Interview: The Devil’s Twins Look to Unleash Their ‘Horns’ as Part of ‘All Female Front’
When an initial party becomes a great success, usually there’s a need to either replicate it in a different environment, build on top of the end result or both. This is the case with “All Female Front”, which originally took place as an unofficial Newport Folk Festival afterparty at the Newport Playhouse & Cabaret Restaurant last summer. On January 20 at The Sinclair on 52 Church Street in Cambridge, the folks at Spring Street Productions are going to be doing it again with another stacked lineup. This edition features The Devil’s Twins, Julie Rhodes & The Electric Company, The Wolff Sisters, Mary McAvoy and Mary-Elaine Jenkins for a stellar array of blues, rock & roll, folk and Americana. It all starts at 8pm with a portion of each ticket going to benefit The Shout Syndicate, a volunteer-run fundraising organization that raises money to help fund youth-led arts programs in Greater Boston.
I had a talk with Jeremiah Louf and Nicole Coogan from The Devil’s Twins about their role in the starting up of “All Female Front”, their latest album Horns that came out back in June and what people can expect from the show this Saturday night.
Other than performing, what has been The Devil’s Twins’ particular role in the creation of “All Female Front”?
Nicole Coogan: This show, more than the others than we’ve been involved in the past, has very much been a collaborative process. A lot of other shows we’ve played have been special in that way too where it’s a lot of friends getting together to play, but this really is a bunch of people that we spend so much time with and who we’ve played with a lot. I feel that we’re each putting our all into making the best show we can. Jeremiah made a great poster for the show, Michael Panico has been doing a lot of promotion for it, even going as far making handbills to shell out at other shows. That doesn’t happen a lot anymore where you go out to another show and hand out flyers, but I really feel like it’s been a “lightning in a bottle” type of thing and we’re excited to make it happen again with some new people.
Going along with that “lightning in a bottle” description, do you feel like that’s the main reasoning for this upcoming show at The Sinclair with putting on “All Female Front” again in a new venue and a new city?
NC: Yeah, I feel like we wanted to take it to a new city because the weekend of the Newport Folk Festival is such an electric time in general and it’s where the birthplace of the idea for the show is. A lot of us all stayed together in a house for the week of the festival. We would all get around the campfire every night while playing for each other and that’s how we put together the lineup, we reached out to people from those evenings around the campfire. Those times really felt special to us, and we wanted to share them with everybody else. When we had the show in Newport, we were hoping it would do well, but you never know as far as these afterparties go because people have a million places to go.
It was super well-received, so we wanted to pull in some new acts into the lineup and bring it to the Boston area. A lot of us haven’t played together in Boston in a long time, if not ever.
I clearly remember the show back in July, how great it was and it’s cool that you’re doing it again. Your latest album Horns marked a new chapter for The Devil’s Twins with the inclusion of Eric Ortiz on trumpet and Aitan Ben-Joseph on saxophone. What initially inspired this expansion of the band’s sound and how has it been bringing both Eric and Aitan into the fold?
Jeremiah Louf: Some years ago, probably more years than it seems, we had the opportunity to do a TV show at WGBH called “Live at Fraser”. It was essentially a one-hour special about us, which was really cool. We played at the Fraser Performance Studio at WGBH’s headquarters where they filmed us and interviewed us in between songs while in front of a live audience. We kind of felt like it was our opportunity to do a bit of “A Night with The Devil’s Twins”. As being a three piece at the time with myself, Nicole and a drummer, we wanted to expand the number of musicians that were on stage.
We included Kevin Landry from Tigerman WOAH on upright bass, Matt Young from Currents on drums and Josh Knowles on violin. Then ultimately for a horn section, we brought in Eric and Aitan. They joined up specifically for that TV special and funnily enough, afterwards they just never stopped showing up to rehearsal. All of a sudden, we started rewriting old songs and writing new songs with a horn section. In regard to the album, Horns is also Nicole and I’s first full-length vinyl record, which was pressed at Third Man Records.
It’s very fitting for it to have that title because we had a bit of a graduation together where we got our “horns” while also having a horn section for the first time.
I consider it to be one of my favorite records that came out last year, especially in the Boston area, and it’s cool that you have this story behind it. Outside of the band, Nicole you’re the co-owner of Banner & Bone Tattoo in New Bedford and Jeremiah you have a detailed career in graphic design. First off Nicole, how has it been running the tattoo parlor so far? I think the business just celebrated a one-year anniversary.
NC: Yeah, we just did have our one-year anniversary last month. Running Banner & Bone has been awesome. I’ve been in the tattoo industry for about 12 years, and I’ve always worked for somebody else, which is good because you go through a lot to get to where you are. Now having a tattoo shop, it’s been nice to be able to be my own boss while creating a healthy and happy work environment for other people. It’s also nice to have the freedom where if I want to play a show or do a tour, I can do it without having to worry about someone covering my shift. The shop has been doing really well, it’s been very busy, but it’s just nice to be able to have your own place.
That’s awesome. Now Jeremiah, how much does your skills in design go towards marketing and promotion for The Devil’s Twins?
JL: Quite a bit. For example, for “All Female Front” I had the pleasure of doing the event branding and the design work for the posters and everything else across the board. What I’ve come to realize, it’s always been a big part of my interest in music, the musicians that I love and the bands that I love. Back when I was a kid, I had this lovely misconception that the band or the artist actually made the album cover for their own album, I thought it was part of the deal. I remember thinking that Robert Plant was this incredible artist who made the album cover for Led Zeppelin’s records, so I naively thought as a kid that it had to be the full package.
That was a lot of what I fell in love with in terms of bands. It wasn’t just the music; it was the individuals and how they looked. It was the themes behind the songs and ultimately the branding behind the band. I’ve always been a fan of bands with very powerful stories and imagery along with their entire lifestyle and their entire identity. Nicole and I started The Devil’s Twins in art school, so it’s really always been a large component of it with the logo and the artwork. I think one of the reasons why it’s lasted so long is because Nicole and I have a very symbiotic and similar vision for what The Devil’s Twins is.
It always feels really fun to be able to step out of ourselves and look at The Devil’s Twins as characters while seeing which hoops we can throw those two characters through for future projects. It keeps things exciting for us.
I can totally see why that’s the case. For people who didn’t get to check out “All Female Front” in Newport last summer but they’re thinking of coming out to see it at The Sinclair, what can they expect?
NC: Like a lot of lineups that we’ve played in the past, we all fit together because we all pull from similar genres. We all take a little bit from blues, jazz, rock & roll and maybe even metal or whatever. We’re all so different but we fit together so well, and I feel like it’s a lineup that could pull in anybody. Bring your friend who’s never seen any of us before and they’re going to find something they’re going to like. I feel like that’s a lot of the feedback we got from the Newport show, there was something for everybody.
Everybody found a new favorite band; they knew they were going to buy their record or stuff like that. It’s going to be a loud night and it’s going to be so exciting.
JL: I think that the music is going to be a combination of swampy and smokey. If I had to say anything for all the acts taking part in “All Female Front”, is that it’s equal parts of both qualities. On top of that, holy fuck can everyone sing. What people can expect is that the bill is full of incredible singers and I’m excited to hear all of them.
NC: Absolutely. Hell yeah.
JL: I’ll also like to mention that the concept behind the artwork is I wanted to make something that was iconic, and we could use moving forward with other artists in different forms. I wanted to create a symbol and what I landed on was the lioness because what’s cool about lions and lionesses as a species is that the females are the hunters. I thought it would be very befitting for “All Female Front”.
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