★I’m Emma, I’m the music director here at WREV and I’m joined here today by the Lemon
Twigs
Would you guys mind introducing yourselves?
B■Sure, I’m Brian and
M■I’m Michael
★Thank you so much for coming today, I have a couple of nice easy questions for you
First, what album or song have you been listening to non-stop lately?
M■I’ve been listening to the Swamp Dogg album,
B■uh, his first record, um, and I’ve been also Listening to some Marvin Gaye, here, my dear,
M■uh, I’ve just been listening to the cl-
My classic, uh, things I like to listen to all the time, like the Monkees
Yeah, and the Keys song, we’ve been learning a lot of covers, so I have to listen to the covers that we’re doing, so Keys, Todd Rundgren,
B■Daughters of Albion is a record that I’ve been listening to constantly for the last three months, a Leon Russell-produced album from like 1968, very cool, orchestral, pop
★Here’s an odd one
What is a song by another artist that you wish you wrote?
B■”God Only Knows” maybe?
That’s like, you know, that to me is like one of the most perfect songs
So who would not, who among us would not love to write that track?
M■Let’s pretend, Raspberries?
★What movie would your music be the soundtrack to?
M■People keep comparing the new song to the song from the movie, uh, what is it?
You got, you, not “You’ve Got Mail” the other time, it’s the one with the Powerpups intro
Everybody keeps commenting that your song sounds like that, so I can’t, the title is
Escaping Me
★Is it a romantic comedy?
M■It’s a romantic comedy
B■Yeah, our new song would be in any number of romantic comedies
Yeah, yeah, any number of those, yeah, that would be great
Maybe something with Ashton Kutcher
M■I was thinking it would be because a lot of people are saying that my golden Years sounds like it would be great for the intro of a TV of a sitcom or something
★Absolutely
M■I was thinking that would be great
I would love that
So any kind of sitcom would be great
And it would be about old folks, a retirement home
Yeah, golden years
B■And then something from the last album for some Gus Van Sant movie
★What is your favorite city that you’ve visited over tour, over the years?
M■Probably Tokyo, or I love, I loved Brussels when we went to Brussels, that’s cool
B■Yeah, those kind of places are real fun, places where you never thought you’d ever go
You find out what a venue looks like in one of those places,
Which is pretty similar to the way they look everywhere
★So at the beginning of the month, right at the start of 2024,
You released a brand new single and a music video
So tell me about my golden years
M■Um, it’s like an upbeat pop song with a lot of harmonies and kind of
Birdsy and beatily and all that
Um, yeah, that has, it has pretty light lyrical content, I’d say
And we recorded it, just the two of us playing all the instruments and Doing all the harmonies and stuff
B■Yeah, we did the music video with Ambar and Navarro, who directed the
Any Time of Day video that we did for the last album, and that was great
I mean, she and the DP, her DP, Max Flick,
They work really well together and they’re like, it’s great
Because we directed a couple of the music videos for the last record
And anytime we do something with them, we know we can just kind of walk,Walk on and it’s going to be something fun, you know?
So it was cool
And it was fun because we did it with the live band, with Reza and Danny
And so it made the whole experience a lot more fun for us
★It was very fun, it was very whimsical, and you mentioned The Monkees before, it felt like an episode of a TV show
M■Yeah, it did
★It just looked fun, you know, a little adventure
M■Yeah, yeah, all the sped up kind of things, very Monkees
★And you are producing your own music right now, is that correct?
M■Yeah, we did, like, we produced that Golden Years song, we produced our last-
Three albums, that’s just something we’ve always recorded since we were on tape, analog tape and always recording on tape machines
My dad had a track that I begged him to teach me how to record on
He was very pro digital, so he thought that was silly that I would want to record on tape, but
Once you start doing it and you hear like your own voice and your own, you know, guitar
Or whatever come off with the tape machine as opposed to the computer, it’s so satisfying
And it’s, it’s almost like a veil
It’s almost like not as, uh, not as naked
★I’m sure it’s a much longer process, but it must be much more rewarding
M■Yeah
Well, I think that, you know, for me personally, it was maybe a result of
Being so bad at the computer, but mainly I think
I’ve just had so much more experience working on tape, digital is much slower for me
And there’s another element of that which is perfectionism and when you’re on the computer
You’re more likely to go in and try to change every note of the drums to try to get it
In time
And our process being kind of like even when we’re on the computer we’re trying to be
Organic about it, so we’re not really recording with a click or anything
So then if you go to the computer and you’re not recording with a click and then you’re
Beat tracking everything or whatever they call it, it’s harder than it is even to start
Out with this kind of like digital approach
So our whole approach is analog so it happens to actually be easier and quicker of a process
For us, you know, to do a top to bottom analog
Throughout your discography, I mean all of the analog production,
★you can tell that
You’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from older bands, it shows in your sound and even in
Your stage presence, like Paul McCartney, Big Star, other glam rock acts, and most recently
Like Simon and Garfunkel on your last record, Everything Harmony
Did you take inspiration from any new artists that you haven’t really listened to before
For your new song and for your new video?
