Castleton, Vermont’s Twiddle is a contemporary quartet that utilizes almost the full spectrum of genres, shifting in out of bluegrass, jazz, classical and the bands greatest musical conquest—the fusion of funk and reggae.
When asked to describe the band and their music, keyboardist Ryan Dempsey relays the essential objective, “We want to give our fans a musical orgasm—that’s our goal.”
Alongside keyboardist Dempsey are guitarist Mihali Savoulidis, bassist Zdenek Gubb and drummer Brook Jordan. Together, these four have started a beautiful commotion on both coasts in the jam scene—and some might even call them the new boys from Vermont.
After a recent rooftop performance at Relix (and a signing of the poster I had purchased at the show the night before) I had the chance to sit down with all four members of the band and chat about what’s really within Twiddle’s box—that has propelled these boys to be able to continually create some of the most beautifully unconventional music in the jam scene today.
As the interview unfolds, I learn not only of the onstage dynamics between the foursome but also of the way that each of them reacts to one another in a social environment. Remarkably, the dynamics are one and the same.
Just as they so fluidly build off of where each other’s jams navigate to onstage, they can tell the direction in which one another’s thoughts are headed—and finish their sentences. Both have almost become second nature to them.
In tune to each other’s thoughts and feelings, the back and forth banter made for a hilarious interview.
So come indulge in Twiddle as they talk about their voyage to success, extensive touring and songwriting, upcoming festival performances, the “Frends,” Vermont and of course, a little bit about “doinkinbonking.”
But most importantly—discover where the compass points in the evolution of Twiddle.
The band’s next record, Live At Nectar’s, is set for an album release party June 2 at Nectars in Burlington, VT.
How has the music changed since Twiddle first formed?
MS: It took us a few years to really find our sound and settle into what is Twiddle opposed to what it initially was like when we formed the band in 2004. I consider when Zdenek joined the real start of the band because that’s when we actually really started trying to tour and take it more seriously. So from that point to now our music has changed in our approach to songwriting and improvisation and simply by playing with each other so much we’ve learned each other’s style so well that it’s second nature.
ZG: We all have developed our own style that relates to each other which allows us to react well to each other and in turn continuously transforms the music through time.
Can you tell me about your musical backgrounds and influences?
ZG: I really dug everything but my biggest influences came from my mom and my brother and that was Earth, Wind and Fire and The Bee Gees. Then I got into Metal like I think most pre-teen guys do. My biggest influence is Les Claypool—that’s who really got me into bass. I feel like music works for me the same way it does with the Frank Zappa quote, “Your mind needs to be like a parachute. If it’s not open, then it doesn’t work.” So I really listen to anything.
RD: I was brought up playing classically and was trained by a teacher. It only lasted two years because she found out that I was cheating and learning classical by ear and she wanted me reading it. [Laughter]. I knew how to read music but she wanted me to read it like I could read a book and I just wanted to do my own thing and write my own songs.
I was in the jazz band in high school and played in two bands of my own as well—the first was called Laughable Butane Bob. But once I started college I thought I would be done with music, until I met Mickey. My biggest influences are Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Hiromi, Phish and The Bad Plus—those are all keyboard players that I really admire. I would love to play with Hiromi one day.
MS: I liked Michael Jackson when I was really little. Then I really got into Nirvana. Nevermind was probably the first CD I ever owned. I was into louder screaming, distorted stuff until my brother got me into Dave Matthews Band. I really started to listen to a lot of the early Dave when I began playing guitar.
I learned all of his [Dave] guitar parts on guitar and pretty much tried to mimic him and sing his songs a lot in my early playing. It was then through Dave that I got into Phish and the lead and electric guitar. I started taking guitar lessons my sophomore year of high school to try and study jazz. I pretended I knew what my teacher was talking about with theory but just like Ryan when he would give me assignments I would use my ear instead of reading them. So I got a little bit of jazz sound from that and then from there I would make playlists and try and solo over whatever songs were on the playlists and play the melodies.
I listened to a lot of the prominent jambands of the time, Phish, String Cheese Incident, moe. and then that’s when I went to college to start a band and I met Ryan.
He [Ryan] blew me away with his piano and stuff and I knew right away that I had to convince him to start a band because it was the right combination. Brook was still in high school at that time and our original bass player introduced me to Brook and we started the band that way.
MS: Going into the music I really wanted to do harder instrumental stuff like the early Phish stuff, that’s what I was really into—trying to prove our worth as musicians, that we had chops and we can play difficult stuff.
