Akron/Family have always been deep. The band has charted a sort of humanistic-folk transfixed by impermanence as delivered through the perspective of a Brooklyn-based crew of "world"-music leaning jazz-lovers. And their softly cooed harmonies over spookily gurgling synths and organs and Gregorian howls matter-of-factly slipped haunting theories of impermanence. Art-punk's bent and sideways jerking, tropicalia's softly shuffling ambience, '60s Brit pop's infectious hooks, non-Western music's transcendent atmospherics and tribal percussion -- all growing, popping, and smoothing out over the course of six years for this once-quartet (currently Dana Janssen, Seth Olinsky, and Miles Seaton, with original member Ryan Vanderhoof having departed in '07). They turned heads with their quirky odyssey Love is Simple, as sanctimonious as it was ravenous, and warmed hearts with a very soulful and engaging live show that often included a hyper-fluidity between performer, audience, stage and... the rest of the world. But now, the band, like their lyrics, are reflecting on the last year they've spent as a trio, and what that has meant to the writing of their latest album Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free. This album is as much a change of direction sound-wise as it is a change of both philosophy (lyrically, and in-approach to writing/recording) and chemistry (learning to live as a trio and understanding heavy stuff like what does this band mean to its members, to its fans, to all of existence).
Well, maybe not that deep. But TMT and Seth Olinsky do chat about joining gyms, the band's origins with Young God records, Woodie Guthrie, and a genuine attempt to do something great.
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How is your 2009 going? Favorite things going on… be it band-related or non-band related?
2009 has been a pleasant year so far. Growing up and staying busy. The last two weeks have been the first slow weeks of the year, and welcome.
I spent the first part of the year in Ghana with my girlfriend recording a non-profit drum group over there, and spending time exploring the country. I got back from this trip four days before our residency/SXSW tour, which was pretty much March. And now I am enjoying some off time in Pennsylvania, picking up old projects, starting new ones, joining a gym for the first time ever. Strange that humanity has gotten to the point where we have to isolate muscles in air conditioned purple/yellow rooms, but I am now a willing and enjoying participant.
How have the live shows been going, and can you expound upon how the three of you stretched yourselves into different areas or different (instrumental) roles to create that Akron/Family-characteristic -- full sonic swath (on Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free) -- and how you've approached live translations of it lately?
March shows were great. The three-piece Akron Family is finally finding its legs. Thinking back to our first trio tour (Europe in December 2007), there were some truly wild and cacophonous nights, messy tectonic shifts of sound, but we are finally reaching a more deliberate and unique sound and show. Slowly, we are becoming more diverse as well, incorporating acoustic instruments and quieter approaches into a generally uproarious show. There was a conscious decision for us to make this latest recording process about exploring the sound of the three piece, including but not limited to experimenting with instrumental roles, use of electronics, exploring new ways to write and record. We went into recording wanting to create a new universe for ourselves, not unlike creatively what we were doing in the very beginning when we were sending demos to [Young God Records owner] Michael Gira. That time created the foundation for a lot of what we explored musically on S/T, the Akron/Angels Split, Meek Warrior, and [2007's] Love is Simple.
It has been difficult live to create the sonic worlds we are attempting to create, so we have employed more instrument changes, samplers, and drum machines. I think with each tour we are gaining confidence with these tools, and they are becoming more inside the sound and the performance. It just takes time. Simultaneously we are still, especially in New York, exploring playing with more musicians like horns, strings, and percussion, and eventually this is something we would like to do more of as well. (2010 big band tour?)
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"There is definitely a creative, musical, and artistic thread to all that we made in the past, but in a lot of ways we were starting over."
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Did you ever experience a kind of panic in the fall/winter of 2007? And if not panic, per se – how would you describe it? Maybe you can properly qualify it, but it seems to be a veritably disorienting time -- you lose a member, you have to re-assemble, re-learn, and you decide to record on your own (for at-that-point-un-recorded Set Em Wild, Set Em Free) and switch record labels. What were the feelings? And how did you acknowledge it as a group? What were the discussions like in the van from show to show?
With the first three releases, we were just trying to capture different sides of ourselves and explore and develop all these different ideas, and I think from the outside it didn't make a whole of sense, or at least seemed kind of schizophrenic. With Love is Simple, I feel like we finally reached a point of a near-balance of ideas and territories we had been exploring, but in that way it also felt like a natural ending to a creative period, a songwriting approach, and to working with Young God Records and Michael. I feel like this eventually would have meant exploring new ideas, but because of Ryan's departure so soon after Love is Simple, we were kind of forced to jump headfirst into this recreation process. This involved first reaching out to friends and playing with Megafaun, Greg Davis, and then the Dodos. But all the while, we were slowly developing the trio live and focusing on making the record as a three piece.