M■Not really
The new song, if anything, the last record that we did was kind of, we um,
Were exploring the modern
You know, we were trying to kind of, at the very least, sonically
And I would say melodically there were elements we kind of had always kept blinders on in terms of
Modern stuff because it
Didn’t appeal to us on a bass level, like, you know, like we would hear like
This melody that had this kind of tinge to it and go, “I don’t know why it’s so different .”
When you analyze it in certain notes, people choose and
But with the last album, we had kind of thought
Of
You know, not doing that, not excluding that
So I think that, um, people connected with it, uh, subconsciously, unknowingly
Because of that in a way, but then at the same time, also our approach in terms
Of the recording, the production had leveled up a lot, so you can’t really
Pin it to one thing, really why, why I think people connected with our last
Record more than they did with other records of ours
But yeah, no, I couldn’t say, uh, single out an artist
It was more like, kind of like, even the production values, it’s all analog,
But it’s not so, um, throwback or something
The last record, this kind of more is the new thing
And I, I decide personally, it’s just what I like
★Yeah,
M■just what I’ve now I’ve did my toe in the water of this other thing and I liked it
But this is really what I like, you know, so
B■yeah,you know though
It’s like every time we do a new record or a new song or something
It’s like we’re always them
Highlighting a different shade of what what we do, you know,
M■trying to take a little part
And expound on it
B■I think recently the feeling has been because the last record was
A bit dreary,
M■sort of just more down tempo and ballad heavy
B■to do more like bubblegum type
Stuff, you know?
M■Yeah, just ear candy stuff
B■So I mean, I think that for us, that means, you know, a little bit more 60s kind of like
Like the Monkees or something, you know, it’s like, almost like very professional songwriting
But you know, you don’t really have a lot of those writers around anymore, you know,
Because there’s there’s no money to be made from doing that kind of music
★Yeah,So clearly, you two have a really deep love and respect for classic rock and pop musicians
I want to know what it was like to work with Todd Rundgren
M■It was great, you know, when we worked with him actually in person, that was like, you
Know, what, seven years, six years ago?
B■Yeah, it was right at the start of our career
M■Yeah, it was right, so we were not very experienced, and we were recording him on
Tape, which I don’t think, he was kind of getting a kick out of that because it had
Been a long time, he’s always been ahead of the curve, so he switched to digital as soon
As he could, really, in the 90s
And he’s really, he thought it was kind of cool
He’s a home recording guy So that was, it was thrilling definitely to have him in our parents’ basement,
Which at the time is where we were and to record this, this vocal
But then it, then we kind of would go to his shows when he was in town and stuff And say hi and it became a thing where it was really cool for us
And because that was less of a collaboration so much as he was just singing on the thing
And then he asked us to do this new
Uh collaboration record
Could you send like a half?
Of a song or something my way and then i’ll finish it off and that’s what he was asking everybody
So we sent him this half song
And he sent us
Back
This
Of all the vocals sounded great and it had this kind of very Todd Rundgren xylophone solo on it and
I know it was supposed to be a Todd Rundgren type song
B■Yeah when we wrote it, it wasn’t like
It we didn’t know he was going to be involved in it it was just uh something that we wanted to
Do you know
M■yeah yeah
B■but we never could come up with lyrics for it so it was kind of perfect
When he asked us
M■yeah it was very cool and it’s always anytime you have to convince yourself
With him and stuff because it really is like he’s such an incredible musician and songwriter
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B■The thing with him is
I don’t think he’s ever had a period where he was inactive,
Like he’s stayed very active and producing records and making records his whole career
So he’s very quick because I don’t think he’s ever really
M■…not precious
B■Gets rusty, you know, because he’s constantly constantly on the road and stuff
★You’ve collaborated with lots of legends, who are some other other people or other bands
Or artists that you’ve collaborated with over the years?
M■Well, we did some work with our father who’s, you know, not, uh, you know, he’s, he’s, he’s
He’s,
He’s,
He’s,
He’s, he
Well-known musician, but is a very good musician
B■And people who hear his stuff are always really
M■Yeah, whenever I show people his stuff, they go, “Wait a minute, this explains why you can do anything at all”
And, you know, I mean, I think that
Those are the people we find really fun to play with like Kristine who we play with
It’s from the DBs and it’s just like people who are into cool chords and stuff like that
Those are the people who are really kind of fun to bounce off of and stuff because they
Know what you mean when you say something
And you know that they’re going to learn the part or something like that
B■Yeah, we’ve done a lot of work with Jonathan Rado from Foxigen, done a lot of work with
Some work with Wise Blood, we did some work with Uni Boys, a record that we produced of theirs
That was like really fun to see how they worked
Yes, it’s fun to do collaborations
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M■Yeah, I mean it’s mostly just Brian and I, Chocsky
It’s mostly just Brian and I and it’s like
You know, a lot of, it’s not very fun, you know?
