Last week, Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando was accused of sending unsolicited explicit videos to a fan. Tony Ortega, the last editor-in-chief for the Village Voice during my time at the paper, did the reporting in his newsletter Underground Bunker, a newsletter otherwise dedicated to exposing Scientology. The unnamed woman and her husband reported that Dando sent her video files of himself masturbating after an otherwise innocuous Twitter conversation, and Ortega verified those video files. Since then, Dando has reportedly been hospitalized, and his wife claims that he was in the midst of a mental health episode characterized by drug-fueled self-sabotage.
After the accusations came out last week, the Lemonheads cancelled a planned European tour, and a spokesman told Variety, "Evan Dando has long struggled with mental health issues dating back to his childhood. He’s been admitted to a local hospital where he’s receiving comprehensive help from experienced doctors and mental health professionals." On Friday, Dando's wife Antonia Teixeira spoke to Billboard to give some context for Dando's offenses.
Antonia Teixeira married Evan Dando in 2023, and she lives with Evan Dando and her three children in Brazil. In a Billboard story published today, Teixeira claimed that Dando has had issues with alcohol and prescription drugs for years and that she has sometimes kept prescription drugs hidden and locked away. (In 2025, Dando claimed to be sober aside from LSD.) She says that his issues immediately got worse in a January 2026 visit to the US, where the Lemonheads performed with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show and recorded an NPR Tiny Desk Concert that she says will never be released because Dando was "so out of his mind" at the time.
Teixeira claims that Dando's behavior grew more erratic as the couple arrived first in New York and then in Washington. She says that they returned to São Paulo and that "everything went to hell" in the immediate aftermath. According to Teixeira, Dando was high on a combination of Adderall, THC, and mushrooms when he sent those videos. She says, "You can’t imagine how mad I was when I saw that he was sending messages to girls. I’m very mad because he betrayed me.” At least based on what's printed in Billboard, Teixeira does not offer any concern for the woman who received the unwanted videos.
According to Billboard, Teixeira believes that Dando send the videos to "the wrong woman" by accident: "From what I’m looking [at] now, it wasn’t … he doesn’t remember what he did. He was in a mental meltdown." She claims that she gave Dando an ultimatum, telling him that she would divorce him if he didn't seek treatment, and that he's "very embarrassed" when he was told of his actions. She brings up the idea that Dando's actions were "self-sabotage" after the release of the Lemonheads' recent comeback album Love Chant.
Teixeira tells Billboard that she believes Dando can take responsibility for his drug use through rehab: "If he’s really, really committed, he can do it... I feel like this is a second phase of his healing, you know? It’s him actually taking into his own hands, his responsibilities, the consequences, and not blaming other people and just trying to be better because he wants to be better himself… I’m very hopeful that things will get better."
Evan Dando has had an extremely turbulent public history with drug abuse, and he's exhibited unpredictable, troubling behavior many times over the years. But there's a difference between drug abuse and sexual harassment, and one is not an excuse for the other. You can read the full Billboard piece here.
If you or someone you know is undergoing sexual abuse, please visit rainn.org or contact the National Sexual Assault Helpline at 1-800-656-4673.