I would say it was a complicated and emotional time. Although the band was started as a family of sorts, or with the idea that it would grow, change, and have a flexible lineup, we spent so much time developing as a four piece creatively and interpersonally that, despite our intellectual idea of ourselves, we were really emotionally and creatively a four piece. It is also easy and I think quite natural too as a young musician to get caught up in the pop-icon mythology that you are surrounded by. For a tenor saxophonist, it is incredibly difficult to face the mythology of John Coltrane, and for a young white rock band you have to deal with The Beatles, or Led Zeppelin, or these groups with iconic individual members... I think as a human it is natural to model yourself after heroes; it is the Joseph Campbell Jung thing. These mythologies are important and deep. Ultimately, though, it is best to break through them I think and move on, and in this way, Ryan's leaving was a kind of gift. This time around, we are all a little older and all a little more conscious of ourselves and what we are looking to create. A little more honest too I hope. I think the change was on a fundamental level. It was never a question of replacing Ryan with another person that does the same things. It was always, well, how do we move forward? Where are we at? What do we want? There is definitely a creative, musical, and artistic thread to all that we made in the past, but in a lot of ways we were starting over.
What kind of effect did you think the transition had on your writing (for Set Em Wild)? (Freedom from formula can become chaos, and some bands embrace chaos, but I'm sure your own experience with said-chaos was unique.) How would you describe the recording?
With Love is Simple, we had gotten into this Beatles, everyone-sings-the-songs-he-brings-to-the-table kind of songwriting structure. As we re-evaluated things, one thing we wanted to do was write more as a group. Sometimes this just came out of improvising. Dana and I collaborated on lyrics. We were living in different places, so Garage Band demos were passed around. Almost every song on the record came out of trying new ways to develop our songs. When we finally got into the studio, there were more than 30 songs and song ideas we were exploring. Some of them we were fairly certain would be on the record. About halfway through the recording, though, a loose emotional narrative started to appear in the songs. It is obviously not the story of a blind pinball champ, but there was a loose sense that everything we were focusing in some way, emotionally or even abstractly, related to this period of change we were going through, and this idea seemed like a common human experience.
How do you regard the band? It seems some local bands I speak to regard it as a weekend-fling, an occasional Halloween costume in-between their day job, while others are really pushing to get noticed and consider it a fly-or-die livelihood -- in the case of the latter, that's often what leads to the stress, stressing about too much chaos, stressing about transitions, stressing about ‘how the new stuff sounds…' Ya know, this whole look-in-the-mirror-and-wonder-“is this really us?” type insanity. With Akron/Family, you were, earlier, in heavy collaboration with Angels of Light, tied to M. Gira (and Young God), then taken as this big-on-Buddhism jam-bandy-type weird-folk thing. Then seen as a band whose live show was dependent upon audience-interaction, but, considering all this over the last 6-or-so years, how do you see your band/regard your band?
It is, alternately:
A love
A passion
A job
A tribe
A family
A drag
Anew
A goofy band that we take too seriously
An attempt to do something great
Something We do
I understand where you are coming from with the first half of your question. It is a complicated thing. When you are young, you are just doing. Building a dream. “What could be more exciting than touring?” Once you are at all involved in the “music industry,” though, you slowly realize that you are a business in an industry, as well as a dream. This is complicated. Some embrace it. Some make fun of it. Some have fun with it. Pink Floyd wrote grandiose songs about it. The Grateful Dead started a company and wore suits and went to the office every day in the early '70s. I think that there can be many creative and personal approaches to this. I enjoy the creative and entrepreneurial sides of business. The music business is a strange one, and being in business with your passion and dreams only complicate it. And then there is dealing with this mediated self that is part of it as well. It is not an easily navigated path. I feel like our band has always made creative and business decisions based on our hearts, and trying to take a slower road towards really creating something both musically and for ourselves. Young God Records is a small label, and so you get the benefit of working closely with a truly passionate artist/label owner, but you are also business-wise part of a much smaller system than something like Sub Pop or Matador that has many employees and bigger distribution. I saw working with Michael as an artistic step. Like Miles Davis playing in Parker's Band, or Coltrane playing in Miles' Band, or Shorter and all the others that played in Art Blakey's band. It was part of coming of age in jazz to play with elders. These were the mentors. It is like learning a trade. Working with Michael, we learned about the studio, producing, budgets, touring... all the things we needed so that we could make clear decisions for ourselves artistically and business wise. All our "stylistic" shifts were just snapshots of us experimenting, trying ideas, playing with them. It was not a series of “new selves” so much as it was microscope slides of our different amoeba “arms.” And as we divide and multiply, learn and experience, make our own mistakes and own them, and learn to honestly look at ourselves and each other, I think we are cell by cell trying to develop into our own complex organism with our own hand made DNA and our own evolutionary tale. (tail?)
The vibe (of Set Em Wild) is different, to be sure. What were you digging, what were you listening to? What sort of musical moods were you going through while making the record? And does the music/songs here still maintain the same sort of Zen/impermanence/ceremonial thing? What changed the vibe?
I think, musically, we were trying to expand our sonic possibilities and move into new territory, musically focusing a lot on exploring rhythms. Simultaneously, though, we were trying to incorporate sounds, ideas, and feelings from our past records, especially our first record. After Ryan left and we went into this “back to the drawing board” type of process, one thing we were able to do was look back over all that we had done and see that there were certain sounds and recording techniques, idea, approaches, and feels that we did naturally early on due to certain restrictions technically and certain things we were into at the time, like Jim O'Rourke or Town and Country. Now that I think about it, though, even more than the sounds or approaches, I think we wanted to get back to some of the magic and abstract potential when we were really truly making things up as we went along; because we had no idea what we were doing. Set ‘em Wild is the combination of us being simultaneously the most prepared we ever have been to make a record and also going into the recording with this kind of abstract potential... anything could have come out. Set ‘em Wild is what did, after months of thinking, singing, laughing, goofing, surfing, and conference calls.
