When Akron/Family first came through town a few years ago with former Swan Michael Gira’s Angels of Light, they played an opening set and then joined Gira onstage as his backing band. It was a formative experience for the Brooklyn-based group that considers collaboration a key part of their concerts.
“It was our very first tour,” says drummer Dana Janssen. “We were
playing to somebody else’s audience. I really had a good time. It was a
big learning experience. We jam a little in our sets. With Michael, it
was the same set every night. He thought of it as like a play, and you
find nuances as you go on and create a different feel for the songs. It
was really neat because I got to learn a different role as a drummer
and singer and musician.”
Akron/Family (they picked the name because it “sounded good”) formed
in 2002 when Janssen and Seth Olinsky, friends since high school,
invited Miles Seaton and Ryan Vanderhoof (who’s since left the group)
to jam. “We made a deal,” says Janssen. “Seth said, ‘I will not go back
to college if you don’t take that teaching job and join the band and
move with us to New York.’ I said, ‘Sure.'”
Once in Brooklyn, the band began playing regularly at a coffee shop,
sharing the stage with the odd assortment of characters who frequented
the place. They sent a demo to Gira, who agreed to produce their
self-titled debut in 2005.
“Michael knew how to pull the songs out of us,” says Janssen of the
band’s first album, which placed them in the company of experimental
freak-folks like Devendra Banhart, a designation that Janssen says is a
bit limiting.
“I’d say our musical backgrounds are pretty big,” he says. “I like a
lot of hip-hop and R&B and the Grateful Dead and all sorts of
stuff. Everybody does. As far as folk is concerned, it means music for
the people. By that definition, you could take it into a broad
spectrum.”
For their follow-up, Love Is Simple, the band recruited
producer Andrew Weiss (Ween, Henry Rollins) who refined the group’s
freewheeling approach even further.
“Andrew Weiss helped us define certain roles, whether it’s basic
tracking or mixing the drum part with a little more vocals,” says
Janssen. “Small things like that that we take for granted.”
Released earlier this year, Akron/Family’s latest, Set ‘Em Wild,
Set ‘Em Free, is, as its title implies, an eclectic affair that
finds the band exploring everything from Sly & the Family
Stone-inspired funk to Animal Collective-like mayhem.
“I think it’s a big departure,” says Janssen. “It’s the first one we
got to self-produce on our own. We had more time than we did with the
other records, as far as being able to flesh out tunes and crack songs
open in the studio. That was great for us because it was something we
always wanted to do. We went to three different studios in Detroit,
Montreal and Brooklyn. We wanted to have a different sound, almost a
living-room collage. Not that having a producer was a negative
experience by any means, because we were able to take those experiences
and learn from them. We proved to ourselves that we could do it.”
On tour now with like-minded acts like Wooden Wand and Jeffrey
Lewis, Janssen says he wouldn’t mind returning to Japan, where the band
recently played.
“It was a great experience,” he says. “There’s this level of respect
that’s unparalleled. The people at the shows went nuts. It was very
cool.”
Akron/Family have a small but loyal following who will undoubtedly
search out the new 7-inch series the band has just released. Janssen
says he’s happy to nurture that cult following as long as possible.
“Everyone is like, ‘I want to make a lot of money and sell a lot of
records,'” he says. “Especially today, if you start playing music to
make a lot of money, I don’t know if you’re making the right choice. I
could be like, ‘This is the only thing I know how to do,’ but that’s
just not true. I’m good at a lot of things, like carpentry. This is
fun, and it doesn’t have to be forever. But I definitely want to do
this right now because it’s what I love doing. Being able to go out and
play music is a really special experience. You can travel the world and
see special places, even if it’s only for eight hours at a time. I
think of it as previewing where I would like to go back to. It’s like a
trailer of the Earth, and I get to decide if I want to see the movie or
not.”
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2009.
