Friends Of The Family

Friends Of The Family

Friends Of The Family is a folk collective from The Hague and Rotterdam. It starts as a group of seven musicians and grows into an eleven-piece line-up. The project forms around shared love of folk music, friendship and a sense of freedom, with frontman Gijs Ballering opening his anti-squat building in Schiedam as a rehearsal and meeting space for the musicians.

Background

The band begins in late 2012 and quickly develops into a larger collective. Its members include musicians drawn from different places, and the group operates with an open-door idea in which anyone with a musical heart can become a Friend. The intention is to create performances in which the audience stands on equal footing with the musicians.

Activity and live work

After forming, Friends Of The Family builds momentum rapidly. In its first summer in 2013, the band plays around 50 shows in the Netherlands, as well as dates in neighbouring countries and a small tour on the Greek island of Samos. The group is influenced mainly by the American and English folk scenes and performs a version of folk that sits within indie pop, indie and indie folk.

Recognition and recordings

Friends Of The Family is later chosen as ‘Aanstormend Talent’ and wins a Haagse Popprijs in that category, which is also described as a public vote. The band releases its debut album in October 2014 at the large hall of Paard van Troje in The Hague, the same venue where it had received the award a year earlier. The release is used as a celebration of the group’s development from a short-lived idea into a wider collective.