Hello, everyone!

     This is Aidan here. I hope many of you read the previous blog post done by Bennett when we launched the website. It is cool having a website and Bennett did a great job doing the work of getting it up and running. It makes me feel like we're REALLY official now as a band (as if we weren't before.) Anyway, I hope everyone reading this is doing well! I am currently recovering from a small surgery on my leg. Before anyone freaks out or gets worried- fret not. I am A-Okay and recovering quite well. I'll be ready to go by the 15th, when we open for Landslide: a Fleetwood Mac tribute at the Icehouse Amphitheater. 

     By the way, do YOU have tickets for this Saturday??? If not, click here and it should open a new tab where you can purchase a ticket. Doors open at 6 and we would love to see all of our wonderful fans there. 

     Before I start rambling nonsense, I must make one more plug to our email list. Even if you think you get too many emails, it'll get lost in your inbox, you'll see our gigs on social media, etc… It helps us help you! We are notoriously bad (at least according to our parents) about doing social media posts about gigs. I can't lie, it is annoying making graphics but The Donovan Twins do NOT use AI for our social media show fliers and we will continue not doing so. For that reason, we will tend to post our shows on our website/mailing list before they are posted on social media. Second of all, if you are not subscribed to the email list you could miss anything cool we do like share unreleased music and give things away. I could've announced that we were giving away cars to all of our email subscribers in our weekly-ish email blast and if you weren't subscribed, you wouldn't know, or, it'd be too late. Womp Womp. Anyway, Subscribe to our emails. Pretty pleaseeeeeee :)

     Now to the nonsense. I'm currently writing this on my couch. leg straight and propped up because it's in a brace and I can't bend it. Unfortunate to say the least. But, I am writing a blog post and not working so I at least have that going for me. I have been thinking the past couple days about what I might want to write about. I remember having specific ideas at one point, maybe about bands that changed my life. But I'm not sure if I even remember what bands I was going to choose. I guess a lot of bands have changed my life. The one thing that I do remember though is that I was going to cap it off saying The Donovan Twins changed my life. I wanted to write about it that way because of how I thought about it in my head. I remembered having all of these profound thoughts about these other bands, their albums, and their songs. Then I thought to myself “Wait a minute.” I am totally ignoring the band most front and center in my life, the band in which every song they write changes me, every show they do, I'm there. That was quite a perspective shift for me because I have valued the work that these other artists have done (which is great,) but I should also value mine. I should value the songs I write or Bennett writes that change me like the songs that other people have written. I should maintain a sense of openness and vulnerability when I perform like I had in the audience of all of the shows that have changed me. 

     Now you might be reading this thinking that I just said the most obvious thing I possibly could've said as a musician in a band. And to that- I kind of agree. But I think the biggest takeaway from this revelation has nothing to do with my band and it has nothing to do with our music. I don't want to speak for my mother, but I think if there was a picture of me on the wall with a song lyric beneath it, it would read “Decide what to be and go be it.” That Avett Brothers quote from their song “Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise” is not flashy, not sophisticated, and on a surface level, not particularly deep. It is certainly a way of life though. I love song quotes like that, for instance, Dawes, in their song “A Little Bit of Everything” say “Love is so much easier than you realize; if you can give yourself to someone then you should.” Again it isn't flashy and doesn't have any deep hidden meaning other than the words that have been etched in stone into my brain. 

     My true point within this jumbled mess of words is that sometimes the deep meaning of something is not deep, is not super profound, and does not take a genius to figure out. As I go into the future with this band being at the center of my life like the music that has impacted me, I hope you all will do the same. I hope you share with others the way someone has shared with you. I hope you influence others the way someone impactful has influenced you. I hope you can fill the space in other peoples' lives the way someone has been there for you. And most importantly, I hope you continue to love others the way you have been loved. I will certainly try to do the same thing myself because at the end of the day, it's not us and them. It's just US. 

Peace,

-Aidan

Hey!

You found us!

Thanks for stopping by. My name is Bennett and I play in a band called “The Donovan Twins” with my twin brother Aidan. I'd like to tell you a little bit about us. 

Aidan and I say that we've been playing music together since we were twelve years old, but in reality, we were doing it long before then. We grew up in a household with lots of music: our dad would play his guitar, sing to us, and we would “jam” in his truck where he would play us his favorite CDs with the windows down and the volume up. My mom would not claim that she is a musician, but she taught Kindergym classes at our local YMCA which connected music and movement. She also had deep pockets full of fun, random songs to sing for seemingly every occasion. My dad’s version of  “Loves Me like a Rock” and REM's “The One I Love” are the ones I still hear in my head to this day. Not to mention, we were well versed in the Wii game “Beatles Rock Band”, which we played all the time. A memorable intersection of some of our major musical influences came when Aidan and I sang “A Hard Day's Night” by the Beatles at a church talent show. I couldn't tell you when exactly that was, but my guess is around eight or nine. Our dad accompanied us on his electric guitar. To my younger self (and maybe even my current self) playing the electric guitar was the ultimate sign of coolness.

So we grew up surrounded by music, but it wasn’t until the age of twelve that Aidan started playing guitar and I started learning the drums. Our current instrumentation began about a year or so later when I began messing around on my dad's banjo. We had a couple of tunes that we really liked to play; “The Fall” and “Swept Away” by The Avett Brothers and "Gold on the Ceiling” by The Black Keys are the ones that stand out to me the most. I am curious which ones Aidan might say as he was not consulted prior to the creation of this blog post. Speaking of which, I believe that this is my first ever blog post. I am not sure if I am doing this correctly but I sure am having fun! Writing something without being bound to a rhyme scheme, syllabic structure, and melody has been a welcome change for the past few minutes. 

As I was saying… Aidan and I started playing songs together, but “The Donovan Twins” did not exist as an actual band for quite some time. Our next milestone performance did not come until we were 16 years old in 2018. During our junior year at Nation Ford High School we entered “NaFo's Got Talent”, under the name “Aidan and Bennett Donovan”-- almost as creative as the name “The Donovan Twins”, I know. This was our first real contest, so we had no real expectations going into it. When I go back and watch the video now, I can hear my voice shaking with nerves as I sing through the second and third verses of “Down with the Shine” by The Avett Brothers. Even now, it’s mind-boggling to me that our performance was so well-received, and even more shocking that we managed to win the thing. 

After that first talent show performance, we began playing at a few more school events where we actually debuted “10 & 4”. It is funny to think that a song Aidan wrote back when we were in high school ended up being recorded about 5 years later and has since been our most popular song. Then, like the rest of the world, COVID interrupted life as we knew it and brought those live performances to a halt. On the bright side, it encouraged the use of virtual spaces and our mom thought it would be a great idea for us to play music in our driveway and stream it on Facebook Live. This was the beginning of “The Donovan Twins,” and these were our first “gigs” where we played more than two or three songs. These driveway livestreams helped lay the foundation for us to eventually play restaurants, bars, and breweries… and now playing music festivals and opening for bands like Sister Hazel and Shovels & Rope??? Crazy. We owe a lot of our current success to our mom: . She doesn't allow us to take opportunities for granted and is full of ideas to help us elevate our brand. Thanks, Mom!

I truly love making music with my brother. I’m also lucky to be able to make music with my friends Preston, David, and Sutton, who play with us in The Donovan Twins. I never expected to be able to do it for as long as I have, and I don't know what the future holds. What I do know, though, is that I am glad that you are now a part of that journey too. We've got an EP coming out real soon and some awesome shows that we would love to see you at. Until then, give us a follow on social media (@thedonovantwins), check out our music, and join our mailing list so that you can keep up with us. 

Thanks for reading!

-BD