Country, Blues, Twangwave, and Grungegrass From Berlin

Valentine’s Day Brunch. The children get little baskets of hearts and candies embossed with syrupy slogans like “Be Mine” and “Q.T. Pie.” As the pancakes are served, the parents say, “Kids, we have something to tell you.” 

“We’re getting divorced.” 

Those words have reverberated all the way to Berlin, where David Rocks—one of the children at that Colorado brunch—connected with trumpeter/composer Paul Brody, fiddler/guitarist Andrew Tweedie, vocalist Kristiina Tuomi, bassist Stefan Nowak, and drummer/percussionist Michael Beat. Together, they formed The Gincident, the Twangwave & Grungegrass band where David is songwriter, singer, and chief cowpoke.

Twangewave & Grungegrass is the music you might find in the seedy bar at the intersection of Rockabilly Road, Bebop Boulevard, and the Heartbreak Highway (call it Americana, if you must). The lyrics fuse the storytelling of country with the defiant edge of punk and new wave. The trumpet parts from Brody (a master craftsman with deep roots in jazz, klezmer, and classical, and most recently the composer of the opera Etes-Vous Amoureux? for France’s Opera Nationale) add a brassy bounce. Tweedie’s fiddle brings Appalachian tradition mixed with lines from Bach. Nowak and Beat keep things pumping and swinging. And Tuomi’s backing vocals cover the whole enterprise in silk.

The band’s three albums reflect the long road from Colorado to Berlin: Walking barefoot through Paris and Florence in the ’80s, where David learned the pleasures of hanging out in cafes drinking wine and espresso and honed his skills busking on the streets, squares, and subway cars; Going under the wall in communist-era Berlin to explore the smoke-filled Kneipen of the East and develop an ear for good Stasi jokes; Smuggling banned books in boxes of cornflakes on the night train to Krakow, where he was jailed for participating in a Solidarity-led protest and became a founding member of the seminal Polish psychedelic reggaepunk band Püdelsi.

David migrated to Washington, Chicago, and Prague, then ended up in New York, where he found himself as a recently widowed father of two teenage girls. Seeking a place to rebuild, the family moved to Berlin, drawn by its reputation as a place for reinvention, where outcasts and misfits have long forged new lives, a place whose heart was reduced to rubble and split in two, only to sew itself back together to become stronger than ever.

The Gincident plays festivals, Zoom chats, second weddings, funerals, Easter egg hunts, gender reveal parties, mudfests, monster-truck rallies, housewarmings, bar mitzvahs, birthdays, brunches, board meetings, and boxing matches. Contact The Gincident for details.

David Rocks: Guitar/Vocals
Paul Brody: Trumpet/Vocals
Michael Beat: Percussion/Vocals
Stefan Nowak: Bass
Kristiina Tuomi: Backing Vocals
Andrew Tweedie: Fiddle