And then over the years being in this scene and seeing what works and what doesn’t, I still love writing that kind of music and it is important to our sound and to who we are as a band but I also kind of fell back into my earlier roots and rediscovered Dave Matthews again and started listening a little more. I began to realize that the way I wrote songs naturally were influenced by him subconsciously just because he was the first I really listened to. It even influences the way I pronounce words when I sing. People think I’m from the south because of the way I pronounce certain words when I sing but it’s just me mimicking him in my subconscious, which is bizarre. I found a blend between the two worlds where as I think that there is an importance to writing a good song with good lyrics that will touch people and mean a lot to them but there’s also a balance where you can do the Phish thing too—the electricity, the big climax and energy put forth by the music itself. I feel like if you can get the energy put forth with the lyrical aspect of it like Dave does and the musical aspect like Phish does and try and make both worlds work without overdoing it on either side you could have something really special. So that’s kind of what I’ve been focusing on.
As far as guitar playing goes my biggest influence is Jamaican Jazz musician Ernest Ranglin. He pioneered reggae music and basically invented ska. He is an incredible jazz player and played all over the world. He gave Bob Marley his first guitar lessons and was rehearsing the Wailers before they were anything. He’s on every prominent reggae album, his guitar work is everywhere but you would never know because he was a session guy.
MS: Bob Marley and Sublime are big influences of mine as well. There’s a lot of reggae in our music and that is like the base of that—it was because I was so obsessed with Sublime and later Bob Marley, you know Exodus Live, I love that album.
MS: John Scofield and Trey are also big influences of mine. Later in my career I listened to Jerry and kind of understood the relevance of his sound and what he did. So it’s just been the same for me as any guitar player—you take your influences and you take whatever you love about them and try and work it into your playing and that’s why you sound like you. I think the ultimate goal, as a guitar player is to have your own sound where if someone were to walk by a store and hear 10 seconds of your guitar playing they would know that it’s you. You know like Santana—I can hear three notes and know it’s him, Jerry, and Trey too. I think that’s kind of why they are who they are because Jerry’s influences were much different than Trey’s influences, which were much different than my influences.
BJ: I feel like I never really got pushed in a direction by my parents but music was around me all the time. My Dad went to ridiculous shit like Floyd on Animals tour, Billy Joel and Elton John but I never got pushed in one way or another. When I first started listening to music I was turned on by pop like Hootie & the Blowfish, Sugar Ray and early Smash Mouth music. Smashmouth’s Walking on the Sun album and the Sugar Ray album were both you know parental advisory and those were some of the first albums I got.
I still remember when the Sublime self-titled album came out. I was actually very influenced by my cousins too who got me to start listening to Rage Against the Machine and 311. The drummer from 311, Chad Sexton—he’s still been an influence on my snare work and stuff. Dave Grohl as well, he’s definitely like an idol.
So the early stuff for me was kind of pop alternative rock stuff. But then when I started to skateboard a lot I got into punk and hardcore. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I started to get into all of the jam music. My friend came home from prep school with the Europe ’72 from the Grateful Dead and my other friend got Story of the Ghost by Phish from his older step brother and then that all came together and then I just never looked back pretty much. I still appreciate so many kinds of music but once I heard jam music and heard what Jon Fishman does on drums it changed my thinking of how I could actually play music and be an actual melodic player even though my instrument except for the toms, you know they all have tones but you can’t change the tone like any other instrument. But now I love everything, you know I’ll throw on some GRiZ, Tipper or Pretty Lights and then I’ll listen to John Mayer of something. I run the gamut of what I listen to. I love Mumford too. I go through these phases and it all influences me.
MS: Another thing about Ryan—he had no knowledge of these other types of music we were introduced to so when he plays it’s just him and just what he knows, it’s just Bela Fleck and classical music and Christian rock but that’s it and that makes you the kind of unique player you are, which is awesome.
ZG: Everything is really an influence. We all love music. We take stuff from music we don’t even really care for. We listen to, we hear it and somehow it gets involved in what we’re doing too.
Yeah it has like a subconscious influence?
BJ: Yeah even the pop stuff we hear on the radio. We make fun of it wherever else but there’s a reason it’s on the radio and people listen to it. Even for people like us that hate it somehow it gets stuck in your head and as a musician that’s always something still that even if you hate it and you think it’s fucking shit but then you start singing the song later in the day and you’re like, “Why is that? Why is that? I need to know why that is,” you know? [Laughter] It’s all an influence.
