Screenshot: Presenting Frendly
The end is in sight. Danny Davis and Jack Mitrani are cruising through to the opening act, having trucked it through A Brief, At Times Sad, But Also Delightfully Wacky History of The Frends Crew and their journey In Search of a Recording Studio Airstream.
In Episode 3 the frends get a bit silly before a grounding moment — Danny dislocated his left shoulder, taking him out of practice and competition. Mitrani’s efforts to keep Danny cheerful, and to take care of him in his disabled state, evoke their mantra: “Life is better when lived together.”
Still, Mitrani finds the silver lining. Danny being couch-bound frees his attention up to make some progress on planning the Frendly Gathering, just over 100 days away (at the time). Deep in the winter 2015 snowboard season competitions and riding take up all the energy these guys and muster, and then some. They find a clear-headed, undistracted moment to get more balls rolling: formulating the line-up, the Airstream-turnt-recording-studio in the works, and a project with festival headliner Twiddle.
Episode 4 opens with a 2011 sequence of the good frends caravaning down to Boulder to see Twiddle play. Davis looks about the same, but Mitrani was sporting a foppish mop-top reminiscent of Ringo Starr circa 1966 — quite contrary to his current bearded, slick, skinny-jeans image. Regardless, the moment holds relevance because of it, a relationship was born – the frends crew and the Vermont jam band Twiddle. The frends brought Twiddle in to play their first Frendly Gathering and came to find them stealing the show.
Fast forward five years, in Episode 4 of Frendly Presents Jack and Danny are brainstorming new initiatives to pursue with the members of Twiddle. Mihali Savoulidis, Twiddle’s lead singer and guitarist, demonstrates a healthy dose of humility in proposing that he and Jack scour the streets for talented yet still undiscovered buskers to recruit for the Frendly Gathering: “There are so many people who are just as good as me if not better, better than all of us.”
To close the episode, Jack invites fans to send video messages over Skype of undiscovered talent. The series’ integration of Skype into the narrative is, for the most part, well done and natural. It seems as though Microsoft intends to morph Skype into a way for musicians to connect with fans, an interesting concept…
Episode 5 will likely be released after this weekend, so for anyone going to the Frendly Gathering: have a ball!
