Akron/Family: There’s So Many Colors
By Team JamBase Apr 22, 2008 • 12:00 am PDT

Things are not what they seem to be
Nor are they otherwise
![]() |
Their sound is a fluid incantation that we’ll let Michael Gira (The Swans, Angels of Light) explain: “They are one of the best bands on the planet. I don’t recall seeing such fantastic live shows ever, except maybe Pere Ubu at the Whiskey in LA circa 1978 or Pink Floyd circa Umma Gumma era 1968/9. Take those unrelated reference points and mix in The Beatles, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Credence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, The Hollies, The Butthole Surfers, Led Zeppelin, and you might get a notion – probably not.”
Gira backs up his boasts with action, using Akron/Family as his backing band in Angels of Light and putting out three albums by the NYC-based band on his Young God Records – their 2005 self-titled debut, 2006’s Meek Warrior and last year’s stunning Love Is Simple. Add to Gira’s laundry list Crosby, Still, Nash and Young, traditional African music, late ’60s John Coltrane, hootenanny folk and a sprinkling of John Fahey and you’re a few inches closer to the mark. That this hyperactive hodgepodge not only makes sense but also shines in a fully integrated way is breathtaking. Seth Olinsky, Dana Janssen and Miles Seaton make freedom music and what could be more American than that?

Love Is Simple opens with an irony free refrain of “Go out and love, love, love everyone.” These days there’s a reflexive urge to scoff at such unvarnished sweetness but the band rejects that easy cynicism.

This is the Butterfly Effect wrangled into musical form. On a fundamental level, Akron/Family recognizes the cumulative effect of small actions.

“We talk about how at shows a band will tell you to snap along or whatever. Whenever we build in parts like that we’ll joke that you can ironically snap. I mean that. If you think it’s kind of cheesy then you can do that because the reality is that unwilling participation will touch those around you,” says Seaton. “I don’t care if people leave the gig and go buy the record. If they have an authentic experience, even if they didn’t really get it, just because 20 extra people snapped the people in front that are really doing it are going to feel it even more. When you open the door and say, ‘Everybody come in’, that means EVERYBODY. The reality is at some shows that’s real uncomfortable. There’s somebody that’s really drunk, pouring beer all over you, and they’re so excited to talk to you about all the ways they ‘get it.’ Or they’re really high on acid and keep hugging you and you’re tripped out and just need some space. When you say, ‘Everybody come in,’ that means indie rockers and cynics and whoever. We don’t want to add to the world’s isolation. We want to inspire the pioneer spirit in everybody and ourselves.”
Continue reading for more on Akron/Family…
![]() |
|
“Going up and down, falling apart and coming together, the duality thing is an approach we’ve used. For us, it’s often reflected in chaos and resolution,” says Olinsky. “Having something that’s chaotic and a little out of control, maybe even turns off the audience a little bit with its dissonance, and then resolves into a song that they know or just something sensual and beautiful, gives us ways to draw the audience in and then try and use that energy as a step-off point for something unfamiliar to everyone. Some nights it’s successful, some nights it’s not. We love music. We love chaos. We love pretty things. As we’ve matured it’s gotten more refined but we love wild turns and butt-ending weird things next to each other.”

“The people we attract are just hip to what we do. The Megafaun guys pick up on the more Americana/The Band elements and The Dodos pick up on the more punk rock and African parts. Since the first time we played with [The Dodos] we were all like, ‘Whoa! Meric [Long, guitar] and Logan [Kroeber, drums] brought it heavy.’ We’d have them up to play drums on the end of a song and they were there,” says Seaton. “When Seth and I first got together we were Akron and the idea was we’d have this family, a collectivist, Elephant 6 thing, with all different members and configurations revolving around the core. Then, when Dana came along we had this discussion about going in a more traditional band route. Then Ryan joined and the four-member unit is so classic, and everybody takes up so much space in this band. So, with Ryan leaving, things had to start over in a way with Seth, Dana and I being the core Akron with this Family thing happening very organically.”
“What started out as damage control has turned into this flowering of its own,” adds Olinsky. “Ryan followed his heart and that’s perfect, and we’re finding ourselves in a position where the box is broken open. You get into the four iconic figures, Beatles-esque mindset and [Love Is Simple] is really the plateau of that. We put the walrus skull on the back cover to recognize that records and the concept of records are dying. We’re never gonna be The Beatles or anything like them. That happened and today’s industry is a blank canvas for people like us to do what we do. There are whole new avenues for expression. Even if Ryan had stayed we would have had to spend time developing ourselves at this point. We feel a sense of empowerment in the group right now where we can pull off our dreams and find a way of doing anything.”
The Lightning Bolt Of Compassion
The immortals gently awaken
All possibilities open
Unto one another
And brothers and sisters begin
To see truly through strata

Being in the physical presence of their fiercely free, organic music as it unfolds is where the tumblers inside Akron/Family’s schema fully click into place. Few concerts have hit me in the spirit like their performance in San Francisco last October, which transformed this writer from a mere admirer into a full-blown acolyte. They are hell-bent on eradicating any fences that stand between them and those gathered. Not content with mere listeners, Akron/Family summons us into the music, makes us a coconspirator in their machinations, a fiddler at their inferno, a child in their sprinkler spray.
“When I first started making music what I thought was a successful situation was seeing Fugazi and having them step up in my face and tell me to pick up a fucking guitar. It’s so important, and in a lot of ways that’s what we’re trying to bring. Success is inspiring someone to make music, inspiring someone to sing, however it happens,” enthuses Seaton, a huge fan of ritual music of all stripes. “When everybody is singing and moving and there’s this whole undulating thing, there’s a sense that, if it gets heavy enough and you’re focused enough in the moment, you can really forget there’s boundaries between atoms. Historically, this shit is meant to fucking bend time and space and completely disorient a person. There’s no passive listeners, no division between the person with the drum and the person without one. I’ve seen people end up having seriously transcendent experiences at our shows. It’s really audacious in some ways to say that shit but at this point I have to because it’s what I really care for in music. It’s what I’m going for and I don’t give a FUCK if someone thinks I’m a sick bass player. Thank you very much but can we go there together?”

“You don’t know what’s gonna happen or what you’re going to bring down [laughs]. There’s a lot of things I go through making music that I don’t talk about. I get off the road and I feel sick for weeks, physically ill,” Seaton says. “I do try to put myself in harm’s way in that situation as much as I can. I feel like putting yourself in that situation is the responsibility of the artist in a lot of ways. For me, and for a lot of people, the heaviest thing they may ever come into contact with is a really profound aesthetic experience. So, in some ways, you’re the intermediary, you’re the host. A priest is not a special thing, they just happen to handle that fuckin’ wafer.”
“With all the changes in the music industry and the undermining of its commercial structure, I feel like music is being returned to the people. I don’t really know what that means,” observes Seaton. “It may mean that I’m out of a job, and that scares me sometimes as an artist in my own little ego world where I want MY voice to be heard. That can sometimes create a little frustration but I can see it happen at our shows that people have enough of an authentic experience that the value of music is increasing exponentially without people really even knowing it. The commercial value is changing, and who knows what that means, but there’s a rift in the matrix that’s making it possible for music to return to folk status. It’s so exciting, so huge. I really want to open myself as much as I can, and having that be more of the agenda than just making great records or whatever matters.”
JamBase | Freedom Trail
Go See Live Music!