Mihali, you mentioned Nirvana and I saw that you guys played Unplugged recently at Nectar’s. Could you guys tell us a little bit about that show? How did it go?
MS: It was Zdenek’s and my duo project called Gubbulidis and we decided we wanted to do it because it’s 20 years later and we wanted to do Unplugged.
Ryan did the entire accordion and string parts and Brook sat in for a song. When we put the band together it was a bunch of musicians from Burlington and Zdenek and I. We never really rehearsed it—that was the coolest thing. I forgot how important Nirvana is to our generation. There were so many people there that I don’t normally see at Twiddle shows. It’s such an important piece of music for us.
You guys recently started working with Madison House as your booking agent, what has that experience been like?
MS: It’s a big company so we were nervous about not being able to produce for them or not being up to par for them. But it’s been great.
ZG: Or not being able to do exactly what we wanted to do like less cooperation.
MS: We’ve had so many opportunities and our fans have come out and supported us and made these opportunities for us and we’ve literally had no problems.
BJ: We were afraid at first about being a small fish in a big pond but they were pretty much straight forward with us and said to us, “You guys are kind of small right now, you’re not going to be our bread and butter, at least for years and years, so we wouldn’t be wasting our time talking to you if we didn’t give a shit and we didn’t want you and want to put our time into your band,” you know like there would be no point in us doing that—that it’d be a waste of their time.
So we met with a couple of other agencies around the same time and meeting with the other agencies they weren’t really professional and we had to ask all the questions. But when we had a phone conference with Madison House we didn’t even have to say a word and all our questions were answered and it was perfect. It felt so right. So from the beginning it was good.
MS: It was all a fluke too, Madison House just happened to be doing car bombs at this Irish Pub they have drinks at on Wednesday nights and we were playing there.
Conor O’Neills?
MS: Yeah we put on the first Frendly Twiddle show that night. It was in September of 2011.
BJ: It was packed. It was totally random. People were crowd surfing.
You guys are in the midst of the Green is Good tour right now and you are always extensively touring these days. How is that going? Have you had any exciting experiences on this tour in particular?
MS: It’s going good. It’s always exciting being in new places and showing up to a city you’ve never been to and having a ton of people come out. It’s rewarding in itself.
BJ: It’s also good to see the entire country. We just got flown out to Utah last weekend. It’s nice to go to different places, try different foods and meet different people.
RD: It’s great when we have some time off on tours. We went to Mount Rushmore. We’ve seen the Grand Canyon at sunrise. We lived in Venice Beach, California for a month.
MS: It is great but it’s not a walk in the park.
BJ: No it’s not and a lot of people think, “Oh, you’re a rock star.” But no we’re not. We just put in a lot of work. It’s so much beyond playing the show, which even then when you get to the show, you have to put your heart and soul into it but then you’ve also been up for the last two days or something.
ZG: And you’ve been with the same people for weeks. [Laughter]
MS: Yeah I hate these boys. [Laughter].
Could you tell me about your songwriting process? Do you guys write songs while out on the road?
MS: I write lyrics on the road sometimes but it’s more about experiences.
My whole thing with writing, especially with lyrics is I just can’t force it. I can’t say I want to go write a song and then just go sit down and write it. That’s not how it works for me. So when it comes, it comes and I try not to force it. So sometimes I won’t write a song for 4 months and other times I’ll write 5 songs in 3 weeks. It all depends on if it’s there and it comes out and it’s natural. I prefer to do it that way because every time I force it, it just never comes out right and I spend too much time worrying about different words and the message and this and that.
ZG: The last thing you want to do is write a song that everyone loves but you don’t like and then we have to play it all the time.
MS: The extensive touring that we’ve been doing is fairly new to us and it does wear on you, at least it does on me. I get so tired and overwhelmed sometimes with just waking up in a new city, it’s all just a blur really.
But you can take that and use it for the songs that you’re writing and the frustration and joy that goes into it are at an equal level for me so I can make them both and channel them both in the music one way or another. Don’t get me wrong—I wouldn’t want to do anything else but if we didn’t have those 4 hours on stage, it just wouldn’t work—that’s the rewarding time. I’m so content when we are on stage playing but that’s about 4 hours out of the whole hour day and it’s all driving, so much sitting on your butt in a van and eating fast food. It’s not conducive to living a healthy lifestyle.
You guys are playing countless shows and you’re hitting the whole festival circuit every summer now. Do you have any plans to make a new album soon?
