Twen on the Boston Basement Scene, Touring, and '70s Music
This Q&A has been edited for conciseness and clarity.
Ian Jones (guitarist and back up vocalist) and Jane Fitzsimmons (lead vocalist) are two halves of the rock band Twen. Formed in Boston and currently based in Nashville, Twen released their sophomore album, One Stop Shop, in July 2022. Entirely written and produced by the duo, Twen creates a dynamic atmosphere with retro guitar tones, powerful vocals and a timeless energy. The duo sat down with Five Cent Sound to talk all things live performance, songwriting, retro sounds and their hot takes on the state of rock music.
Minna Abdel-Gawad: How would you describe the music you make?
Jane Fitzsimmons: We've been told a lot of things of what it sounds like, but I would say we're trying to make rock music. In this day and age, rock can't stand by itself. So usually, it's psychedelic rock or indie rock or ethereal rock. It has a lot of sub genres, which is understandable–I would accept any of those.
Ian Jones: I think we're a song-based band. We write songs, first and foremost, and then the instrumentation and the sonics of the song are all informed by the seed of the song itself. I think some bands are based around their jams or their grooves or aesthetics. We're more of a song band, and we never tried to write the same song twice. I think we have a wide breadth of songwriting and music, even though we are a rock band.
MAG: Does being a song-based band make it difficult to compile songs for a cohesive album?
Jones: We wrote twenty songs for One Stop Shop and we only ended up choosing ten. If you listen to it, the ten songs are very different from each other. They probably feel like they fit together because emotionally, they're tied together, but sonically, they're actually very different. [...] Each song on the record should be like a cast of characters. On a show or a movie, the characters are all different from each other, but they fit together to form a narrative.
Fitzsimmons: They tell the same story.
MAG: What was the formation of Twen?
Fitzsimmons: We've been through a lot of different iterations, but it originally started in Boston. Ian was in another band in his Berklee days, and I was in a band in college. Those both broke up dramatically, as bands should, I guess. There was lots of drama and betrayal and all sorts of things. We were together for a long time prior to making music together.
Jones: Although we met making music together.
Fitzsimmons: Yeah, that's true. He was originally in my band, but we kicked him out, hence the drama. And then when we were both bandless. I think we just missed it so much and we knew that's what we needed to do individually, [so] we started writing songs together. We were in the same house temporarily because we were moving out of Boston. [...] Boston has that big college town energy, so it kind of felt hard to stay.
Jones: There’s a hard turnover after people graduate.
Fitzsimmons: We were big in the house show scene. I ran a house venue and lived across the street. That's where [Jones’s] whole band lived together in one house. [...] We felt so at home there, but it really had a shelf life. I think we were missing that music community and music based life, and I don't think we saw that in Boston. So, we started the band immediately. People were kind of attracted to it because they were hearing it — hearing us play it — in the basement of where we were temporarily living. And then they came with us to Nashville because we didn't want to go to New York and didn't want to go to L.A., and Nashville was a warmer city that had a music business. Even though we're definitely not a country band, they have a lot of other things going on.
Jones: We were looking at tours; Nashville is a good place to tour from because we're kind of in the epicenter. [...] When we moved to Nashville, we would do short tours in any one direction outside of Nashville. We'd do a weekend North or a weekend up in Chicago or down in Florida or Texas. Those early tours just kept expanding into longer and longer tours until we were doing it full time.
Image courtesy of CJ Harvey.
MAG: You began in the Boston house scene. Do you feel like the house scene informs your current music style and your performance style?
Fitzsimmons: It's hard to say because it feels like there's nothing remnant of that time. But, it's a part of how I got into music because I didn't really plan on being in a band. I really was starting out with playing music, being in that house venue, experiencing other bands and having such regrets now because I didn't [recognize] the reality of touring. Any touring bands that came through – I'm horrified at what I didn't give them. Like, I didn't give them clean sheets and cook them breakfast in the morning because I had class. Experiencing it on the other end, I'm like, “Damn it, that’s karma right there.” I think it was more of the freedom of it and being able to do whatever you want because that was very much what was going on. It was more on-guard and noisy.
