The Lemon Twigs

The Lemon Twigs Artistfacts

  • 2014-
    Brian D'AddarioVocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, trumpet, cello2014-
    Michael D'AddarioVocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, percussion2014-
  • Formed in Long Island, New York, The Lemon Twigs are built around brothers Brian D'Addario (born March 21, 1997) and Michael D'Addario (born March 3, 1999). Steeped in '60s and '70s songcraft from childhood, the brothers write, sing, and play nearly every instrument on their records, crafting a theatrical mix of power pop, glam, and baroque rock.
  • Growing up in Hicksville, Long Island, music surrounded the brothers from the start. Their father Ronnie D'Addario played guitar for Irish folk legend Tommy Makem and worked as a sound engineer at the famous Greenwich Village venue Gerde's Folk City. "Dad didn't try and talk us out of a career in music, but he was worried we'd be disappointed by the business," Brian told Uncut magazine. "He'd tried all these avenues and was never able to make a living off his songwriting, which was his passion. But he never told us not to do it."
  • Michael was 15 years old when the pair recorded their debut album, Do Hollywood, at Foxygen member Jonathan Rado's home studio in Los Angeles in February 2015; Brian was 17. The brothers had messaged Rado on Twitter with their home demos, prompting him to fly them out to lay down the basic tracks over a fast-paced 12-day session before spending the next 18 months polishing the record.
  • Brian was writing and recording long before the band formed. In 2017, he uploaded a self-released archival collection to Bandcamp titled My First Songs (Volume 1), comprising six tracks written between the ages of 7 and 9, all with his own playing and vocals.

    His very first song, "Girl," written around age 7, kicks off the collection. By his own admission, it was a direct nod to one of his childhood favorites. "It was basically a rip-off of a song by the Monkees called 'The Kind of Girl I Could Love,'" he told Interview magazine.
  • Brian's early recordings were set up at home by their father. Ronnie D'Addario taught both boys to read music and encouraged them to learn every instrument, starting with the drums. Ronnie recorded a couple of home-studio albums of his own back in the 1970s.
  • The group wasn't always called The Lemon Twigs. The brothers originally performed as The D'Addario Brothers but ditched the name because it sounded too much like a local pizza spot. Brian came up with The Lemon Twigs shortly before a support slot for Foxygen at New York's Webster Hall. "It makes me think of Lemon Pipers or '(Here We Go Round) The Lemon Tree' by The Move," Michael told Uncut. "There are a lot of good Lemon bands."

    There's also of course The Lemonheads, though Evan Dando's band took its name from the candy, not the fruit.
  • The band's 2018 record, Go to School, is a full-blown concept album about a chimpanzee raised as a human boy who gets sent to high school. The idea came directly from watching Foxygen dream up oversized project ideas.

    "We were really impressionable," Michael admitted. "Foxygen would conceptualize stuff and talk about how 'now we'll do an orchestra album.' We'd never made music that way, but it seemed really cool, so we felt we'd do a concept album. But it wasn't a concept so much as the concept of a concept."

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