Twice Shy Makes An Electrifying Debut At Rockwood Music Hall

Upper West Side NY

12 December, 2021

12:32 PM

Description

Columbia Daily Spectator BY JESSICA BLATT DECEMBER 9, 2021 At midnight on Dec. 3, illuminated by the deep maroon light at Lower East Side's Rockwood Music Hall, fusion rock band Twice Shy climbed a rhythmic ascension that regularly erupted into epic drum, piano, bass, and saxophone solos throughout the band's debut show. Bandmates Robert Lotreck, CC '22; Levi Pugh, CC '22; Timmy Stabler, CC '22; and Stefan Haerle spent months working on the set list, which included seven original songs, as well as a cover of Stevie Wonder's "As If You Read My Mind." The performance on Dec. 3 was years in the making. Lotreck, Pugh, and Stabler met during the New Student Orientation Program and began jamming together in John Jay Hall. In their first year, they played with a number of Columbia artists including Caroline Sky, BC '23; Sarah Kinsley, CC '22; and Maude Latour, CC '22. Following the summer of their first year, the three decided to form a band, but after struggling to find a cohesive concept to unite the band's message, the group fell apart around December 2019. "It's a tale of trial and error," Lotreck said. Things started to come back to life when Lotreck and Pugh became roommates in January and started playing together more frequently. After an improvisation session with Stabler and Pugh in March 2021, Lotreck listened back to the recording on his phone and suggested they start a jam band. Haerle, who graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in 2020, joined the band in summer 2021 after meeting Lotreck at a concert and connecting through a mutual friend. Twice Shy's origin story is embodied in its name. "It's kind of a funny tongue-in-cheek reference to our earlier attempts at making a band," Pugh said. "The saying … 'Once bitten, twice shy,' [means] that you try something, you fail at it, you become bashful to try it again." Bashful or not, Twice Shy has found a sound of its own this time. Its debut concert included nods to contemporary jazz, indie rock, R&B, and hip-hop, while Pugh's auto-tuned vocals set to classical piano exemplified the band's experimental quality. Haerle noted that its style draws from a wide range of influences, making the group's phonics hard to pin down. Haerle's Georgia roots allowed gospel, soul, and funk to inform his style, while Stabler was inspired by his San Francisco ties and the city's rich history of classic rock. Pugh's adolescence was set to a playlist of My Chemical Romance, Ozzy Osborne, Metallica, and Bruce Hornsby, while Lotreck cites Bon Iver, Kanye West, and John Coltrane as some of his major influences. Twice Shy's lyrics encompass the same improvisational quality as its composition and production style. Pugh described how his writing style is driven by the sonic and poetic beauty of language, even if finding the perfect word means changing the meaning of the song. "Songwriting has been a byproduct of playing music all the time, sitting down at the piano, and jamming on my own a lot," Pugh said, adding that some of his best writing happens when he is in a "flow state", often stemming from an initial improvisation through which he will catch unique melodies to turn into complete songs. On stage at Rockwood Music Hall, the band performed those songs publicly for the first time, an emotional milestone marked by nerves, anticipation, and pure fun. The intense preparation and organization that went into the show allowed the band members to enjoy the moment, Stabler explained. Lotreck echoed that sentiment. "When we got to a certain point in the show, it just felt so natural," Lotreck said, later adding, "[Performing] is what we're most qualified to be doing. There's nothing that I'm better at than this because it's what I work on all the time." Twice Shy established its confident and joyful performance presence in its opening song, "One More Night." With lyrics like, "One more night, in the morning I'll be blue, but it's all right," the track captures a desire to live in the moment, embodying the same sense of spontaneity as the band's compositional style. The underlying anticipation of feeling "blue" in the morning was sung over a euphoric explosion of bass and drum that masked any of the lyrics' foreboding gloom. These elements reflect Pugh's prioritization of aesthetics and the band's overall joyous and celebratory sound. In the last two months, the members of Twice Shy have recorded five songs in a studio, which they plan to release as singles paired with more live performances around the city. On campus, Twice Shy hopes to perform at Bacchanal's Battle of the Bands competition. In the meantime, the band will continue to write music, perfect its current set list, and experiment with its sound. After wrapping up its set at the Rockwood Music Hall, Twice Shy offered an example of its experimentation. When the crowd cheered for an encore, Pugh asked for someone to shout out a phrase on which the band could base an improvised final song. "Dolphin daydream," someone screamed from the crowd. Twice Shy took flight, with rhythmic ripples that instrumentally embodied its words of inspiration in a dreamscape that is anything but "shy." Staff writer Jessica Blatt can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @blatt_jessica. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.