Jones: Noise rock and a lot of math rock was popular.
Fitzsimmons: I'm not a super fan of math rock, but it was trying to expand the boundaries of what rock is using; guitar, bass and drums.
Jones: Because we were in all those Boston basement venues, you’re in a sweaty basement in college, and it's packed — and you're really rocking out. There's a level of intensity of performance or volume. You know, it's a high-octane kind of energy. I think when we moved to Nashville, we brought that with us and it was refreshing to a lot of people here.
Fitzsimmons: It was more of a professionalism here, I think – a stoicism, because a lot of people are musicians.
Jones: They're like, “I'm a performer, and I'm on stage and I'm performing,” whereas when we got up, we kind of just rocked out in a way that was fresh to the scene. [...] Also, the level of success that we had when we moved to Nashville [was] because we were doing something different, and it was bringing that punk rock, basement energy to a singer-songwriter town like Nashville. When you're in a crowded basement, and that's where you're playing all the time, a certain performance style like head-banging and playing the guitar and being loud and aggressive with your music…To do that in a crowded basement gives you a kind of feeling. But then, when you graduate from a basement scene and you end up playing bars and stuff, it can be hard to translate that energy. Lately, we've been playing bigger venues with slightly more people, and now I almost feel like it's coming back to that [point] where I'm headbanging in a college basement again. There's a weird [kind] of venue where it doesn't feel like it translates, but then on the other side of that, it does translate.
MAG: How has it been moving from that basement-style performance to performing at massive festivals like ACL?
Fitzsimmons: It feels like a long time coming, honestly. We had a lot of DIY touring that still involved basements and small clubs at the beginning, and then a whole lot of support on tours that were those bigger, 200 to 500 cap rooms. But, we're opening for another band, and it's a great way to see how things are done and get into way bigger crowds and bigger venues. But it's a different energy: you're trying to convince them of something and they're not just ready to go. [It has] made us very confident and sturdy in our own performance, because we don't really need much from anyone [and] we're gonna do it whether you're reciprocating or not by the end. Now, getting into these big festivals and even bigger venues, it’s very motivating and encouraging, even more so because I think we've been ready for bigger crowds like this for a long time.
Jones: We never really got the opportunity. In a couple of weeks, we'll start a tour and the smallest venue is 2,000 tickets. That's a first for us. In theaters like that, you have full lighting rigs and everything to augment the performance and create excitement. But, when you're playing in a basement, you kind of have to make the fireworks with your body and your stage presence because you don't have all those productions to enhance the music.
Fitzsimmons: If everyone's coming to a show and they're in that big of a crowd, everyone wants to have a good experience. It's almost easier to play that role of the performer, because you do have this large audience that's willing to participate in that.
Jones: There are, of course, rock bands that bring it, although I think it's far and few between right now, in the music scene. It feels like a lost art, culturally. Maybe it's coming back, but I feel like when you come and see Twen, you'll see a rock band that is really playing together in a very [tight, energetic kind of way], creating something spontaneous and in the moment rather than doing the same old thing while you stand there behind the mic. Most rock bands and indie rock bands are very fucking boring and you actually don't know how boring it is because it has just become the norm. It takes a band like us to come along and make it exciting, and people are like, “Holy shit, it really paints a picture between how boring rock music has become when it's done right.” So, that's what we're trying to do. We're not the only ones, but we are a fucking small percentage of people playing guitars right now that are actually exciting and playing as a band together.
MAG: Now that you have access to these bigger production aspects, how is it adding this element into your performance?
Jones: It's exciting – it’s liberation, honestly.
Fitzsimmons: It's really flowing right now and it's probably just because we've been at it for a while.
