While the supremacy of rock ’n’ roll might be in slow decline, Chicago-based band Twin Peaks is making sure that its impact is not forgotten. Idolizing groups like the Kinks, T. Rex, and the Rolling Stones—so much so that singer and guitarist Cadien Lake James tattooed LET IT BLEED on his chest in honour of the Stones’ seminal album—the five-piece plays its half garage rock, half punk music loud and fast.

“We normally end up going twice the speed of the record when we’re on-stage,” James tells the Straight on the line from Rogers Park, Chicago. “We’re all about the high-energy music. We want to put on a show.”

The guitarist isn’t joking. Deciding early on that “nothing would slow them down,” the band’s members have been so committed to Twin Peaks’ live dates that James once played a week of concerts with an undiagnosed broken leg.

“I was about 20,” he recalls. “I was in New Orleans for the first time, and there was a lot of liquor. It’s safe to say that I partook. I jumped up on-stage with another band in just my really short shorts, and started singing along and doing all kinds of goofy stuff with their guitars. At one point I had their singer on my back and collapsed under his weight. I tried to stand up and couldn’t, so I shimmied off-stage. Everybody was like, ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a sprain. Walk it off.’

“The next morning we arrived at South by Southwest festival,” he continues. “I was doing three or four shows a day. At one point during our downtime, I took a tab of acid and walked a mile to see a band on my fractured ankle, not knowing that it was so busted. By the time we got to Arizona on the tour, I realized that I had to see a doctor. He told me that I was an idiot, and that I should have gone to the hospital immediately. They had to re-break my leg before they’d give me the cast. I didn’t stop playing shows after that, though—I just did it on a stool or in a wheelchair for the next seven months.”

For James, injuries come with the territory of playing rock ’n’ roll.

“It happens,” he says. “Last Wednesday we were playing a show at the Empty Bottle and I accidentally cut [bandmate] Clay’s head with my guitar on-stage—he had a big gash. Luckily, we have insurance now.”

Despite James’s preference for strumming at a hundred miles a minute, Twin Peaks’ live shows also honour the group’s catchy harmonies and jaunty riffs. Tracks like the ’60s-inspired “Walk to the One You Love”, from the band’s latest LP, Down in Heaven, are accentuated in performance by raucous punk vocals, while standout song “Getting Better” trades its ragtime feel for distorted guitars without losing its melodic swagger.

“You can listen to our albums forwards, or you can listen to them backwards,” James says. “All of our tracks are pretty different. We have four songwriters, and everyone composes in various styles. We all have different singing voices, and we all work in different ways. Having numerous people writing and arranging is what this project is—but it still manages to sound cohesive. We work well together as musicians, and we end up creating reasonably consistent songs because of the unique way that we each play our instruments.

“It’s not too easy to make a living these days in rock music,” he continues. “There’s not a lot of money in it, so you have to work all the time. Having so many songwriters takes the pressure off continually coming up with great tracks, and it also means that we get to be out on the road a whole lot. We’re basically living the dream.”

Twin Peaks plays the Rickshaw Theatre on Sunday (April 9).