Say you go to Night 1 of Twiddle’s three-night residency at the Warehouse in Fairfield. You hear two sets of songs and an encore. The Vermont quartet — keyboardist Ryan Dempsey, singer/guitarist Mihali Savoulidis, bassist Zdenek Gubb and drummer Brook Jordan — improvises (“jams,” informally), taking funk- and reggae-tinged song structures into new sonic directions. The crowd dances happily. Make no mistake, this is dance music. The show ends. You file out and go home.
Why return for Night 2? New songs, new improvisations, a chance to hear (incremental) evolution, and (most likely) the same happy crowd, who’ll gladly fill you in on the finer points of the setlists (debuts, bust-outs, covers; just don’t ask once the music starts). You might even leave Night 2 wanting to come back for Night 3.
This exercise seems familiar; Phish (another improvisational-rock quartet from Vermont) and the Grateful Dead blazed similar chemtrails. The formula works, for what it offers: escapism, pleasant vibes, thumping grooves, heady guitar-led jams (if that’s your thing), decent people and unflagging energy. And like the Dead and Phish, Twiddle’s audience has grown to expect the unexpected, to dance and to be silly for a couple of hours. Nothing wrong with that.
Gubb speaks about the band’s growth over the past several years, experiencing musical ecstasy on stage, and “Plump,” a new two-disc studio set.
Q: Your fan base seems to have grown exponentially over the last, say, five years or so. Is that fair to say?
A: It has definitely blown up, to some extent. It was always moving and growing in a positive, upward trajectory over the past few years. It just kind of snowballed. We’re grateful for the positivity of our fans, which makes people feel comfortable enough to come into it, like a family that they always had but didn’t know what there. I think that has helped the growth. Everything has expanded in a great direction.
Q: It’s clear that you’re giving value to fans for tuning in and coming to multiple shows, in terms of the varied nature of what you perform, how every show is different.
A: Yes, definitely. We keep track of what we’ve been playing so we don’t overdo things. But we’re also doing certain songs more often, so that we can create different versions of those songs, with whatever improv we throw into the mix. We keep in mind that we have fans who come to every single show. … If it was us watching a show and following a band everywhere, we’d hope that they would do the same thing: create a similar atmosphere, but a different sound and feel for every show.
Q: How many shows do you play a year?
A: I couldn’t tell you, honestly, but the number has been going up every year. Everyone talks about how much we’re working, and it definitely feels like we’re working a lot, not that it feels like work. I can never pick up on the number of shows that we do, because I’m just focusing on the week ahead of me.
Q: You’re sticking around in Fairfield for three nights. It seems like Twiddle is fond of multiple-show runs these days. What happens over the course of three nights?
A: It gives us the opportunity to get into a rhythm and to build off of that, because we do so much improv. Doing that encourages us to get comfortable. When we’re staying in one spot, we don’t have to worry about the travel. We can really focus on the shows more than getting from point A to point B. We have time to build upon this one area. The Warehouse, where we’ve never played before: we can learn how to play there the first night. We’ll test out certain ways of playing, depending on what songs we’re doing, how we’re playing emotionally, on the second night. Hopefully, by the third night, we’ll be really close to figuring it out and use that to our advantage.
Q: When you’re inside the whole thing, is there a trajectory to the three-night run? Is Sunday, say, naturally more experimental and improvisational?
A: It would make sense, the way you describe it. But at the same time, we’re very emotional people, so it depends on everything that’s led up to us getting there. The first night might be the most experimental, because we really are figuring out how to work the room. That’s something we’ve learned how to do as the rooms have grown bigger, or smaller, or whatever. We have to cater to the room, not just the fans and ourselves. The size of the room makes a huge difference, especially in the role that I have as the bass player. My sound waves are so much longer and bigger than everybody else’s. I might have to play more or less. But once we figure it out, the last night might be more experimental.
Q: Good live bands, I believe, are particularly well-suited to survive drastic changes in the music industry, in the sense that it’s rarely about album sales. You make your living performing live. Is that safe to say?
A: Totally. And luckily, for us and for our style of music, we get to do something different every night, within the musical style that we’ve chosen. That’s what keeps it fresh and exciting for us. Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to be in Metallica. But if I was playing every single show the same exact way, I’d be a little bummed. It would seem like work. There’s something I can learn from every show, because we’re improvising. We’re trusting each other. That’s the exciting thing for us. Hopefully that translates to the people watching the show.
Q: Do you personally experience one or two moments of pure spirituality per show? Does it happen reliably?
A: Ah, bliss. Yes, it’s a beautiful thing. We’re experimenting with musical equipment as well, which also means in-ear monitors. We’re hearing everything differently, almost for the first time. That helps us reach that point also. You can get lost in perfecting the sound in the room, too, so we have to remind ourselves to loosen up a little bit. But I always hope for [bliss]. It’s usually one or two times per show. We can get really lucky and get more than that. When you hit that moment, it’s hard to outweigh that moment. There might be others, but you’re still just focusing on that moment that we had.
Q: The first half of “Plump,” your new double album, was recorded earlier than the second. Is that correct?
A: Yes. We had the idea of doing a double-disc all along. By the time we finished Chapter One, that’s when we felt the whole thing would be done. It dawned on us: to make this what we want it to be, it’s going to take a lot more work. That’s why we broke it into two chapters. We had played most of the material on the first Chapter live. All of the material on the second chapter: we hadn’t played it live, except for two songs. We still haven’t played a few of the tunes live, but that’s part of the plan during the coming weeks of touring. I’ve been joking with the guys that, much later, we pull a George Lucas: “Actually, Chapters 1 and 2 are really Chapters 4 and 5, and we’re doing prequels now.” We’ll see if that happens.
TWIDDLE plays three shows at the Warehouse in Fairfield on Aug. 31 to Sept. 2 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25-$30. fairfieldtheatre.org.
