Illiterate Magazine

Words by: Bree Davies

I did not want to like this band. Akron/Family seemed like a band I wouldn’t be fond of, a biased assumption based on no facts or logical reasoning. Maybe it was their name. What kind of a band puts a forward slash in the middle of two words like that and calls it a proper title? How pretentious and hipstery, I thought.

But with one listen to Akron/Family’s latest full-length, Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free (released this week on Dead Oceans,) I had to take my own pretentious and hipstery foot and shove it directly in my mouth. Because the eleven tracks on Free are nothing short of, pardon my French, fucking awesome.

Bound together by the trio’s rainy harmonies and pulsing drum beats, each song drips with handfuls of curling flute lines, graceful piano steps and guitar sounds that create a virtual lush and dreamy western mountainscape. The tracks are mini-epics in themselves, deep resonations of  life’s passing and the forward movements of the future. (Check out “River,” a track I think to be one of the best songs of 2009.)

In March, Ak/Fam  played an amazing St. Patrick’s Day show at the gorgeous Oriental Theater in Northwest Denver, the perfect venue for their fluid waves of sound. (And proudly, Illiterate’s own Yuzo Nieto even graced the stage with Ak/Fam for a super heavy jam-out!) I had a quick interview set up with the dudes pre-show, but it nicely turned into a mini-adventure/search for some specialty coffee and was topped off with a trip to Tommy’s Thai.

The early evening I spent with Seth Olinsky, Dana Janssen, and Miles Seaton was pleasant and relaxing, the band talking about everything from this tour’s multi-faceted opening acts to the usually beard-heavy contingency of their audience.

You guys just played some residencies—smaller, multi-date stops in Los Angeles and San Francisco. How was that experience in comparison to the usual concert setting?

Dana: Well, it was a small room.

Miles:  Like 150 People.

Dana: It was great! The first night, I feel for both (LA and San Fran) residencies, they were both different. The first night we were sort of learning the room and trying to get our feet off the ground. Maybe a little more difficult than usual. But the second night for both venues, it was off the hook. The third night was great as well.

Seth: It was kind of cool. You got to go into a room, play it, and it was sort of like, “Wow! This song didn’t work well, and this song didn’t sound right.” Then we could come in early next day for sound check and tweak it. 

So you sort of got used to it?

Seth: Well, yeah. And in smaller rooms there is just less PA. The first room was a small bar in San Francisco, the second a theater in LA. It was just different songs, a different crowd, and a different context for the shows.

Different songs were successful, different things sounded better. I felt like we were able to tweak the show to the room, that way the second night in both venues was far better. It was kind of a cool experience to get to do that.

You used to have a forth member (Ryan Vanderhoof). Has playing without him been different? Better, worse, weird?

Miles: Definitely all three. We all love Ryan. He’s a good friend. It’s hard to not have that good friend around, one you’re used to having there. Inevitably though, it’s one less cook in the kitchen. As much as we play it mellow, we all have to have things more or less defined.

We all also have a personal sense of aesthetic. When you’re working through a collaborative process, one of the biggest assets and hurdles is our personalities. He has an amazing personality. But one less is sometimes…easier?

Seth: We toured as a bigger band for a while…but for the last year, we tried to focus on recording and touring as a three piece. I think I can speak for all of us…being just the three of us is getting to the point where we are starting to feel confident with songs, and the way they sound, the way we’re presenting ourselves. I think it’s an exciting time for us, starting over.

It’s like, when you’re a new band and things don’t quite work. Then you find your stride, and think, “Oh, wow. This feels great!” It’s just exciting. We have a new label, and a lot of new things going on.

So it was a positive change?

Seth: Sure. It was a hard thing to go through (losing Ryan), but ultimately resulted in something good.

Miles: It’s like a really intense relationship. We’ve definitely spent more time together as a band than any of us have with our families in the last through years.

Living and working together…it’s like 24 hours a day.

Miles: And dudes.

Dana: Yeah, we’re all dudes.

Are there any women on tours with you ever?

Miles: Ah, we’ll have friends meet up with us along the way, or our girlfriends have met up with us a couple times.

Dana: We had a female tour manager.

Miles: And we had a band from Baltimore tour with us, The Lexie Mountain Boys, for like five shows (there is a girl in the band.)

In San Francisco, LA, and Santa Cruz, actually all of our California shows, there was definitely more of a diverse crowd. A lot of our shows at different times in our touring like, the crowd has been…a sea of beards! (Laughs) Just a bunch of dudes being like, “Yeah!”

Seth: As much you would like to think you have a wide spectrum…

I know a lot of girls coming to your show tonight…a lot of younger girls, actually. So, you’re reaching them somehow!

Miles: I think it’s with our good looks. (Laughs)

With the residencies, did you guys get to pick any of the bands on the bill with you?

Miles: It was kind of a mix between us and the venues.

Dana: And our manager (Jared Flamm.) In LA, I think he picked this magician, Max Maven?

Miles: No, that was the venue.

Dana: Oh, yeah. He runs the Magic Castle in Hollywood. Oh, and we had this girl open for us, Charlyne Yi (performance artist/writer/actress of Knocked Up fame.)

Seth: She writes these fun songs, and she opened with this comedy/song routine. She had fake blood with her, and came out on stage when we were playing, during a really loud part, and bled everywhere. It was pretty fun.

Dana: She’s this short, very young-faced, charming girl…and then she comes out with blood everywhere, like blehhh! (makes gross-out noise.)

Seth: (Having Charlyne on the bill) gave us an opportunity to meet and play to new people. Same with the band Howlin Rain who played with us in San Francisco. There was a different opener every night for the shows thus far, which is great.

Dana: Avocet, who we played with in San Francisco was great too. She was in this band, Feathers, for a while…but now she plays this Gamelan instrument she’s made out of different forks that she’s strung up and puts contact mics on.

Miles: She also creates these compositions where she uses a specific type of metal that she pours salt on, and when she amplifies different frequencies the salt moves and makes pictures and patterns. She makes different drone patterns with the Gamelan while singing, and the salt moves into new shapes.

It’s pretty mystical. Very Boulder (laughs.)

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