Curiosity, community continue to fuel Oneida

In December, Oneida gathered for sessions that yielded new single “I Can’t Stand You,” a cantankerous, darkly psychedelic burner that rides the guitars of Hanoi Jane and Showtime to a smoldering crescendo. The track is backed by the hypnotic, Krautrock-esque “Steel,” edited down from a 60-minute jam and highlighting the kinetic kit-work of drummer Kid Millions as well as the atomic bond the musicians have developed over the nearly three decades they’ve played together.

“We were kind of trying to find something,” Millions said by phone ahead of Oneida’s concert at Cafe Bourbon Street on Friday, Aug. 14, which will also feature the great Columbus rock band the Lindsay and a collaborative set between Oneida and members of Kinski, whose guitarist, Chris Martin, flew home to Seattle earlier this week to have surgery for a detached retina. “So, you’re just listening and trying things, and if something is landing, you repeat it. … And even if it’s not working, sometimes you just play on faith that something will happen. … And there is a sense of length or time when you start to let go of those expectations, like: ‘I want to play this riff’; ‘I want to play this’; ‘We’re trying to do something.’ And when all of those things begin to fall away, sometimes a diamond can fall out.”

With “Steel,” Millions said, this moment of transcendence arrived near the end of the hourlong jam, at a point in time when fatigue could have created another stress point from which the search could potentially have benefited. Of course, there are also numerous times when these kinds of sessions yield little of value, at least in terms of material suitable for release, with Millions describing the process as “layered.” 

“It would be putting the cart before the horse to be like, ‘Let’s find transcendence right now,’” said Millions, who shared that a new Oneida record is well under way, pointing to his hopes for a 2027 release timed to the 30th anniversary of the band’s formation. “It’s more like, ‘Let’s just sit with this and trust that the human engagement and our ears and experience … will lead to that moment.’ You can’t just be sitting there like, ‘This has got to happen,’ because then you have to manage disappointment if it doesn’t. … So, you just keep showing up and trust that the relationship will bear fruit.”

Millions has increasingly found himself drawn to this communal aspect of music making, describing “the human piece” of gathering in space as paramount – an idea reinforced in him by the isolation of the early pandemic. It’s a revelation further rooted in age, with Millions allowing that he entered into making music with myriad ideas about what it meant to pursue that life, expressing deep admiration for the many artists and albums that he then held as “talismans,” as he explained it.

“And these little things are a part of the aspiration or ambition,” continued Millions, who credited the “fantasy of a life in music” as one factor that led the players to launch Oneida nearly 30 years ago. “We had lots of experience seeing bands, loving records, reading about records, reading about bands. And it was like we all had a similar direction we were going in. We wanted to make records like these other people. … And that was kind of the drive, along with a curiosity. We wanted to see other bands and meet other bands and travel. Seeing the country, it was all super exciting, and that fed into things. … What we do is impossible, in a way. But you have these naive ideas, and you just grind forward and do it. And all of a sudden, it’s 30 years later.”

This time has led to inevitable changes, with children and family rightly becoming a priority for most band members. But the desire to feel part of something and that youthful sense of curiosity have remained, even if the latter now evidences itself in different ways. 

For Millions, this inquisitiveness tends to surface in the dedication with which he approaches his craft, the musician revealing that even decades on the drums can still surprise him. “Living in New York, there are so many drummers that are insane, and it’s continually humbling,” he said. “And so, I focus a lot on practice and technique and things like that. But in terms of how things have changed [in the band], I mean, I don’t know. We’re still showing up together, and we still never know exactly what’s going to come out, and that continues to be exciting.”