MS: _Live at Nectars _will be out in about 2 weeks and we are going to start recording our next studio album in January. We’re getting booked so far ahead in advance right now that we want to block off a month for doing an album. Touring in the winter sucks, you know driving in the snow sucks so we decided that if you are ever going to take off time to make an album, you better do it in the midst of the winter.
BJ: We plan to head out to the west coast for a tour after we record the studio album in January. We’re hoping to start the tour in Washington and head down the coast.
I’m curious, what are some of your favorite bands to see live? What are some of your favorite venues to see music? I went to The Gorge for Phish last summer and fell in love with it you know even over Red Rocks.
MS: I’m a Red Rocks guy. I love the Gorge too and it’s beautiful but I find that there is this special energy at Red Rocks.
RD: I’m really excited to see Phish, Bela Fleck and go to Wakarusa, Gathering of the Vibes, The Frendly Gathering and Summer Camp. I’d like to play at The Capitol Theatre again hopefully soon. There’s going to be tons of amazing music this summer. I’m really excited for SPAC.
Are there any upcoming tour dates, festival dates that you guys are specifically excited about or new places or festivals that you’re playing at this summer?
ZG: Summer Camp, The Frendly Gathering, and the Hudson Project.
MS: We are playing the main stage for the first time this year at the Gathering of the Vibes. Vibes is probably the most special for me.
BJ: We’re also playing the main stage at Wakarusa.
Can you tell me how the “The FRENDS Theme” song came about? Does it have something to do with The Frendly Gathering Festival? Are you guys associated with The Frendly Gathering? Is that your festival?
MS: Yes we are associated with The Frendly Gathering Festival. We are the host band. The “Frends” are a group of snowboarders who started the Frends group. They also have a headphone company and they were the ones who flew us out to Colorado to play that show at Conor O’Neill’s, which resulted in us meeting Madison House and soon becoming a band under their booking agency. They’ve been really good allies for us. We met them at the first Frendly Gathering and now they are all good friends. Danny Davis, one of the guys from the group was just in the Olympics for snowboarding and that’s really awesome.
When they flew us out to Colorado to play at Conor O’Neills we also ended up staying in their snowboard/ski house in Breckenridge and played at the amphitheater there and I was like, “Man, I just want to write a song for these guys,” and I kind of hummed the melody when we were out there and when I got home I wrote the song.
At the time it only had a first verse followed by a bunch of gibberish. It was just three chords, really simple with a nice hook. So I really just wrote it for Jack and those guys, just sort of to say thank you and we really like them.
Jack, one of the other guys from the “Frends” group and I just finished writing the second verse a couple weeks ago when we were in Colorado last. We were just in Utah with Jack too and we decided we were going to work on the third verse.
I want him to be involved in the rest of the lyrics on that one. He gives me outlines of what he wants for the lyrical content and I’ll take that and morph it into the song. So they’re the ones—Jack and Danny that put on The Frendly Gathering and we’re the host band this year. It’s not officially our festival but to us it’s like our family, fan base there. I mean we play every night of the festival. So it’s our festival in the way we think about it. Officially it’s not but I think it will be one day but this year at least we are the host band and we get to play every night. Zdenek and I are doing a couple Gubbulidis sets, I’m doing a solo and Mihali and Friends set so we’re just going to be playing the whole weekend and multiple times a day. So it’s really exciting and those guys have just been so good to us.
They know how to live man. They’re pro snowboarders and they really have had a really crazy, amazing life being able to travel and understand the business ends of being in sort of entertainment and having agents and the value of a brand and that kind of thing. And they support our band and really were kind of ambassadors for us in that world and they’ve just done so much for us without even trying. You know they didn’t know that Madison House was going to be at Conor O’Neill’s that night, they just happened to be and so it became the first Frendly Twiddle show we put on—that’s what we call them.
How did you guys come up with the name Twiddle? Is there any story behind it?
RD: When Mickey and I met in college we were first together in a trio band called Jinx but when Brook and our old bass player joined the band we found out that Jinx was taken as the name of a German band. So we picked up a dictionary and I started to read words off to Mickey until we finally got to T and stumbled upon Twiddle. Mickey asked me to read the definition and in this dictionary it was defined as “to twiddle your thumbs,” an act usually done when you’re bored. But on Wikipedia and other online sources we found that Twiddle had many other definitions like to turn or jounce lightly, to energize, move around and in the sexual and musical sense—to masturbate or to climax the music. So Twiddle seemed like a good thing because to us it meant to do fast, musical notes and also to move around in the sense of movement. So Mickey and I were like, “Yes, that’s good.” It really just came from us going through a dictionary stoned off of our asses. [Laughter]. We did go through the rest of the dictionary but we ended up not finding anything else that we felt had a musical affiliation that connected with who we are and what kind of band we were becoming.
