Overview of Twisted Teens
This episode of How Long Gone is a loose, high-energy interview with a member of the band Twisted Teens, centered on DIY music, off-grid living, New Orleans culture, mental health, and a long digression into AI, spirituality, and cultural bullshit. The conversation starts with the hosts’ usual comedy banter and sponsor reads, then turns into a surprisingly detailed look at the guest’s unconventional life: years living in the woods without electricity, building a house from salvaged materials, moving from California to New Orleans, and finding a way to turn a chaotic background into a working music career.
Main Topics Discussed
Twisted Teens, touring, and making music
- The guest explains that Twisted Teens has only been together a couple of years but has already been recording heavily and releasing music quickly.
- He describes the band as rooted in punk/DIY culture, but with a more accessible, pop-minded approach.
- A recurring theme is that songs are tested live first; if they work with audiences, they stay, and if not, they get dropped.
- He contrasts this with the more isolated, self-conscious “artiste” model of making records in private.
Off-grid life and survival
- The guest goes deep on a period when he lived for around 12 years with no electricity or running water.
- He says he built a small house in the woods out of scavenged or discounted lumber, using a truck and improvised transport to move materials.
- He describes a survivalist routine involving food stamps, dumpster diving, stealing, band income, and trimming weed.
- The story paints a picture of a real DIY subculture, not just a romanticized punk lifestyle.
California, Santa Cruz, and New Orleans
- He talks about coming from California’s Bay Area and Santa Cruz scene, then relocating to New Orleans.
- New Orleans is framed as both musically fertile and unusually intense, with a strong undercurrent of danger and spiritual weirdness.
- He says a lot of his California scene friends eventually left because of tech-driven gentrification and moved to places like New Orleans or Minneapolis.
- He also recounts how a close friend moved to Minneapolis and was later killed in a shooting, underscoring the episode’s darker turn.
Mental health, spiritual experiences, and hospitalization
- One of the episode’s most serious threads is the guest’s account of being involuntarily institutionalized after a period of intense mental distress.
- He frames the experience as less purely “mental illness” and more like an encounter with spiritual or altered reality.
- He argues that the hospitalization made things worse in some ways, while also catalyzing a major shift in his perspective and creativity.
- He describes it as a kind of “rule book” moment: once he saw through the structure of the game, his relationship to anxiety changed.
- He references ancestry, occult practice, meditation, and culturally different ways of interpreting hearing voices or altered states.
Technology, AI, and Rick Rubin
- The hosts and guest riff on AI, digital surveillance, and the way technology changes everyday life.
- He is skeptical of tech optimism and argues that the modern surveillance state is more dangerous than most people want to admit.
- Rick Rubin comes up as a symbol of fake spirituality and elite aesthetic branding; the guest is sharply critical of him and of people who “squat” on spiritual language to sell culture back to the public.
- The conversation also pokes fun at agents, celebrity culture, and the entertainment industry’s obsession with image.
Herbs, yarrow, and beer lore
- The guest gets animated about plants, herbal medicine, and old brewing traditions.
- He discusses yarrow in particular, explaining its use in traditional brewing and folk medicine.
- He claims that hops were historically used to suppress libido, while yarrow was used in older beer recipes for a more stimulating effect.
- This leads to a broader tangent about ancient practices, medicinal plants, and how much “new” culture is actually very old.
Notable Takeaways
- DIY ethos matters more than polish: The guest’s whole story reinforces that the most important creative education came from performing, surviving, and adapting in real time.
- His music is shaped by instability: Off-grid living, psychic rupture, and constant movement all feed into the band’s sound and attitude.
- He’s deeply skeptical of modern systems: The episode is full of distrust toward tech, institutional power, celebrity spirituality, and sanitized public narratives.
- New Orleans functions as both refuge and pressure cooker: It’s a place of community, music, and spirituality, but also danger and unpredictability.
Tone and Style
- Fast, irreverent, and very conversational
- Equal parts comedy, cultural commentary, and confessional storytelling
- Heavy use of slang, jokes, and bait-and-switch humor
- The episode swings from absurd bits to genuinely serious reflections without much warning
Overall Summary
Twisted Teens is less a standard promo interview and more a sprawling hang about what happens when punk, mysticism, survival, and ambition all collide. The guest comes across as someone who has lived a genuinely unconventional life and turned that experience into a musical identity. If you’re interested in DIY music culture, New Orleans, off-grid living, or a very unfiltered take on mental health and modern culture, this episode delivers a lot.