Whether or not you enjoyed Akron/Family at the Grog Shop last night largely depends on how willing you were to embrace the communal spirit. Beyond that, the 90-minute set required you to be patient with three members of the community seemingly content to casually stroll their way through some of their more recent songs.
Openers Delicate Steve would periodically join Akron/Family on stage, and crowd members would sing or clap along when properly provoked. Roughly midway into the night, we were led in a mild form of meditation to imagine ourselves at the beach, “but not Miami because fuck the Heat, right?” Instructed to sway along to the beat as if we were careless at the beach, “Island” provided a solid break from the looser, Grateful Dead moments in the show.
This article appears in Mar 2-8, 2011.
