L4LM had the chance to talk with Mihali Savoudilis of Twiddle, during their current tour while on a stop in Colorado.  The Vermont based quartet is comprised of Savoulidis on lead vocals and guitar, Brook Jordan on drums and percussion, Ryan Dempsey on keys, and Zdenek Gubb on bass.  They are currently playing in Colorado through the 14th, before heading to Costa Rica to play Jungle Jam, and then swinging back to the northeast for a “Dirty Dozen” tour with Kung Fu.

Savoulidis will tell you all about the Dirty Dozen shows with Kung Fu, and you can also check out info about their upcoming co-headlining show at Irving Plaza on April 3rd!

Do you have any favorite songs on the new upcoming album, especially that you prefer to perform live? Talk to us about that.

We’ve played a couple of the new songs off the album live and they’re going over really well with our fans.  We also have three or four other songs that we are not going to play until we release the album.  Those are the ones we’re most excited about because they are brand new for us.

So you’re currently in Colorado.  How are you enjoying that?

It’s great.  We’re staying in the Rockies right now.  It’s been good.  Pretty much every show has sold out, and we are having a great time. We’ve played a lot of mountain towns.  Telluride was really fun, really beautiful.  We had a great time there. 

Let’s talk a little bit about composition and theory.  Songs often blend multiple genres and influences.  What’s Twiddle’s process?  Is it a group effort versus individual contributions?  How do you put a song together.

Typically, one of us will write the song and bring it to the band.  Then we will rehearse it.  Usually they develop live on their own.  The more we play them, the more we figure out what works and what doesn’t. It’s usually one individual that will bring a song as we don’t write together very often. 

Let’s talk about the Dirty Dozen Tour you have coming up.  That’s a great concept.  The Dirty Dozen Tour involves playing with Kung Fu but in no set order on stage.  Where did this idea come from?

We’ve been really good friends with them [Kung Fu], and been wanting to do a tour with them for a long time.  We are really happy it worked out. The idea behind the tour is we’re not announcing who’s headlining or opening on any of the nights.  We’re going to try and do a lot of collaborations. One night might start off with half of Kung Fu and half of Twiddle on stage, or two members of them and two members of us.  We’re just going to try cross pollinating like that and come up with some cool covers to do.  Teach each other our originals and make it one flux night.  This band plays this and this band plays that, just split the bill like that. We just want to make it for one fun really long show, and that’s kind of the idea.  We talked about it a while ago and we’re really happy that it’s coming together. 

So basically you’re going to go in there and the audience isn’t going to know who’s going on stage first or last?

Right, the idea is we want don’t want any of our fans coming just to see one band or the other.  It’s co-bill.  I think that our fans will get a lot from each band and it would be cool.  Even though it’s co-bill, there’s just something about who plays first and who plays second.  If people don’t know, then they just have to come and enjoy it.  That’s really what we’re trying to do.  

With this idea, do you see any collaborations down the road with Kung Fu?

Me and Todd Stoops [keyboardist from Kung Fu], have a side project called Drunks for Cowboys.  We’ve done that a few times and Tim Palmieri [Kung Fu guitarist], is one of my favorite guitar players.  I’ve been watching him play since I was 14.  Those guys, we all kind of grew up in the scene watching them play and we have so much respect for them.  It’s just very cool that we became friends and are able to collaborate.  We’re trying to get Todd, Tim and Adrian [Tramontano, from Kung Fu] up to Vermont so we can get some tracks with them, so that would be great.

That would really add a great dynamic to Twiddle’s sound.

Totally.  Todd is the man on the keys, Adrian does amazing percussion and Tim just kind of speaks for himself.  He’s the best guitar player I think.

Twiddle has some festivals coming up this summer year, with Wakarusa, Rock and Roll Resort and Summer Camp, to name a few.  You guys have a packed festival season, and just all around music, coming up.

Yeah, festivals are great for collaborations.  We are excited to see who we can get up on stage with us and hopefully we can do some jams as well. All our friends are there together and makes for an interesting set for music.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to L4LM.  Is there anything else you would like to add for your fans out there?

We would just like to thank our fans so much for supporting us on this run.  We’ve been in Colorado for two weeks and fans have been on tour with us the whole time at every show.  We are just really honored that they would want to do that and be so supportive of us. So much has happened recently with the Kickstarter campaign for the new album as well.  It’s been a real blessing to us. Thank you!

You can find more information on Twiddle’s tour dates on their website. Enter below to win tickets to the April 3rd Irving Plaza show!