Around lunchtime the day after playing the biggest headlining show of their careers, the five members of the band Twin Peaks gathered at their practice space on Chicago’s Northwest side, each member looking some combination of tired, hungover, and shell-shocked. Unlike most tour days, they had all slept in familiar beds the night before, but it was clear they had left it all on the field for their sold-out show at Chicago’s Riviera Theater. “I’m so fucking sore,” remarked drummer Connor Brodner, who had practically obliterated his drum set over the course of their 21-song-set. When someone reminded them that they were going on at 11:00 that night at The Empty Bottle, the legendary dive bar, the group let out a collective groan.
The touring life is hard on any band, but a Twin Peaks show is a uniquely physical experience. If the Dudes, as they’re affectionately known by their fans, hadn’t made a career out of music, they could have opened a line of boutique fitness spots specializing in the Twin Peaks workout: a relentless hour or two of dancing, kicking, jumping, and screaming, set to garage rock. Substitute water with Miller High Life and do it 100+ nights a year and you’d be feeling pretty beat, too.
Twin Peaks—Cadien Lake James (guitar, vocals), Jack Dolan (bass, vocals), Clay Frankel (guitar, vocals), Colin Croom (guitar, keys, vocals), and Brodner—got their start in 2010, when the members were still in high school, playing shitty house parties. (None of them had seen David Lynch’s show when they picked the name; Chicago legend has it the name was chosen because James and Dolan are both kind of tall.) But as they’ve moved up to 2,500-person theaters and major Bonnaroo slots, every Twin Peaks set retains all the qualities of a basement rager.
Case in point: the Dudes open most shows by covering Today's Hits’ “What Up Dawg,” a frat rock barnstormer that sets the tone for the thrashing guitars and bellowed harmonies to come. At The Riviera, they were one chorus in when a man in a hockey jersey pushed past two security guards, hopped on stage, and began belting the lyrics into Frankel’s mic. “I thought he was a crazy person at first,” said Frankel, but it turns out it was James Swanberg—also known as the guy who wrote the song. Swanberg hopped off stage, but not before he and Frankel shared a Madonna-Britney-style kiss. The crowd went nuts.
Watching Twin Peaks throw down on stage in 2019 almost feels like a blessing—or at least like a glimpse into a timeline where guitars never died. The band formed at the tail end of indie blog rock’s golden age, those halcyon days when music festivals were getting huge on the backs of guitar-based lineups and Julian Casablancas didn’t yet live in the suburbs. Then came the rise of the streaming economy, the rules of which mean that if you want to get paid, you basically need to have millions of fans.
As the industry realigned around pop and hip-hop hits, younger, weirder bands got hit hard. Many of the Chicago bands that raised Twin Peaks self-destructed or called it quits, and others started writing songs with car commercials in mind. Rock ’n’ roll basically pulled a stage dive into an apathetic crowd and hit the floor. The fact that the Dudes can party like the Black Lips, and write songs that worm their way into your brain for days on end, puts them on rare footing.
The Dudes released their first album, the angsty, Strokes-y Sunken, in 2013, after dropping out of college to play full time. They had plenty of reason to think they could rise through the Chicago scene—James’s brother was in the scene-y Smith Westerns, and James and Dolan had gone to high school with a budding South Side star named Chance The Rapper—and from the jump had no shortage of lineup spots at DIY venues and house parties around the city. They quickly developed a reputation for their blistering sets, even if they were opening to nearly-empty rooms. “We’ve never played to nobody,” said Frankel. “I think a band like us really only could have came out of Chicago,” Dolan added. “Everyone brought us up, you know? You don't see 16-year olds playing with adults in basements and stuff like that. That's pretty unique to Chicago.”
