We Are 'Famile'...

Some bands are just fascinating.

While this is a blog and I do get the advantage of throwing a pinch of personal opinion in every now and again, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more compelling backstory than Danielson.

Danielson's music is smart, endearing, and deeply, DEEPLY religious. In fact, religious is really the only adjective you need in the arsenal when describing just what it is they've got going on. Danielson is a 'famile': a term which was created by front-man Daniel Smith to describe the close-knit brotherhood which this troup rallies behind. The proverbial ball was set into motion in 1995 when Smith created Danielson as an art school project during his senior year in high school.

And yep, you guessed it, they were on a mission to save.

What's odd about Danielson is that it is so expressive and so uninhibited by the pressures of "good music" that it is often seen as a joke. The members have all hand-crafted uniforms for their performances, including solid white doctors and nurses uniforms bearing a heat of the sleeve used to accentuate their belief that their music heals those who listen to it. "Brother" Danielson (Smith's newly coined surname) has even donned a nine foot tree costume, created to visually symbolize the bearing of the "good fruit"


To watch them is like sitting in on a kinder-care morning session where the kids are handed instruments and everything happens to go right. Hand claps, xylophones, and choral singing are essentials to the Danielson sound. You don't have to get it, you don't even have to like it, but you've got to hand it to the creativity that these proud Christian folk are churning out.

If you're interested, a film crew has been following these guys around since March of 2002, documenting everything along the way. 'A Danielson Famile Movie' can be seen in select theatres come December of this year. More info can be found at the website

Of course we couldn't leave you without a taste:

Time_That_Bald_Sexton.mp3

Did_I_Step_On_Your_Trumpet.mp3



And for fun's sake... amazing


Lasse Gjertsen