Twen Proves They’re Still Evolving During ‘Fate Euphoric’ Tour

The rock band is hitting new cities this spring and embracing the self-made ethos that inspired new album Fate Euphoric

PHOTOS BY APRIL ANDERSON

If there were an antithesis to the term “industry plant,” Ian Rollins Jones and Jane Fitzsimmons of the nomadic rock band Twen would fit the bill.

The pair has invested nearly a decade in crafting their independent musical project, born out of sweaty basement shows and impromptu gigs, and now operating out of a live-in van they built themselves. 

Managing the band on their own has given them complete creative agency, they said, but has its drawbacks — after rescheduling our interview last minute, Jones joked he was dealing with “full moon brain fog” from a March 3 lunar eclipse. Meanwhile, Fitzsimmons was still recovering from recent food poisoning, sipping a bottle of Pedialyte in between answers.

“I’m feeling wrecked, but I’m coherent enough to chat,” she said.

But when the topic of tour arose, Fitzsimmons and Jones perked up, giving energetic, polished responses that could only come from seasoned music industry veterans. 

Twen had just wrapped up its first leg of touring their latest album, Fate Euphoric, released last November, hitting several new cities with surprisingly large crowd turnouts.

“In Rochester, New York, we sold out, and that's kind of a weird feeling,” Jones said. 

“We have a different reach with this tour that isn't just boots on the ground. Now there are promoters from smaller towns reaching out to us.”

Unlike popular spots in New York or LA, the smaller town venues, he said, really “know how to rock.” Years ago, before Twen was a touring act, the band packed audiences into their own homes for raucous basement shows, which was how it all got started. Those shows, which Fitzsimmons described as “character-building,” taught her how to book her own shows and be her own manager.

“I loved it,” she said. “But soon enough I was like, ‘I’m ready to be done.’ One time a pipe burst in the basement because someone was hanging on it … things would get stolen. It’s all fun and games until these things happen.”

Real venues with higher-quality sound environments and equipment were a much-appreciated upgrade, but Jones said Twen hasn’t forgotten their roots.

“We still carry that energy over, because that's how we learned to perform,” he said. “You can kind of tell when you see a band blowing up on big stages if they skipped over that step of playing small house shows, because they don't know how to carry that energy.” 

That homemade feel is reflected not only in their live performances but also in other visual elements, such as the posters, merch and music videos, all designed and spearheaded by Fitzsimmons, a former graphic designer. Jones has handled the mixing, production and engineering of all three albums: Fate Euphoric, One Stop Shop and Awestruck.

Influences for the band’s audiovisual world come from a hodgepodge of indie sleaze era musicians of the early aughts, such as Bright Eyes and Modest Mouse, but also draw on earlier decades from the 60s to the 90s. 

“A lot of our music has some 60s elements, like boogie-ing rock,” Jones said. “We like to think of it as like a 60s, 90s and 2020s through line.”

Twen formed in Boston, but since Jones and Fitzsimmons opted in to van life eight years ago, they’ve been collecting pieces of inspiration from each new place they’ve visited. Having no real home base or conformity to genre meant that all the material on Fate Euphoric came simply from free-flowing thoughts and improvised grooves. 

The album’s title, Fitzsimmons said, came from a “word salad-y” lyric writing process that kept her coming back to the same phrases.

“I don't really write anything down at first,” she said. “It all usually comes through melody loops, or guitar or drum loops. The words ‘fate euphoric’ came in two different songs, ‘Tap Dance in Limbo’ and then ‘Fate Euphoric.’ And since it came up two times, naturally, you're like, 'Well, it has to be the album title.’"

To Fitzsimmons, the phrase summed up the record’s central themes of finding beauty and euphoria in the unknown. Performing the songs live has given them new life and meaning, and audience reactions have solidified their optimistic approach to a fate in limbo.

“Some people after the show have said they feel hopeful,” Fitzsimmons said. “They’ll say, ‘I haven't been going to shows. I haven't danced in forever.’ It’s almost like the audience knows it's gonna be okay.”

Despite fine-tuning their creative direction and establishing their own management, audience reactions are one piece the band knows they cannot control. For a while, they struggled with wanting to feel understood, rather than simply heard, but those years are behind them. As they continue to tour Fate Euphoric, Jones and Fitzsimmons remain grounded in what they do know: Twen is their project, and theirs alone.

“I feel very grounded in my own identity,” Fitzsimmons said. “If you do things that are hard, and if you get through all those moments, no one can take that away from you. Anything that was sad or hard, well, those are stories now, baby.”

Bumps in the road are continuous and unavoidable, but the foundation is solid.

“If you have a goal in life that is bigger than just the relationship itself, and if you’re both working towards the same thing…that keeps you going forward,” Jones said. “And if you're on the same page with somebody, then it becomes pretty easy, actually.”

Fate Euphoric came out on Nov. 4,2025. Twen will take the stage in Atlanta on March 12 to kick off the next leg of their spring U.S. tour of the south, east coast, midwest and west coast, ending on May 7.