For a band with only one member over the age of 26, Twin Peaks has had a prolific output, with four studio albums (the most recent, Lookout Low dropped in September) and a live LP in their discography. When I asked them why they continue to tour incessantly as their band eases into adolescence, they were frank about the challenges facing a guitar band today. “It definitely pays our bills more than any other aspect of this business,” said Brodner as the band lunched on empanadas. “These days you have to tour all the time,” added Dolan. “We don't make the decision to, necessarily, but we're willing to do a lot.”
At The Riviera, Twin Peaks’s touring regimen had instilled a sense of precision within the madness. James often strays far from his mic on meandering guitar solos, and Frankel has been known to headbutt Dolan in the chest during extended jams. But no matter how loose they look or how many beers they drink, they always recover in time to hit the note—and then maybe a few extras. There’s a reason you’ll see a lot of Grateful Dead gear at a Twin Peaks show: their studio music is good, but their live stuff absolutely slaps.
James is the de facto leader of the band, a distinction he earned when French cops pulled the Twin Peaks van over on their first tour to search it for drugs and asked who was in charge. Everybody pointed at him. But the secret to the dynamism of the Twin Peaks show is that the band basically has four frontmen. All members share songwriting duties, and the band’s rule is that whoever writes the song gets to sing it. Each brings a different style to the stage. Frankel prowls around like an ultra-stoned Keith Richards. James thrashes his bowl cut back-and-forth so vigorously that you feel dizzy just watching him. Jack is more of a brooding presence, and Croom is a precise instrumentalist whose guitar solos and vocal range power the band’s most anthemic hits. Unresolved, the lack of a clear star might make for an awkward, aimless performance. But the Dudes thrive on the motley-ness of their crew, and none of them want to be out-sung and -soloed by whoever comes before them on the setlist.
One of the ways a rock band might stand out in 2019 is by communicating directly with fans, like they’re always hanging around the bar after the show. Earlier this year, Twin Peaks listed a collective cell phone number on their Instagram. Shoot them a text like “I love you guys” and you might receive a hearty “bro, thanks” in response. And if you’re in the Twin Peaks contact book, you’re the first to know when a new single drops or a secret show is announced. The connection helps power the righteous live show, the kind where the vibe is so strong that people crowd surf between songs, as they were doing at The Riv. “When we have a crowd that all turns out and turns up, it's infectious onstage, too,” James said, when I asked him what separates a magical Twin Peaks show from a merely good one. “It becomes kind of like a give and take.”
When it came time to take some photos, the Dudes put their best game faces on, but it was clear they wanted to get to loading their gear into the Bottle so they could enjoy their last few hours of hometown free time. One of them sent a tweet requesting fans bring a non-black-market weed vape cartridge to the show. Ten years on, even a hometown tour stop has its indignities, like lack of a solid weed guy. “It's hard to sustain,” Jack said. “Touring just kind of sucks. Nobody should live like that, the day to day, it just sucks. A lot of people just don't keep up, or they quit for reasons that I can understand.” “But you’ve got to count your wins,” added Brodner. (By that point, it’d become clear that he was by far the least hungover Twin Peak.) “I mean, we shared beds for years, and now we don't have to. I get my own bed tonight. Like, that feels good. And I appreciate that. You know, it's little stuff like that makes the difference.”
How, then, have they been able to stay such close friends from high school through the present, given all the shit they’ve had to deal with? “Jokes,” said Frankel. The Dudes were quiet for a moment. “We have definitely grown together,” said Brodner. “We’ve had ups and downs, and I think we've just gotten really good at knowing when, you know, someone needs their space. So many bands have come and gone. Trying to spend all this time doing all this stuff, sharing money, sharing all this stuff. And to them, it’s like, that’s not worth it, you know? But you have nights like last night that are like: this is really why we want to be here. It’s refreshing. It's like, yeah, that's why.”
Before letting them go, I asked what goals the band has as it enters its second decade. The Dudes were quiet again. “Two beds per person!” Frankel said. Seven hours later, they were onstage again, drinking cheap beer and playing their guts out.
