Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Abby Rodriquez
You can’t choose your family. But if you could, wouldn’t you want some sort of combo that included Wes Anderson, Sarah Silverman, Aziz Ansari, Will Arnett, Jimmy Leyland, Don Rickles and Peyton Manning? It makes sense in my head. It might also be smart to throw Daniel Smith into that wish list for some familial musical relief, just make sure to always be on the lookout for the rapscallion trying to dress you up in World War II-era nurse or awkward looking maid duds. I’m just saying, keep them peeled. He’s a brainwasher. He’s also a hypnotist, though you’d never know it by looking at him. Those skills we see (more justly, hear) in this year’s smashing release, “Ships,” which contains the finest song of apology and an attempt to add to our adage-using vernacular – “Did I Step On Your Trumpet?” a video for which can now be seen here (the skating profiles that leader Smith slips into and the cardboard monocles are wonderful). We’ll get back to those skillz later.

Speaking of family, it’s not just blood relations that are finding themselves caught in his net these days. Smith attempted to find all of the people he’s ever recorded with in the past to ride with him again on “Ships,” a less blitzkrieg version of the Frog Eyes template and utterly inviting record with songs about books and life as an oceanic simile. He hunted them down like there was a bounty on the line. He found one friend he’d played in bands with in college living in the woods in upper Wisconsin. Sometimes it got too difficult or the trail went cold. When that happened, he made due with what he had.

“I didn’t have all the time in the world,” he said of finding everyone. “I did this, really, in the name of studying and the beauty of different relationships. When you’re going back to the concept of relationships, that’s so fundamentally human. And from an artist’s perspective, it flies in the face of ego. I loved that dilemma.”

The members of Smith’s big family have been constant parts of his various projects for 10-plus years. It’s the number of members making it out onto tour and onto stage that various considerably depending on the time and prior obligations. Nothing has deterred Smith from continuing, no matter how large or small the gathering and don’t suggest that wanting to be around your brothers and sisters so regularly is at all unnerving.

“It’s not creepy to me,” Smith said. “It’s probably people who aren’t from big families who can’t understand that we want to be together.”

Even with that, Daniel is the only Smith who really wants to be a professional musician. His sisters Megan Slaboda and Rachel Galloway are fashion designers of children’s clothing and the others all have jobs that they enjoy and don’t feel like ditching for some road weariness and indigestion.

“I have my dream. Everyone else has their own dream,” Smith said. “This is not really anything they want to do for a living. It’s kind of the exception when we have everyone on stage for a show. I just keep doing it. I just keep writing songs and recording them. There was a point a few years ago where I realized, ‘I’m Danielson.’ For ‘Ships,’ a big part of it came full-circle. Our policy is now that everyone’s invited. If you can’t make it, there’s no pressure, but it’s really liberating because everyone understands that I’d prefer that they come and that means everybody.”

The band just recently played Madison Square Garden, opening up for The Flaming Lips.

“There were a lot of people at the Pitchfork festival (this summer) so we knew we could handle it,” Smith said. “Steven Drozd, their drummer, had e-mailed me and that if they ever came to town, they’d love to hang out with us. He owns everything we’ve put out, he said. We saw them in Philly and we just hung out with all those guys.”

In the upcoming future, Smith plans to work on releasing four separate 7-inches over the course of the next year, continuing to work with various people that he’s worked with over the years. And as for those skillz we were talking about earlier, he bears fruit. He bears thick, luscious fruit in each one of his songs. These songs (or fruit) deserve the constant roll of a kettledrum, unveiling each of their subtleties as if they were newsflashes. They should be and there are plenty of them on “Ships.” Ahoy. Isn’t that a Hold Steady song about a racehorse? Naw.