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Chicago-rockers Twin Peaks kicked off the U.S. leg of their North American tour on May 18 at The Sinclair in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The band is touring their third album, \u201cDown in Heaven,\u201d with fellow Chicago natives, NE-HI and Jimmy Whispers. WTBU DJ Olivia Gehrke sat down with Jack Dolan (bassist, vocalist, songwriter) and Clay Frankel (guitarist, vocalist, songwriter) before the show to discuss the creating and touring of their latest album, released on May 13.<\/p>\n
Olivia Gehrke: You guys just finished touring Europe and Australia and have done some festivals\u2014what have been the reactions to the new material live so far?<\/b><\/p>\n
Clay Frankel: It was good. We were playing it for a few months, like a lot of new stuff. I guess I\u2019ve noticed a slight difference from when the album actually came out because usually before it was the singles that people would get excited for, but we played a lot of the other stuff on our record obviously. I think people are starting to know those songs pretty well, don\u2019t you think?<\/p>\n
Jack Dolan: Yeah. I\u2019m pleasantly surprised by the reaction because this record, overall, it\u2019s a little more mellow. Initially we were kind of wondering which songs would actually be good live, because our live shows are typically so crazy, but we found out that we could still make shit rock.<\/p>\n
CF: It\u2019s nice finding ways to put energy to songs that are slower. They still have good energy to them.<\/p>\n
OG: Even just working off that, the album has definitely been noted for being mellow and laid-back. Do you think that\u2019s a product of recording in Western Mass as opposed to Chicago? Like would it be a different album?<\/b><\/p>\n
CF: I definitely think so, yeah.<\/p>\n
JD: It allows you to do that much more in that environment for sure.<\/p>\n
CF: It definitely had an influence on it, just in the instrumentation you choose. You\u2019re almost more likely to pick up an acoustic guitar if you\u2019re in a farm area.<\/p>\n
OG: It\u2019s no secret that you guys are definitely heavily influenced by the Stones, Beatles, and Velvet Underground.<\/b><\/p>\n
CF: Never heard of them!<\/p>\n
OG: How do you manage to take that style of the past and tie it into your own style?<\/b><\/p>\n
CF: I don\u2019t know how conscious it is. We certainly like those bands a lot, and I guess there are certain ways you can play guitar that are similar to that. You gotta make it your own. A good way to do that is with lyrics\u2014sing about shit that makes it you\u2014or melodies and stuff.<\/p>\n
OG: Influences for songs\u2014do you guys find more influences on the road, or more in things that happen when you\u2019re off tour? Or a bit of both?<\/b><\/p>\n
JD: I guess just overall life experiences. I think we might write, like more recently, about being on the road or my life relative to what I\u2019m doing right now. Right now what I\u2019ve been doing for the last four years is touring around, so it might be different from songs I had written awhile ago. You just take from what you know, I guess. You never want to try too hard to get people to relate to you. Just say what you want to say.<\/p>\n
CF: You don\u2019t want to be melodramatic about it.<\/p>\n
OG: Sometimes bands, with their early albums, feel like they can\u2019t relate to them as much. Have you found that to be the case with \u201cWild Onion\u201d and \u201cSunken?\u201d Or does it still feel pretty relevant?<\/b><\/p>\n
CF: I feel like our early records, I really like them. Especially the first one I really like. I can\u2019t imagine ever kind of writing\u2014not that I couldn\u2019t write songs like that again\u2014but you just change as you\u2019re writing songs, and you always want to do things that are new and interesting to you. You don\u2019t want to make the same record over and over again, so you try new things. There are just some things on that first record that I feel like we just came up with because we were really young. Just crazy ideas, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
JD: Yeah, it\u2019s interesting to look back on those for us because those marked such moments in time for us as a band. We probably look at them way different than anyone else would, obviously. But I get nostalgic thinking back or listening back on all that stuff. And we still play a shit-ton of the songs from both records.<\/p>\n
CF: Yeah, that\u2019s good. We play a good mix of all of them.<\/p>\n
OG: Because the first one came out when you guys were in high school, right?<\/b><\/p>\n
CF: Yeah, we were like 17 or 18. Second one was when we were 19.<\/p>\n
JD: Yeah, those were all songs we had been playing all through high school, and we had recorded them right when we graduated, basically.<\/p>\n
