Thirty years ago, one of the co-owners of the former Java ‘n Jazz on Lyons Avenue in Newhall begged Mike Pieper and his friends to play at the coffee shop. Pieper, who grew up in Valencia, said the group didn’t want to perform for a crowd because they didn’t have a lead guitarist. Plus, they were a little shy.
They’d eventually get a guitarist, overcome their shyness and go on to play there. Now, the Santa Clarita rock tribute band, known as Electric Vinyl, plays what they call “the best music from the best bands” and they’re celebrating 30 years of playing music together.
Pieper, 60 years old and living in Saugus, told The Signal in a telephone interview last week that he and a friend of his from years back really just played music for fun.
“My friend Jim Wrona and I were both guitar players, and we were both writers, and we were the kind of guys that sat around the house and played guitar,” he said. “We started talking about putting a band together, but really nothing ever came to fruition.”
Around that time, Pieper had become friends with Mitch McMullen, who’d founded Java ‘n Jazz with his brother Kyle. Pieper had already said no to playing at the coffee shop a couple times before over the course of a few months.
“We were all big coffee drinkers,” Pieper said, “so, we would go over there, take our guitars, get coffee, and go sit on the patio and play. And Mitch would come out and hear us play all the time. He was like, ‘Why don’t you guys play on stage?’ We said, ‘Oh, no, we don’t really do that.’”
But as time went on, Pieper and Wrona would recruit some friends to form a complete band. They rehearsed about an hour’s worth of music and finally agreed to play at Java ‘n Jazz.
“It was a lot of fun,” Pieper said, “and it was a huge success. We packed the place with friends and family, and it went over so well that Mitch asked us to come back and do it again. We thought, ‘Oh, man, are we going to be able to do this again? We’re going to have to get all these people together.’ So, we did. We got some new people together, and that kind of was the impetus for us to say, ‘Maybe we can do this.’”
When the band did that first show, Pieper recalled, McMullen had asked for their name. Not having one, someone threw out “Skinny Little Twits.” It was a joke name. One of the guitarists they’d previously approached about joining the band had responded to the request by saying, “Are you kidding? Who’s going to want to watch you skinny little twits play?”
The name stuck. And performance after performance, the Skinny Little Twits got better and better.
“We really cut our teeth when Mitch opened his second store in the mall,” Pieper said. “We started playing there every Thursday night as his standing Thursday-night band. We played acoustic there because it’s too small of a venue, and that’s where we really refined our vocal harmonies. Because when you’re playing acoustic, it’s a lot quieter, and you really hear every little thing. So, we really developed our guitar parts and particularly our harmony vocals there.”
The Skinny Little Twits played what Pieper called a “distinctively classic rock” sound, drawing inspiration from rock, blues and country bands of the 1970s and ’80s.
The band recorded its first album in 1998, and a second one called “To the Rescue” in 2001. Those recordings would lead to the band opening for comedy musician “Weird Al” Yankovic on his “Running with Scissors” tour, for singer-songwriter Christopher Cross at a show in Fresno, and for the all-female punk-rock band the Go-Go’s at “The Taste of Newport” in Newport Beach.
And while the band experienced many successes, by the mid 2000s, the Skinny Little Twits felt they weren’t getting the volume of booking they really wanted.
“So, we decided, ‘OK, you know what? Maybe it makes more sense to throw some covers in and do like 50/50 — do half covers and half original music,’” Pieper said. “And that worked pretty well. We started getting interest from various cities for their concerts in the park.”
Once they began doing those shows, the band stayed consistently booked. They played in cities all over Southern California, including a couple concerts in the park in Santa Clarita. Pieper said his favorite city to play in was Santa Clarita, not just because it’s his hometown, but because the shows here always had the best staging, the best sound, the best lighting and the best crowds.
“It’s just awesome here,” he said. “There’s nothing like it. You feel like a rock star when you’re playing Santa Clarita.”
Unlike most cover bands that will typically cover one band, the Skinny Little Twits covered a wide range of favorites like Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, Rush, U2, Van Halen and Tears for Fears.
According to a press kit from the band, the Skinny Little Twits became Electric Vinyl in 2018, the rebranding, coupled with their “already strong reputation,” further boosting their number of bookings.
Over the years, the band has seen 24 contributors, with five current members. The 30-year reunion show, which took place over the weekend at the Tipsy Goat in Thousand Oaks, brought back a number of former band members and, of course, the current ones.
Still, there was a time when the Skinny Little Twits played at Java ‘n Jazz on Lyons Avenue in Newhall for some friends and family and had packed the tiny venue. The band — now Electric Vinyl — which has gone on to play for crowds in the thousands, has come a long way since those early days.
For more information about the band, go to ElectricVinyl.net.
