The Lemonheads are an American alternative rock band formed in Boston in 1986 by Evan Dando, Ben Deily, and Jesse Peretz.

[2] Since its formation, recording and touring lineups of the band have included co-founders Deily and Peretz, John Strohm (Blake Babies), Doug Trachten, Corey Loog Brennan, Byron Hoagland (Folks on Fire), Ben Daughtrey (Squirrel Bait), Juliana Hatfield (Blake Babies), Nic Dalton (Godstar, Sneeze, the Plunderers), David Ryan (Fuzzy), Patrick "Murph" Murphy (Dinosaur Jr.), George Berz (Dinosaur Jr., Gobblehoof), Josh Lattanzi, Bill Gibson (the Eastern Dark), Mark 'Budola' Newman, Kenny Lyon, Vess Ruhtenberg, Devon Ashley, Karl Alvarez and Bill Stevenson (Descendents), P. David Hazel, Farley Glavin, and various others.

Evan Dando, Ben Deily and Jesse Peretz formed the Lemonheads as teenagers at the Commonwealth School in Boston.

[5] After high school, Dando enrolled at Skidmore College but could not maintain his grades and dropped out to pursue a musical career.

Records, the Lemonheads released the albums Hate Your Friends (1987), Creator (1988), and Lick (1989) with Deily and Dando sharing lead vocals and songwriting duties.

[1] Initially they also shared lead guitar and drumming duties as well, but when this became unworkable, they hired drummers such as Doug Trachten, John Strohm, and Mark Natola to fill in the lineup.

Dando then recruited David Ryan on drums, and Corey Loog Brennan as a second guitarist, and signed to major label Atlantic Records, releasing the album Lovey in August 1990.

[1] Straddling punk rock, country music and heavy metal, Lovey was released a year before the commercial explosion of grunge, and failed to chart or produce any songs with serious airplay.

The album also featured guest appearances by steel guitarist Sneaky Pete Kleinow and singers Belinda Carlisle and Rick James.

The band enjoyed modest mainstream success, this time with the single "Into Your Arms" (their highest charting UK hit to date).

While featuring jangly guitar songs such as "If I Could Talk I'd Tell You," this set also showed off the darker side of Dando's writing.

Following a cameo line in the BBC's all-star cover version of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" (which reached number one in the UK Singles Chart), Dando continued to play live solo shows.

After a nine-year hiatus, the band reformed in the summer of 2005 with a recording lineup bolstered by Bill Stevenson and Karl Alvarez, members of Descendents.

On September 14 and 15, 2005, Dando, Stevenson and Lattanzi performed two shows at Shepherd's Bush Empire in London as part of the ATP Don't Look Back series, where they played It's a Shame About Ray in its entirety.

To promote the album Dando toured the UK, Europe and US in late 2006 with a band consisting of Vess Ruhtenberg (bass) and Devon Ashley (drums) of the Pieces.

His power pop/punk band, Varsity Drag, completed a 25-city European tour during January and February 2007, performing their own material alongside several Deily compositions from the first four Lemonheads releases.

[9] A deluxe reissue of Lemonheads' 1992 album It's a Shame About Ray was released in March 2008 (US) and April 2008 (UK) on Rhino Records,[2] which features demos, B-sides and a DVD issue of the previously VHS-only Two Weeks In Australia, featuring footage from the band's Australian tour in the wake of their breakthrough album's release.

To promote the reissue, the lineup of Dando, Ruhtenberg and Ashley performed the album in full at a number of gigs between March and May 2008.

[10] On June 23, 2009, the Lemonheads released Varshons – a collection of eleven covers, including tracks by Gram Parsons, Wire, GG Allin, and Christina Aguilera.

He also announced that Evan Dando would be joined on the record by Juliana Hatfield and, for the first time since 1989's Lick, co-founder and original co-songwriter Ben Deily.

Starting with 1996's Car Button Cloth and continuing through the present, the band membership has been fluid, with the name the Lemonheads generally being used by whomever Evan Dando had recruited to record and/or play with at the time.

Evan Dando Ben Deily Jesse Peretz Doug Trachten John Strohm Mark Natola Corey "Loog" Brennan Juliana Hatfield David Ryan Nic Dalton Patrick "Murph" Murphy Bill Gibson Bill Stevenson Karl Alvarez Devon Ashley Vess Ruhtenberg Farley Glavin Studio albums