Twisted Livin’ guitarist Denny Shiffler discusses the band’s new album, opening for Mitch Ryder, and upcoming shows at the Hard Rock Cafe and beyond.
by Danny Colman originally published on Rock On! This Week’s Sound Bites…8/21/2025
“I’ve been good,” began Twisted Livin’ guitarist and front man Denny Shiffler as he discussed their upcoming appearance at Atlantic City’s Hard Rock Cafe` Sound Waves Theatre as part of the Emerging New Jersey Blues Artist series. “We got this show through this dude who books us in the casinos and places like that, he hit us up and was saying how he had an opening for this original music event; so, yeah, it should be cool.”
Prior to the aforementioned Hard Rock gig, the trio, consisting of Shiffler, bassist Will Keiter and drummer Bob Irwin has other undertakings; recording a new record.
“We are actually recording in Long Branch with a guy named Jeff Levine. We’re pretty much doing original tunes and laying down a couple of covers as well,” said an excited Shiffler. “Jeff played with Joe Cocker and people like that so it’s cool to sit down and bullshit with him and he’s playing on our album as well, he’s amazing. Right now, the way we are doing it, we’ve done three songs so far but we are gonna record an entire album; we’re not sure if he thinks we should release the three as a demo EP and then go back in and crunch out a bunch more stuff; I take his word for it, he’s been doing this a lot longer than I have so we’re kind of waiting on his word to see what he wants us to do.”
“I write all of the music,” he went on, “I’ll bring the guys a pretty much completed song and Bob will put down the drums, sometimes I’ll tell him or say, “Emphasize this more” or maybe, “Do this different” and Will will write his bass line and the same thing, “Back off a little bit here” or “Be more consistent here,” we’re kind of all over the place but I’m not a stickler, they definitely have their freedom for sure. Jeff, he’s like hanging out with a friend. We’re all in there bustin’ balls and joking around and having a good time so even though we all get into a serious mode when we’re recording and playing, it never feels like crunch time, it feels like we have all of the time in the world. On all of my other records, money was a concern and time was a concern. So, I would go into the studio really not wanting to spend money on the next time I’d have to be in there and I’d try to finish as much as I could rather than kind of letting things flow. That’s where we have a huge plus with Jeff who is hooking us up big time; sometimes we will spend 10 or 12 hours in there and get what we have to get done. We’ll work on the same thing for sometimes two or three hours; it’s very freeing and I like working with Jeff in particular. Money, unfortunately, is a huge deal in life and I make the best music when I’m not thinking about money when I should be thinking about music.”
The fun doesn’t stop there for this trio which calls Somers Point, NJ home as they’ve also got a September 12 slot opening for the legendary Mitch Ryder. So; how long and what can we expect from them at this September 5 festival and beyond?
“September 5 isn’t a music festival,” he pointed out quickly, “It’s more like a series of events that I think are once or twice a month which is really important around here with our original music scene because we really don’t have much of anything at all so it’s cool that we have this one thing. I was told that we are the first act but I haven’t gotten anything confirmed just yet. Our set is about 30 minutes and we’re gonna play because that’s who we are. We’re not gonna take away who we are so we can get more songs in or anything like that; if people want to hear more of us, hopefully next time we’ll get a bigger set time. I mean, that’s just what we do. We don’t think about time or anything like that when we’re trying to play; when we feel like it should be over; maybe we’ll play one song for 30 minutes, you never know. I was told that we were the first act but I haven’t gotten anything confirmed just yet.”
“We’ll be playing gigs a lot, doing our thing and recording. In October we’ll be going to Knoxville because we have a gig at the University of Tennessee. That came about because I bumped into a guy who goes there and he said, “You should come play our tailgate before a football game. There are a shit ton of people that go and they’d love you” and I thought yeah, OK, whatever so, I gave him my phone number and he actually called me. It’ll be good to go where nobody knows you and see if you can blow some minds, where they don’t even know your first name and we’re trying to get into New York City and Philly; kind of get outside New Jersey too.”
To discover more about Twisted Livin’, please visit https://www.twistedlivinband.com/