>>PREVIEW
DANIELSON: A FAMILY MOVIE
Friday, September 29
The Globe
Everyone remembers the first time they really heard the Danielson Familie – the point at which the brilliance of Daniel Smith's songwriting and arrangements overcome the bizarre ways in which they are born. Personally, I didn't pay much attention beyond taking slight note of the Familie's caterwauling and bizarro song structures and loving the idea of a fully costumed mega-band.
When I finally saw the Danielson Familie perform (opening for Low, of all people), I was blown away by their sense of theatrics, the absolute conviction with which they sang their songs, the incredible mess of creativity all spruced up in matching Red Cross nurse uniforms. I may not believe in what they were preaching in howling group falsetto, but their intense focus on the task at hand made me an instant convert to their music. That night, The Danielson Familie made a heavenly racket no one else could match.
Filmmaker JL Aronson was affected enough by his own discovery of the Danielson Familie to spend over four years documenting the group for Danielson: A Family Movie, an intimate portrait inside a band and family operating under the guise of a family band. After stumbling across the Danielson's "Smooth Death" on a sampler CD, Aronson was a near-instant convert.
"I'm not sure if I'd heard of the band before or started to soon after but, lacking any visual aids to help pinpoint who these people were – this was before myspace, kids – the music invited mythmaking," he says. "I really wanted to know who this odd-sounding family was. Were they as homegrown and earthy as they sounded? What did they dress like? I didn't even know about the nurse costumes at the time – I was expecting overalls and straw hats. Maybe a worn-out flannel."
While Smith's Christian beliefs lead him to credit God with much of his creative impetus (each show is considered a practice of "healing" the audience, thus the nurse's uniforms), his family members were not entirely sure of welcoming Aronson and his camera into their lives and homes.
"Daniel is too nice to say 'no,'" Aronson recalls, "but I think he tried to dissuade me. It took some convincing. I kind of pitched it to him and his family that this would be a collaborative endeavour and that if they had in mind some ideas for sketches or whatever, we could do that. I think I was imagining a cross between A Hard Day's Night and Don't Look Back. The funny thing is, while I think they agreed based on this concept, it quickly became apparent to all of us that they felt more comfortable just letting me do my thing."
As a film, Danielson: A Family Movie is a portrait of a man with a mission, surrounded by a supportive family who one by one step away from the Familie to begin their own lives and families. The notion of freakish curio has always hung around the Danielson Familie's necks, yet Danielson: A Family Movie is tinged with notes of sadness as Smith’s band gradually crumbles, a brave-faced and supportive brother eventually working alone.
"Part of the story of the movie and part of the process of making the movie was Daniel's siblings getting too busy with their own lives to devote themselves to the band, and Daniel wound up having to press on himself. At the same time, when he was left all alone, so was I. A friend who had started working with me on the project early on bowed out, and so I also had to carry on without anyone else," Aronson says. "So then it was just me and Dan standing there. And for a while, Sufjan."
Now an indie superstar in his own right, Sufjan Stevens' appearance as part of the Danielson Familie regular cast of characters happened, in the words of the group's youngest member Andrew (whom Sufjan was conscripted to replace on a European tour while Andrew was still in high school), "out of nowhere." As the Familie stripped away into Smith's solo guise as Brother Danielson (fittingly, he performed dressed as a giant tree dangling fruit), his sole compatriot remained Stevens on banjo, himself making his first babysteps into the spotlight. Recorded in Smith's basement studio, Stevens's Seven Swans flipped the balance. Stevens quickly placed on a pedestal as the saviour of modern folk.
"When I first started shooting," says Aronson, "Sufjan was also fairly new to the scene and I saw him as my stand-in or my alter-ego in that, instead of having the director ask questions of the band, he could ask questions."
The Flaming Lips' documentary Fearless Freaks features The Butthole Surfers' Gibby Haynes denouncing Wayne Coyne & Co. as rip-off artists treading on his ideas. Given Sufjan's transformation into the lead Illinoisemaker he's since become (touring as a full cheerleader group in matching garb, utilizing much of the same instrumentation used by the Danielson Familie), it's easy to spot the similarities. Aronson suggests, "As Sufjan started to gain his own audience, I realized that he was Daniel's alter-ego, not mine. Sufjan is a reflection of how differently music is received when it conforms to more traditional qualities of popular music like traditional narrative, appealing voice, etc. I think Sufjan is a brilliant artist but his music contrasts with Daniel's, as does the music world's reception of what he's been doing."
That's not to say Smith is bitter with his past collaborator.
"Daniel and Sufjan have a very complex relationship but they continue to be great friends and very supportive of each other," says Aronson. "I guess it might come off as thievery in the film, but really it's a tribute to Daniel. If Sufjan had taken what he learned under Daniel's tutelage and changed phone numbers, it might be a different story. I think our film is like that movie Dig! in a way, albeit about musicians who are fairly well-balanced individuals with an antipathy for rock excess."
Spanning the height of the Danielson's infamy, from New York's Knitting Factory to the U.K.'s All Tomorrow's Parties festival (the Danielson's invited to perform by Steve Albini, whose cameo conversation with Daniel is easily one of the film's more memorable segments), Aronson's material forms an important document of one of modern music's finest musical oddities. As for his own favourite Danielson memory, it comes back to Aronson quickly.
"When I toured Europe with the band," he recalls, "it was their first time over there together and although touring can be kind of punishing on your body and mind at times, the feeling of wonder was contagious. The last night on the tour they played on this old wooden boat docked on the Seine in Paris. The place was packed with howling hipsters hanging on Daniel's every word, and the band was rocking extra hard, playing their loudest songs. I was standing on the side, behind the keyboardist and got the band's perspective – it felt dangerous, exhilarating and rather triumphant.
"I started the documentary more as a sociological study, but at that moment I remember thinking to myself, 'Oh my God, this is my favourite band in the world.'" |
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