Jones: We've also been pent up for a couple of years because of COVID-19. We are young and we have vitality, we're in our 20s; we want to rock out and the past few years, we haven't been able to.
Fitzsimmons: We had a nationwide tour canceled during [the COVID-19 lockdown] where we were supposed to perform West Coast to East Coast, and that was all canceled. I think the whole process of recording this latest album and releasing it ourselves [was very fulfilling and enriching], but that didn't always involve live performance or touring. It involved a lot of recording and making music videos and promoting it and stuff, like getting vinyl printed.
Jones: All that administrative bullshit–
Fitzsimmons: –Which is fulfilling in its own way, but if you don't have the touring aspect accompanying it, [the process] can be a little depressing.
Jones: We are pent the fuck up.
Fitzsimmons: We're just ready the fuck to go.
Jones: When you know exactly what you want to do in life, but you're not allowed to because of your age or your gender or whatever, it's like, “If only I was given the chance to do what I know I want to do, then I would have this release.”
Fitzsimmons: I think a lot of people relate to that with COVID-19. I think it's just taken us longer because we were kind of building ourselves back up again. It felt like [coming] from ground zero after COVID-19 because everything was so fragile with live performance, in general.
Jones: Our band is growing so we have friends helping us out and we can afford to pay them to help run lights or sound or run the merch table.
Fitzsimmons: Our friend who was doing lighting for our friends’ bands was available for this upcoming tour to do it with us. It's just been fun to communicate the colors or vibe for each song in a setlist and what they would do.
Jones: It’s another creative outlet, but it's a slightly more managerial creativity. It's more or less like taking the songs and all that raw creativity that you have, so it's almost like a management of that art.
“There are, of course, rock bands that bring it, although I think it’s far and few between right now, in the music scene. It feels like a lost art, culturally. ”
MAG: Is there an aspect of live shows that you're excited to bring to audiences?
Jones: Loud guitar amplifiers and lights, honestly, and some good songs.
Fitzsimmons: I’m excited to interact with the crowds. When you're at a certain level, maybe the crowd isn't willing for you to go into the audience or crowd surf or do something like that, but I think I'm gonna have the moment and people to do that on this upcoming one, which I’m excited for.
Jones: You can’t crowd surf in a crowd of twenty people.
Fitzsimmons: You can try, but you’ll get hurt [laugh].
MAG: Your first release was “Waste,” followed by “Awestruck.” What was the spark of inspiration that led you to release them?
Jones: It was just that we were signed to a label.
Fitzsimmons: That took a while, actually. The thing that was weird about us at the beginning — which I have no regrets about because I think we both learned so much from it — was that we started touring without any recorded music. When we moved to Nashville from Boston in 2016, we hadn't released anything. We didn't release the album until 2019, and we were playing around so much and making a name for ourselves in the live sphere in Nashville, [so people started paying attention]. A producer approached us about recording, and we started that process. That eventually led to a label deal and all these other things because there's a lot of infrastructure in Nashville. We were playing those songs for probably two years, live on all of those DIY tours for a long time before we were actually recording them – which made it a weird process, but one I wouldn't want to replicate ever again. But, I think it was cool at the time.
MAG: How have you grown since the release of your first album?
Image courtesy of CJ Harvey.
Fitzsimmons: So much! We had never recorded [by ourselves] before. We had worked with a producer before, and we did not actually enjoy that process because it was kind of hard to communicate and get the ideas out. But now, in this process, Ian has learned through this album that some of the songs vary in their aesthetic — it was at different stages of Ian learning how to record and mix. He did all that himself, but it was in that process of that batch of songs. There were a lot of other songs that we tried in that process as well, but these are the ones that we thought were the best they could possibly be.
Jones: This is not our first rodeo. Having been through it before, we know ourselves better because of everything that we've gone through, [and] we understand the music business better. Or at least, the portion of the music business as it relates to us. Through that, you get more confidence because you know who you are, and you know what to expect or what not to expect. After COVID-19 and after our first record deal, we stopped looking for anybody to help or save us. It was like, “Only we can save us.” I think that's true for everybody.
