Turnstile has partnered with PLUS1 so $1 from every ticket supports Maine Needs work providing essentials to individuals and families across Maine, including the immigrant community, survivors of domestic violence, those leaving incarceration or in recovery, veterans, the unhoused community and humans experiencing hardship.
Fiddlehead
Since starting over a decade ago, Fiddlehead’s members—vocalist Patrick Flynn, guitarists Alex Henery and Alex Dow, bassist Nick Hinsch, and drummer Shawn Costa—have always written music for themselves first. “The thing that we’re always chasing is that unified excitement,” says Henery, describing how Fiddlehead never sees an idea through unless there’s full belief from every member. “We’ve gone into every record with the idea that it might be the last thing we ever do,” explains Flynn. “That was true even of the first EP: ‘This is probably the last thing—probably the only thing.’ Everything’s been treated that way because of the nature of our lives and our relationship with making music and creating art; it’s not career-driven. We don’t care if people like it; we care if we’re satisfied.”
After their third album Death Is Nothing To Us, Flynn was concerned that making another album just because it’s what they should do might spoil the energy of this thing he holds so dear. “This band has done such wonders for my life in a mental health way that I felt totally satisfied, “says Flynn. “The concept of writing more after a third LP was like, ‘What are we fucking doing here?’” Tragically, Flynn soon found that answer. The week of Thanksgiving 2024, Flynn’s wife and kids were on a cruise with his in-laws while he stayed home to work. It was there he received the call that his mother died. “It was the only time in my life where if I wanted to see my children on a dime, I couldn’t. They were in the middle of the fucking ocean; I felt completely isolated,” says Flynn. Two days later, a knock at his door revealed guitarist Alex Henery and bassist Nick Hinsch, who flew in from across the country to surprise their grieving friend.
Though they convened as friends, music started to share the space with them, too. “We went to Pat’s house just to support him in a dark time and then, in that, we ended up writing music,” says Henery. “It came out of a really good place, of us just wanting to write music together in that moment, and that freed us up to experiment.” Reflecting on it now, Flynn cuts to the core of what has kept Fiddlehead alive all these years: “I don’t think you get better friends than this.”
With new songs unexpectedly forming, and a drive to deepen the scope of Fiddlehead’s musical landscape, Dow received a fortuitous message from producer Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Archers of Loaf, M.J. Lenderman) offering to record new Fiddlehead material. The band felt it was worth it to see what would come from a weekend in his North Carolina studio, and what resulted is Baby I’ll Change, a new three song EP that pushes the boundaries of what Fiddlehead can be.
Raucous opener “The Dogs” is the sound of a band reaffirming their commitments to one another, and sharing that joy as one cohesive unit. Flynns sings about each bandmate with genuine love and appreciation as he simultaneously tries to process even more loss, a recurring theme in the band’s beloved discography. “This is a gift of life to have four guys who I have no dysfunction with,” he says. “Those guys are my brothers and I wanted to stop playing with them? Now I want to keep this thing going until the wheels fall off.” Next comes “Porchlight,” an exhilarating cut of alternate tuning riffs and stirring vocal melodies. Finally there’s “Baby I’ll Change” the title track and stunning standout of the new EP. The song is unlike anything Fiddlehead has done before: a sprawlingly dynamic composition with triumphant reverb-drenched leads, a charging rhythm section, and perhaps the most cathartic finale the band has penned to date. Its title and lyrics were inspired by a phrase the deceased Boston hardcore legend Jimmy Flynn (no relation to Patrick Flynn) would say, always half-joking and half-wishing. “In my life, I’ve been surrounded by addiction, and a lot of hopeful people making big promises and seeing other versions of themselves,” explains Flynn. “That, to me, is the greatest heartache of my life. It’s not seeing people fail, it’s seeing people desperately try to not fail.”
As Fiddlehead left the studio, they were buzzing at what they just created. Flynn says he was so charged up by what just occurred that he couldn’t sleep that night. “It felt like a new band in a very organic way,” says Flynn, quick to note that Fiddlehead didn’t go into the studio with some self-inflated idea of reinventing the band. They just did what they always have: listen to what’s inside of them and find an honest way of expressing it. “There’s a lot of times in the band group chat where we’re like, ‘What if we did a song like this?,’” says Henery. “And that’s the thing—what if?”
