40-year-old billionaire twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have been touring the country with their rock band Mars Junction since early last month, offering their versions of songs from Blink-182, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. the police, Pearl Jam and Journey. Tyler sings; Cameron plays guitar. On Saturday, they rolled into Amagansett, NY, the seaside town on Long Island, not far from where they spent the summers of their childhood.
They arrived in grand style, riding down Main Street in a 45-foot Prevost tour bus with “Mars Junction” in huge letters on the side. A Mercedes-Benz Sprinter brought out the rear. The retinue of the twins consisted of the four musicians in the band, a documentary filmmaker, a merchandise seller and various employees.
The two vehicles parked in front of the Stephen Talkhouse, an old-fashioned venue that has seen a number of party artists take the stage over the decades, including Jimmy Buffett, Jimmy Cliff, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Sheila E. and Suzanne Vega. Mars node capped off the tour with two nights at the Talkhouse on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets were $50.
The twins, whose cryptocurrency company, Gemini, laid off 10 percent of its staff in the recent crypto crash, encountered a bump in the road to Amagansett. An audience member at the band’s show at the Wonder Bar in Asbury Park, NJ, posted a video of Tyler attempting to emulate vocalist Steve Perry’s crystal-clear highs in Mars Junction’s rendition of Journey’s 1981 hit “Don’t Stop.” Believin’.” The clip went viral, and comments on social media about the twins — former Olympic rowers who made a fortune off Bitcoin after playing a part in the founding of Facebook — have been warming up.
Born in nearby Southampton and raised in Greenwich, Conn., Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss were much more warmly welcomed at the Talkhouse. Saturday at 7 p.m. the hall was packed, mostly with young adults in Bermuda shorts and sundresses who seemed to belong to the same crowd as the Harvard-educated twins. Their parents, Carol and Howard Winklevoss, were in attendance, as were several family friends.
The twins took the stage and dove into their opener, “Top Gun Anthem,” the instrumental theme of the 1986 film and its recent sequel. With his mustache, slicked back hair, aviator goggles and wallet chain hanging from a back pocket, Tyler looked somewhere between “Top Gun” and Tommy Bahama. Cameron, in an orange shirt and white pants, had more of a surfer vibe.
Suddenly, his legs wide apart and the mic held sideways, Tyler led the band to Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name.” “Now you do what they told you!” he sang before leaping into the crowd, where he hit a flurry of high-fives and fist bumps with the Mars Junction stalwarts.
“What’s up, Talkhouse!” he said after the song was done. “The weekend of July 4, it’s the big one! Ready to rock, guys?”
The hits just kept coming: Kings of Leon’s “Sex on Fire”; Mumford & Sons’ “The Wolf”; “Can’t Stop” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. When Tyler sang Sublime’s “Santeria,” he changed the line “Well, I had a million dollars” by replacing the word “million” with “billion.” Cameron performed a wah-wah guitar solo and took a sip of Liquid Death water.
Then came the challenging part of the show: the Police medley, where Tyler had to hit the high notes so effortlessly sung by a youthful Sting in his 1980s glory.
“So Lonely” transitioned into “Message in a Bottle”, which morphed into the hard rocking “Synchronicity II” (“The factory burps dirt in the air!” Tyler sang) before settling into the reggae vibe of “Walking on the Moon ” .” Tyler stretched his voice to the limit. Why not make it easier on yourself by starting it in a lower key? But that’s not Winklevoss’ way.
The audience sang along to the next song, ‘Flagpole Sitta’, a 1997 hit for Harvey Danger. As the music died down, a young man in the audience repeatedly yelled a profane chant at Mark Zuckerberg, who unsuccessfully sued the Winklevoss twins, accusing him of denying them their fair share of Facebook money.
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Tyler said to the noisy fan with a hint of a smile on his face.
He got nostalgic in his introduction to Pearl Jam’s “Even Flow”.
“Let’s go early ’90s, yeah?” Tyler said to the crowd. “What do you think? Early 90s? Pre-Internet? Can you handle that? No social media? Okay, want to go back?”
He channeled Eddie Vedder’s growl. Cameron took two solos.
“Hooooo!” said the crowd.
“We’re staying in the early ’90s for this next one,” Tyler said. “Ready for some Nirvana?”
The crowd cheered again.
“Okay, that feels like a yes!”
Then came ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. As they played the next song, “Suck My Kiss,” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, their mother, Carol, clapped along to the beat while their father, dressed in a blue blazer and button-up shirt, maintained a stoic demeanor.
For Taking Back Sunday’s song “You’re So Last Summer,” Cameron donned a Mars Junction cap. There were more available at the merch table for $20.02 each.
After the audience sang along to “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers, Mars Junction offered a few Journey songs as encores: “Don’t Stop Believin'” and “Any Way You Want It”. The lights came on to the sound of AC’s “Hell’s Bells” /DC on the Talkhouse sound system The twins left for a late dinner with their parents at Gurney’s in Montauk.
Prior to the Sunday evening show, the brothers took a moment to chat in an upstairs room of the Talkhouse. While Tyler broke open a Liquid Death, he said the previous night’s show felt like coming home and noted that his parents still had the beach house in nearby Quogue. He added that Mars Junction was in a somewhat vulnerable position because it plays such well-known songs.
“When you play covers, you’re judged by the recording,” Tyler said. “And the more iconic the song, the more people know about the recording, and life is a little different. So it is a difficult thing.”
One thing the Mars Junction experience taught them, the twins said, was that the life of an itinerant musician can be exhausting.
“You need to rest for these shows,” Tyler said. “It’s a huge effort and as a singer your voice can go if you’re not careful.”
“Guitars don’t get tired,” Cameron said. “But people do.”
