy example of ’90s alterna-rock. With that in mind, the group, consisting of Dando and two fresh faces, are out performing The Lemonheads’ breakthrough album It’s a Shame About Ray in its entirety.
It’s been noted on local websites and in local publications that Dando’s last two times through Omaha were a bit rocky, and well, tainted — allegedly — by a noticeably intoxicated Dando. Apparently, third time’s the charm as Dando was pleasant and professional throughout the evening. (I did hear from a few reliable sources, however, that Dando spent a few hours at Jake’s next door prior to the show allegedly enjoying several rounds of tequila.) But whatever.
The Lemonheads’ set started with Dando alone on stage with an acoustic guitar singing the amiable track “Being Around.” After that, he was churning through song after song, rapid fire. A few slurred words here and there, but all together he sounded good — not great. Soon he picked up his SG as his band mates came on stage for the second act of the set: commence It’s a Shame About Ray. If you liked the album, you’d of been satisfied with the group’s performance, but still there seemed to be an unease and incohesiveness to their most famous album in this live setting, as if Dando was more-or-less just going through the motions, trying to get the songs out of the way and buried out-of-site-and-ear until the next tour stop. Finally, things started to loosen up a bit when the band left once again to let Dando finish out Ray‘s closing track “Frank Mills.” For whatever reason, Dando decided to sing the song a cappella and was greeted by a chorus of fans in the audience. You could see Dando start to break a smile — there’s a lot of diehard fans who love the man’s music. That has to feel good.
Watch a little of that moment for yourself:
Dando closed out the set with a few more solo songs, pretending to take requests but still he really only kept churning through song after song like a man trying to shake away his troubled past. All the while various clips of tour footage was projected onto the stage, something that’s become a signature element to any Lemonheads show.
Of course, the audience demanded an encore. And this is where the Lemonheads really started to shine. The band came back out and rollicked through 30 minutes of loud, grungy alternative rock, much of it drawing deep from Dando’s catalogue. Plenty of scrawly guitar solos and missed lyrics, but mostly you could see that Dando was, at last, enjoying himself. The spontaneity of set list seemed to fuel a fire within the band, the same fire every young dude with a guitar dreams of sticking his fingers into in attempts to become a part of — a hot rock ‘n’ roll band.
The funniest thing about the whole night was watching the opening band (the talented Meredith Sheldon) and their friends drunkenly form mosh pits and really go at. You could tell they were still kids, probably in their early 20s, like most of them were infants when The Lemonheads signed to Atlantic back in ’91. Adorable.
