Home

Margaret Hair

Margaret Hair's column appears Fridays in the 4 Points arts and entertainment section in the Steamboat Today. Contact her at 871-4204 or e-mail mhair@steamboatpilot.com.

Steamboat Springs — About an hour and a half into his band's set Wednesday night at Ghost Ranch Saloon, Akron/Family bassist Miles Seaton had reason to ask: "Can we start our show now?"

The concert had started with a stirring but sparse sing-along to a chorus about wanting to "live in Woody Guthrie's America," and had moved through more musical styles than could ever be recounted.

But it wasn't until guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Seth Olinsky turned on a drum machine and laid down a dance groove that the band - highly acclaimed in some areas, less known in the mountains of Colorado - had more than three people to play to. By the end of the night, about a dozen people filled the floor and every head that hadn't walked out of the venue earlier in the set was bobbing.

It's a credit to the band's mesmerizing stage presence that even after the dance beat faded, everyone they'd attracted to the floor kept moving, navigating the psych rock, folk harmonies and fireside sing-along sessions that carried the rest of the set.

Akron/Family doesn't make it easy for new audiences to wrap their minds around what they're seeing. The trick is not to think about it too much. Yes, drummer Dana Janssen is playing his drum kit with a maraca, and yes, that is a microphone in Olinsky's mouth, and yes, Seaton is playing a beer bottle with a drumstick.

But even when the sonic onslaught is too much to dance to, Akron/Family never lets the music slip into a lull and always pulls an experimental jam into a chorus or tight groove just in time.

Solid information about Akron/Family is about as immediately accessible as the band's sound - which is to say, not very. That's one of many possible reasons that the show - which ended up being free, but at one time had a posted cover of $15 - had three people dancing for the first hour. It's probably a fair guess that the small crowd was a little disheartening to Akron/Family, a band that likely hasn't played to a disinterested audience in a few years.

But low attendance didn't seem to have any effect on the amount of energy the band put out, and the three people dancing had the uncommon chance to have a very good, very interesting band play a private show just for them.