No, I’m just kidding
It’s just fun
B■It’s more fun when you bring other people into it
M■It’s kind of like being in a room with a lamp
You know, you just,
B■you know everything that that thing is going to say
Yeah, yeah
You know?
A lamp is not, is going to be someone of few words
M■A lamp?
B■Much like myself
M■Well, that Pooh, you get the same Thai food with every day, and you basically know what
His order’s gonna be
Yes, it’s gonna be mixed vegetables, chicken
★So clearly you’ve been working together as artists, as musicians for so many years now
How has your songwriting process changed over those years from when you just started kind
Of jamming, writing your first songs to now when you’re producing and creating many singles
And many albums?
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B■Me personally, when I first wrote something that I really
liked, I started to feel like
Anytime something came naturally, that it was good, you know?
And if it wasn’t like a pain to kind of like come up with words and stuff, I didn’t really
Give it much of a second thought
Which is good in a sense in that it feels like you can write stuff and you have confidence in what you’re doing so you bring it across the finish line or whatever
But I did start to notice that after a couple years, I would look back at, you know, lyrics
M■There would be one or two that we liked and one or two that you didn’t like
B■Yes
M■Because of a few things, that would be so much better if the lyrics were better there
B■So it’s good to not, I think it’s good to not doubt yourself when you’re just starting to
Write something and let whatever happens flow
But yeah, I definitely have more of an editing
Process now and we think of it outside of the moment of creation and try to think of it a
Little bit objectively after the fact as well to see what we’re saying
M■I think a huge thing for us too is that when we first
When we first started making albums, we would go into the album going, “This is what we’re
Going to do for the album,” which was maybe inspired by Foxy and our friends who were
Really conceptual
They had really conceptual thinking
I think we thought that was really cool and we wanted to do that, but then
As we’ve progressed, we’ve sort of gone into a mode of, um
The albums kind of form, but we just record all the time
And then we take the pieces and we put them all together and that’s down
It’s sort of more of like a solo musician’s way of working, maybe,
Like a Todd Rundgren or something like that, where you’re–
I mean, he’ll go in and make an album, certainly
But there’s also periods of just– it’s like collecting
You know, you just collect songs and then you–
Would work then they might take all of the pieces and take them somewhere to finish them
That’s the album but I
Like that way of working because
B■It’s good to have a lot more songs floating around
M■Yeah, you have a back catalogue and you can pull from things and certain things
You can let rest for a long time before you feel like they’re ready to come out
B■Like the last album, like the lead single off that album, or the first single off that album
Was written, you know, probably shortly after our first album in 2017 or something like that
So that’s way, you know, there were like, you know, two records that
M■Because the truth of it is you never really know what your greatest thing that you’ve got is
You know, you don’t really know and other people can try to tell you
But they don’t know what other people are gonna like
B■And they can also lead you astray
M■Yeah, very often they will
So, it’s really just best to kind of have stuff and you think, know what you think is good and
If you have a lot of stuff
We’ve always had a lot of stuff
It was just kind of like,
You don’t necessarily want all the new stuff to take precedence,
Because you decided this is my new thing that I’m doing
You’re so excited about it
★Your last record, it all feels so cohesive
You know, I could have thought that all of that was written in the same week
It was all very, very similar, but it all had the same feel
M■Yeah, well, and the reality of it is that if you write ten songs in a week, you know,
Often times, they’re actually not, they’re kind of all over the map
Because it’s like, “Oh, I just did that, I don’t want to do that”
So kind of like, you might have a burst and then you do like one ballad, one, I don’t know, whatever
We just took the songs we thought were worked together but that weren’t too shamy so if you
Have like you know obviously you don’t want 10 ballots
★a little bit of variation in there
M■Yeah yeah but you want it to flow so
★Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today
And for all the WREV listeners out there, could you give us a quick rundown
On where to find you guys on social media and your newsletter?
M■Sure, we’re @TheLemonTwigs on Instagram and Twitter
B■And you can look us up on our website, TheLemonTwigs .com
And you can sign up for our newsletter and mailing list
M■Brian’s also making some fantastic TikToks
That the kids they haven’t they haven’t quite latched on they haven’t quite latched on yet
Brian’s got a sort of a very unique tiktok style that’s kind of like B■i think it’s just a little
Bit too ahead of the curve right now it’s not history will look i think history will look back
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