We want to give fans a musical orgasm—that’s our goal. Twitter came out soon after ironically and a Twiddle was a twitter riddle and it kind of took off and we love it. It is also something that you can remember whether you hate or love it. I felt like it just fit with our surrounding side, our vibe and our personalities. Also the idea of having a one-word name band was important to us. You know like instead of say Blink 182, we definitely wanted the one word name for our band name.
You guys have a contagious, fun energy on stage that bounces off each other. How would you guys describe the energy between the four of you when you’re playing live?
RD: That were twiddling and bouncing off each other. The thing about the band is we’ve grown to know each other’s sound and how we play and it’s basically become second nature to us—to know what we’re doing and play off each other. It takes a lot of listening and you can’t just focus on yourself. It’s taking the whole sound, making it better and trying to play off all the players. It took awhile to do that too because for a long time it was just focusing when we were younger musicians, making eye contact and trying to play off everybody around you. But we’re still trying to perfect it to get to the best musicians we can be. We’re trying to look at the music as an overall sound and give ourselves a unique sound, which is the best thing a musician can ask for—something that makes them unique. You know like, “This is Twiddle because I can hear how it sounds overall.” So hopefully one day we will be able to get our own unique sound and just make music on the spot other than the written parts you have to play at certain times.
You guys tell everyone to “Doinkinbonk!!!” What is “Doinkinbonking”?
RD: Zdenek wrote that song and he wanted to have a word he made up that was really silly to convey a tune that made you loosen up, you know just lose yourself in a dance and just fucking groove.
You guys have gone to festivals as fans together. What is that like in contrast to the experience of headlining your own festival now?
RD: My first festival was actually one that we also played at—Gathering of the Vibes in 2012. But Mickey and Brook had been to Bonnaroo, Vibes and other festivals prior.
For Mickey, when I met him it was a dream to play any festival—that one day we will be able to do this and we’re finally seeing a pay off and playing festivals.
It was such an amazing feeling that now we’re in that position to play for people in the same way we were once fans and members of the audience to now, you know when we were teenagers and watching and being in awe and now my first festival I was actually able to play for people too.
You guys have evolved so much as a band since you first started and it’s a continuous evolution. Where do you see it going next, the evolution of Twiddle? How far do you see the evolution of Twiddle going?
RD: I like to keep the organic feel, I like the band as live music so hopefully in that direction. I love the idea of musicians getting on stage in front of people and playing music. So I hope it will always be playing an instrument and maybe going off of different sounds that are catchy. At the show we played last night there were these two girls crying in the front row and I looked at the boy next to them and I asked him what was wrong. He told me that everything was okay and that they were tears of joy because of how much they love you guys and your music—that’s what I hope to keep in our evolution that we will always have that impact on our fans. Anyone who knows that feeling and I told her that I’ve been there before too, I remember starting to cry you know at Phish—there was this moment after they were playing no notes and the crowd was just going nuts after them just doing nothing, just this energy of people sitting there not even making noise and it can make them go wild, this intense feeling. It just struck me as, “Wow you can get so many people so excited.” So I hope that music stays like that and you can always get an intense emotion out of people whether it’s sad or happy and hopefully that’s where Twiddle will always stay, to always have that connection is so important to me.
How has living in Vermont shaped your music?
RD: We started in Castleton, Vermont. I donate the idea to the scenery. We all lived in a place called Eagle Rock with a lake in front of us. We wrote music there and we would hike this mountain called Eagle Rock with such beautiful scenery.
In Vermont, the environment had a great deal to do with our music just as it might be different if we lived in New York City or Detroit or any different part of the world you’re from.
Vermont has this scenery and environment that just makes the music. It inspires you so much being in such a beautiful place in the world, inspiring what kind of a composition you create or you know if I was in a place of war and there was gunfire—I’d think I’d write a little different. So really foliage and lakes, hopefully that has a lot to do with where Twiddle’s music comes from. But it also comes from everybody’s taste in music. Even just art in general, you know music, art and literature—it’s all about taking what’s around you and making sense of it and creating something from the imagery you get from the scenery around you.
