Last month on an episode of his Time Crisis radio show, Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig and his co-host Jake Longstretch discussed their unexpected admiration for Twiddle and their song “Jamflowman”–a track off the band’s 2007 Natural Evolution of Consciousness that describes the character development of a young guitarist.
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Particularly fascinated by the characters within the Twiddle universe, Koenig and Longstretch admit listening to the song on repeat and making a concentrated effort to dissect the song’s meanings. On the latest episode of Time Crisis, Koenig continued the conversation by inviting frontman Mihali Savoulidis onto the show.
As Koenig describes them, “Twiddle is a great jam band. Their song ‘Jamflowman’ sometimes gets picked on by people in the jam band community,” though Koenig notes he finds the song “fascinating”–especially the final verse that describes the older, darker version of the “Jamflowman” character. “It’s the type of song where the deeper you dive, the more you like it.” As a continuation of the show’s analysis, they go straight to the source by calling up Mihali himself.
After discussing the origins of Twiddle and how the Vermont band came together in college, Mihali discusses some of his own influences outside of the jam bands (John Scofield, Ernest Ranglin). When “Jamflowman” comes up, Mihali explains that he wrote the song when he was 15 and only introduced it to the Twiddle repertoire as a way to fill a setlist for their first live shows. Of course, this shocks Ezra and Jake to a point of disbelief–especially when they hear that there are now live versions of the song that last nearly 30 minutes. Mihali goes on to explain the other characters in Twiddle’s songbook, like Frankenfoote and Carter Candlestick, and how “Orlando” is the latest meeting of all those characters.
It’s obvious that the two show hosts are impressed and will be hitting up Twiddle the next time they come through town, in which case we might hear even more on the Time Crisis radio show.
To listen to the complete episode with Mihali Savoulidis, click here.
The post Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig Interviews Twiddle’s Mihali Savoulidis About “Jamflowman” [Listen] appeared first on L4LM.