In many ways, it makes me excited to do something more clear on the new record, but I am proud that we stuck to our extremely defined yet undefined guns on this one. I think it is the best us thus far, for better or worse, and definitely a good step for us in the general direction we are going, wherever that is?
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"Strange that humanity has gotten to the point where we have to isolate muscles in air conditioned purple/yellow rooms, but I am now a willing and enjoying participant."
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So here we are, the economy, wars, poverty, healthcare, auto industry – and on and on... society seems to be falling apart; how much of your writing is inspired by social issues and what does a song like “Everyone is Guilty” mean to you? And maybe talk about a song like “Hard Year” and if that's become more broadly applicable…
For the most part, I don't think our songs are ever topical in a social sense. I would be happy if they possessed a certain humanist social value, like Kurt Vonnegut, but I am not personally interested in commenting on current affairs. For me, one of the ways I tried to grow in lyric-writing this record was to try and make things more simple and broad and perhaps slightly more abstract or subconscious at the same time. I think a common theme in timeless songwriting or writing is putting things into words that people can relate to in a broad sense. There is enough emotion, melodic suggestion, and lyrical direction to point a direction to a common human experience, but not the kind of personal confession or specific and/or current events that may pull someone out of the emotional/intellectual relationship to the feeling.
As much as we like to think we have reached such a distinct and unique point in the history of the world, I imagine we are still experiencing the common themes of change and loss, love, war, blues. My favorite music, the timeless music like Coltrane and Ayler, or Dylan, or Beatles, or Bach, seems to have that magical power to be simultaneously of the time it was in and yet timeless. For me, this is a definite goal for the music we write and record.
And has any other songs meaning changed for you? Be it ‘Guilty' in the time spent since you wrote/recorded it, or any past song.. changed for you in meaning -- lyrically or musically?
There is a song that is not on the record, called “Woody Guthrie's America.” It is a simple little folk song. We tried recording it for the record, but decided it would be more fun to have all of our friends record different versions of it, with different lyrics and arrangement. Thinking of a day before songs were recorded and people played them and rewrote them to tell there own stories. We are collecting these right now and will post them all online for free. Eventually we will invite everyone to post their takes on the page.
Anyway, the song's refrain is, “I want to live in Woody Guthrie's America.” When I wrote it, the idea was more in this humanist vision of America, it's land and people. The epic yet simple sentiment of “This Land is Your Land.” But when we first tried to record this song, it was October and the recession had just started. I started realizing in the midst of actually tracking that Woody Guthrie's America was also Depression America, and there was this strange parallel that I was singing that I wanted to live in his America, intending to mean one thing, and yet it was actually becoming a different, harsher reality in the world.
Talking to a friend later, he was talking about how he felt that Woody Guthrie was able to be what he was because of the time. Difficult times allow for heroism. (Batman/Gotham?) Not just individual celebrity heroes, but all people are forced to rely on each other in difficult times. It is why I love big snow storms. There is a momentary unity of cause where we are all going through the same thing. All weather is like this really.
Ultimately, I would never wish hard times on anyone, but there is something to be said for people taking care of each other in hard times.
“Everyone Is Guilty” is almost rock opera-ish -- the guitars are funky, the drums are very danceable, then these epic guitars come in and strings ride us out; how does such meticulous construction come about, or is it something natural flowing between you all? (Or, feel free to dork-out and expound upon the fun, exciting aspects of working these songs out and the instruments/equipment used.)
"Guilty" was very much a group composition. It was a very gradual process as far as our compositions are concerned. The basic rhythmic and guitar figure just came out of improvising together during practice. We eventually added a loose form, with the half-time breakdown, and it was a title-less instrumental we used in the middle of our shows as a long transition between other songs. It lived like this in our shows of early-mid 2008, until that summer I sat down at the farm and wrote out some lyrics. These were used as the guide for the chords and form that takes place in the middle of the song. Then we recorded and edited it. Later, we brought in the strings, and then the final day of mixing, we added the little repetitive “everyone, everyone, everyone” vocals. It really was always developing, and already is slightly different live. Live it is almost always followed directly by MBF, but for the recording (to some friends' dismay), we decided it would be interesting to separate them.
What are you looking forward to for the rest of the year? What are you working on next?
Long Playing records, though increasingly less relevant in the world, have become a time for us to really focus inwardly and create and explore new ideas. In this way, this record feels more like a spring board than a script. For us, it is like getting to go dig up a bunch of earth and plant some seeds; some favorites, like tomatoes and greens, and some heirloom zucchinis and wild peppers that we have no idea what they will do. This year is the time when we get to see how these things bloom, which bean plants yield and which don't, and tend to them all as they grow. All part of playing in a band with some friends.