Folk Rockers Spirit Family Reunion Thrive On Unfamiliar

Spirit Family Reunion songs rarely have more than three or four chords. The melodies sound familiar — a sampler of the great reserves of American folk, gospel, blues and work songs from the 1920s through the 1960s, found in dogeared anthologies or sung around campfires. Theirs is a traditional musical language, shared by countless folk-rock acts across Brooklyn and or Newport side-stages.

On paper that makes it harder for a band like Spirit Family Reunion, a Brooklyn band that performs at Edmond Town Hall in Newtown on Saturday, Sept. 5, to stand out. But it has — and seems to be thriving: “Hands Together,” its second album, was released earlier this year, and since late spring SFR has been traveling the country, making new friends and fans.

“We did a lot of small towns we haven’t been to before,” says founding member Stephen Weinheimer. “We got up to Petaluma [Calif.,] to the Lagunitas Brewery there. We hadn’t been there before. … It definitely wasn’t the same places.”

Weinheimer and singer/guitarist Nick Panken met in high school in New York, but they didn’t play music together.

“We had very different tastes, but we appreciated each other’s love of music from a young age,” Weinheimer says.

They preferred electric music: punk, hardcore, classic rock. In 2006, after two years of culinary school, Weinheimer took odd kitchen jobs and reconnected with Panken, who had left college after only a year.

“Nick had this energy that he really wanted to play music again,” Weinheimer says, “and he knew that I’m pretty much up for whatever.”

The two musicians worked together in a live-music venue. After featured acts would finish, Panken and Weinheimer and their friends would get up and jam.

“It was an energy of both not knowing what to do and [Panken’s] confidence of ‘Let’s just go out there and do it’.”

Other musicians — notably singer/clawhammer banjo player Maggie Carson — joined, and the sound grew. They busked in subways and on the street as the economy tanked.

“Maybe it was conscious on our part to get away from that and to do something simpler, where you could just go out on the street and play instruments,” Weinheimer says. “I couldn’t say definitely it was conscious, but I know we both wanted to play music that we hadn’t played before, music that came from an older time and had a more classic sound to it.”

It helped to be extroverted. “I’m definitely a social butterfly and very personable,” he says. “I think to go out and do that you have to have a certain level of confidence. Otherwise, you’ll probably be crippled by anxiety.”

Surprisingly, SFR was asked to perform at the 2012 Newport Folk Festival. Nobody in attendance had heard of them. It was a breakthrough performance, one that caught the ears of NPR critic Bob Boilen and others.

“We came on at noon, and I think we just kicked … it,” Weinheimer says. “We played every song way too fast. We played one song twice. That’s how nervous we were. It was a mixture of people not knowing who were and us wanting to really put our all into this thing we cared about so much.”

Spirit Family Reunion was invited back to Newport the following year and again in 2015. (Band members hung out, without performing, in 2014.) “We’ve become part of the [Newport] family,” Weinheimer says. “We love it up there. I can’t imagine not going back.”

On studio recordings, guitars strum and fiddles blaze. Carson’s banjo weaves through dense textures of harmony vocals. The rhythm section stomps with intensity. Production-wise, “Hands Together” is bone dry; every crack and crevice in Panken’s troubled voice rings out, especially on slow-burn songs like “Skillet Good and Greasy” and “Wait For Me.”

This summer, SFR — Panken, Weinheimer, Carson, drummer Dylan Harley, bassist Ken Woodward and fiddle player Noah Harley — traveled west, to play to even more unfamiliar audiences.

“I like to think we do pretty much the same [show], but maybe subconsciously we hit them a bit harder because we know these people haven’t seen us before,” Weinheimer says. “I can’t say that consciously we do anything different.”

And although it’s easy to imagine SFR as the vital center of a larger, acoustic folk-rock cohort, Weinheimer doesn’t always feel that way.

“There are some bands who are amazing and I can’t believe that nobody knows them,” Weinheimer says. “And then there are other bands who are huge and that people associate us with, and I’m like, ‘I guess we’re both playing acoustic instruments.’ It goes back and forth. Sometimes I’m so happy that people associate us with this movement, and other times I can’t feel farther away from it.”

SPIRIT FAMILY REUNION performs at Edmond Town Hall in Newtown on Saturday, Sept. 5, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25. Information: edmondtownhall.org.