Fitzsimmons: Only you can show up with the best that you can do. You can get into a mindset, I think — in a lot of different disciplines, but especially with music — where you don't need someone to tell you, “You can release this or we'll get this out to the people,” because you can do it yourself. [I think] that's very empowering. It can be a little scary at first, I guess, but that process of shedding makes you grow so much as an artist and as a person.
MAG: The music that you’re putting out now is solely written and produced by you two. Do you feel that this reflects your actual music taste, sound and more?
Jones: Yeah, 100%. It is the purest and truest, and the most direct line between what is inside of our hearts and what is hitting your eardrums because we don't have any outside influence. There was no producer or engineer doing it, [just] us sticking the microphones on the guitar caps and recording it the way that we thought that it should sound.
Fitzsimmons: I think during that time, we were listening to a lot of the things that we listened to growing up. When you're in that pre-teen era and you're caring so much about bands, you're not really comparing and contrasting or being critical, like you would do now, being in the industry.
Jones: When you're a kid, you think music just falls out of the sky. You don't think about where it comes from. It's just a magical thing that you find, and it means so much to you. As you get older and you're in the music business, that tends to go away, I think.
Fitzsimmons: Writing these [songs] is what we were trying to get back to: being [the band that we want to be right now]. Maybe we have felt a little jaded about not being able to get excited about other music — we just make it ourselves.
Jones: Why did I love the bands I loved when I was growing up? During the pandemic, that really came into focus for us, and now we are that band for other people.
“You can get into a mindset, I think — in a lot of different disciplines, but especially with music — where you don’t need someone to tell you, “You can release this or we’ll get this out to the people,” because you can do it yourself. [I think] that’s very empowering.”
MAG: “One Stop Shop” has a very retro and almost ‘70s sound to it. Was that intentional and are there childhood favorite bands you want to emulate with Twen?
Fitzsimmons: [It’s] probably the closest in this album, and it'll probably change in the next one, but we were thinking a lot about the last time big rock bands were actually a big deal and doing things that are cool, which was the ‘90s. You know, Oasis, Pearl Jam – the big ones.
Image courtesy of CJ Harvey.
Jones: Well, it's about having fun. It's not about wanting to kill yourself. It's life-affirming, it's positive, it's uplifting. And that's definitely what we tried to do. [...] When you're in college, it's an expansive time in your life where your horizons are [broadening], you're trying out new things, and there's new input that you previously didn't have access to. You spend the first half of your twenties in this ever expansive mode, where you're constantly changing, changing, changing. Then, in your late twenties — especially during COVID-19 — we found a return, a harkening back to what you loved as a kid and what actually makes you you, instead of outside input. It's like, “Wait a minute, let me reconnect with what's inside before I was conditioned by all this other stuff.” I think in the ‘70s, you actually had a similar thing. I think, culturally speaking, the ‘60s were an incredibly [vast] time where you had all this new music and culture emerging in jazz, in rock, in film, in everything. In every aspect of American culture, it was an expansive period. In the ‘70s, you had a lot of returning singer-songwriters, acoustic instrumentation. You're getting away from the loud amplifiers [in the ‘60s] and getting back to acoustic instruments and folk influences in the ‘70s. There was a certain harkening back, at least in the music. As far as the album art goes, when you're making album art there's stylistic fads–but then if you do that, it doesn't necessarily age well. There's [more universal themes and aesthetics that you can tap into that will probably age better], like a fine cheese.
MAG: What is next for Twen?
Jones: We have a big fat tour coming up in December. We have a headline tour through March and April, and we have a new music video [that came out November 11th].
Fitzsimmons: And we’ll be writing in Florida for January and February.
Jones: We're snowbirds, so we're going to drive down to Florida for the winter and emerge in the spring with a new album, and we'll have a new album at the end of next year, I reckon — if it all goes according to plan.