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Akron/Family Just A Band? Not Exactly

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By CURTIS ROSS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 7, 2007

Akron/Family is a band and nothing more, Dana Janssen is quick to explain.

'Really, it's not any sort of religion,' Janssen says by telephone from his boyhood home in rural Pennsylvania.

The fact that Janssen even has to clarify that point pretty well establishes that while Akron/Family may be just a band, it's miles away from any you've heard before.

Some of the religious misperception is the work of crafty marketing on the part of the band's label. But the band's music, which often borders on the ecstatic, made the joke believable.

The foursome - Janssen plays drums, but like the others (Seth Olinsky, Miles Seaton and Ryan Vanderhoof) is a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist - came together in Brooklyn five years ago, honing its blend of psychedelia, folk and rock in virtual seclusion.

'We moved out to Bushwick, an area of Brooklyn where there was nothing around us,' Janssen recalls. 'There was a block of emptiness just to reach the train.

'So we weren't the most social people, basically just hanging with ourselves at the house, to the point where it was hermetically anti-social,' Janssen says.

That helped fuel the mystery around the band, as did working on its eponymous 2005 debut album with Michael Gira, ex-leader of extremist art-rockers Swans and now head of the Family's label, Young God.

'The first time we were in the studio with Michael, whenever we would hear something we liked ... we'd respond to that with 'Oh, dude, that's so ak, that's so ak ak,'' Janssen says. 'As in, that's something we'd like. Essentially it was just us saying that's cool.

'Michael went off and started writing about ak and was inspired by it, and thought it was pretty unique, so it started this thing of it being quasi-religious,' Janssen says.

Young God's press releases slyly played up the 'ak' angle to the point that Janssen still gets incredulous questions about it.

'Sometimes I just go with them and say, 'Yeah you should join,'' he says with a laugh. 'Send your money to ...'

Maybe describing the band as a religion was just a way to avoid having to describe the music, which is hard to pin down.

Early reviews were quick to lump Akron/Family with the freak-folk movement, primarily because Devendra Banhart, proclaimed as freak-folk's faerie prince, was recording for Young God at the time.

'When we first made the first record, the focus on Young God was directly post-Devendra, or freak folk, or whatever word they were throwing around, so it became the hipster thing,' Janssen says

'We're definitely not freak folk,' Janssen says. 'The first record has acoustic guitar and banjo, so I understand why someone would call it that. Bit it's a lazy way of lumping a new band into some category.'

Lazy doesn't seem to be part of Akron/Family's makeup. Besides releasing its own debut in 2005, it also recorded and toured as Gira's backing band, dubbed Angels of Light.

That meant opening the show with its own music before closing it as Gira's backing band.

'It was hard to put on a good show night after night, especially when you do your music first ... and then you have to do the same thing in a slightly different capacity backing someone else,' Janssen says. 'But it was all worth it.'

The band released the seven-song 'Meek Warrior' last year, and will release the full-length 'Love Is Simple' on Sept. 18.

ON TOUR

Akron/Family

WITH: Greg Davis and Megafaun

WHEN: 5 p.m. Monday

WHERE: Outside Hamilton Center, New College of Florida, 5800 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota; (941) 487-4491

COST: Free

Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568 or cross@tampatrib.com.

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