OG: You guys site Chicago\u2019s DIY scene as influencing the band you are today. As you\u2019ve grown in success and toured nationally and internationally, do you still feel like you\u2019re part of that scene, or have you outgrown it?<\/b><\/p>\n
CF: Well, it\u2019s like are we playing basements in Chicago anymore? No fucking way.<\/p>\n
JD: Unless you have the biggest basement in town.<\/p>\n
CF: We\u2019re trying to set up things in more of like loft spaces, stuff like that, which they had a lot of when we were first starting out. It\u2019s hard to play the 30-person basement. But on this tour, we\u2019re bringing a lot of Chicago bands that have hooked us up in the past from the DIY. Every band on this bill is from Chicago. Good friends of ours. You know, spread the love.<\/p>\n
JD: Yeah, we definitely owe a lot to Chicago. At least the scene and the people who inspired us to really push this as a career because we did it younger than a lot of the bands in Chicago did. Everyone\u2019s proud of us, and we just want to give back.<\/p>\n
CF: It also makes it easier probably because we did it young. Most Chicago bands have jobs. We didn\u2019t have any things to really work out, so any tour we could pretty much do.<\/p>\n
JD: It was perfect timing.<\/p>\n
OG: When you guys write music for \u201cDown in Heaven\u201d and the other albums, do you have how it\u2019s going to translate live in your mind, or just how it\u2019s going to sound in the studio? Or are you not even thinking about it really?<\/b><\/p>\n
CF: I think for the most part we take it pretty separately, like two different beasts. We just want to get a really good recording, the heaviest recording we can have with it, and then we\u2019ll try to figure out how to play it live. It\u2019s not like \u201cOh man, we shouldn\u2019t lay down this saxophone on here because we\u2019re not going to tour with a saxophone player.\u201d We just get the song that we like on recording and then figure it out.<\/p>\n
OG: You released \u201cDown in Heaven,\u201d the same day you also released the \u201cButterfly\u201d music video. How did the idea come about for that particular video?<\/b><\/p>\n
CF: We were just tossing some things around, and then all of a sudden I just thought of\u2014you\u2019ve seen that movie \u201cEasy Rider?\u201d It\u2019s like an old motorcycle film. It\u2019s really good. It\u2019s got a lot of great music in it. It\u2019s a really cool movie. And there\u2019s this scene where they take acid in a cemetery.<\/p>\n
JD: And it\u2019s totally freaky.<\/p>\n
CF: So, I just got that sort of thing. Then we went to a costume shop and I saw these costumes\u2014this cloak and the big black pirate pistol and just kind of went with it.<\/p>\n
OG: As mentioned, Rolling Stones, Beatles\u2014all influences. But is there a band or musician that people would be surprised to know influenced this album in one way or another?<\/b><\/p>\n
CF: Well, we really like the Black Lips. I guess that\u2019s no surprise. We\u2019re big fans of them.<\/p>\n
JD: Juan Wauters came out. We actually a recorded a song with him that is yet to be released.<\/p>\n
CF: Yeah, he was kicking it out there with us.<\/p>\n
JD: That was a little bit influential\u2014his presence I guess.<\/p>\n
OG: Is there a dream venue you guys would like to play? Because you\u2019ve played basements, big clubs, festivals\u2014is there a goal or dream?<\/b><\/p>\n
JD: Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n
OG: Who would be the supporting act?<\/b><\/p>\n
JD: Oh, I don\u2019t know. Maybe we\u2019ll start with supporting act at Madison Square Garden, and then we\u2019ll move up.<\/p>\n
OG: Supporting for?<\/b><\/p>\n
JD: I don\u2019t know. Bruce Springsteen? The Rolling Stones? I don\u2019t know, who plays at Madison Square Garden?<\/p>\n
OG: Like Adele, I don\u2019t know.<\/b><\/p>\n
JD: Yeah, we\u2019ll do the Adele tour. That\u2019s cool with me.<\/p>\n
CF: Oh my god, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m signing up for that one.<\/p>\n
JD: The checks would be fat though.<\/p>\n
CF: If we could fucking play a Wrigley Field show, that would be good.<\/p>\n
JD: Actually yeah that\u2019d be really good.<\/p>\n
CF: That would just be so funny. It seems ridiculous for us to play huge venues, but we\u2019re going to play a few on this tour.<\/p>\n
JD: We\u2019re gettin\u2019 there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chicago-rockers Twin Peaks kicked off the U.S. leg of their North American tour on May 18 at The Sinclair in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The band is touring their third album, \u201cDown in Heaven,\u201d with fellow Chicago natives, NE-HI and Jimmy Whispers. WTBU DJ Olivia Gehrke sat down with Jack Dolan (bassist, vocalist, songwriter) and Clay Frankel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[26,28,29,27,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}