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Photo by Deana Petersen
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Photo by Deana Petersen
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Photo by Deana Petersen
By the time Off-Leash (then called Detention) -took the main stage at PorchRokr Music and Art Festival in 2022, the skies looked stormy.
Though the alternative pop-punk band would go on to headline the festival in 2023, the weather — which rained out the original final act — gave it an early shot. Detention finished performing “56 Minutes,”- a lively bop about long-distance relationships, to a crowd of around 3,000 before it started to pour.
“It was the first time I’ve ever heard people singing the lyrics to our songs back to us louder than I heard my own voice,” says Elliott Carter, the band’s Akron-based vocalist and frontwoman.
The performance was a homecoming for Carter, who wears her hair in a shaggy green and turquoise cut — her musical debut, around age 8 alongside her dad, took place at PorchRokr. But it was far from the group’s first packed show. By that time, its members — including Carter, now 20, drummer Luke Konopka, 18, guitarist Evan Cox, 17, and bassist Fritz Dannemiller, 21 — had been a band since 2018.
In 2019, Detention released “The Devilberries EP” and sent it to Dannemiller’s father’s musician friend in California. Impressed, he invited the band to play Hollywood’s famed Whisky a Go Go. In 2020, Carter and her bandmates won the 24th annual Tri-C High School Rock Off — then COVID-19 hit.
Detention got to work livestreaming shows and making its first music video, for the bouncy, defiant single “In Reverse.” Carter, her head shaven, belts: Give us a school bus, not a hearse. The project, covered by Cleveland’s WKYC, expanded its reach and cemented the charismatic, assured act.
“We established what we are, what we look and sound like,” Cox says.
The band released “The Patchwork EP,” its second, in 2021. A multifaceted collection of songs, it showcases Detention’s early work, such as “Dead Malls” — a driving, meditative look at the shuttered Rolling Acres mall in Akron. By the time it opened the stage for Kesha, at Columbus’ WonderBus festival that year, the group had begun to solidify the sound it shreds today. Influences of hardcore, pop, ska, emo and more are identifiable in its eclectic style.
The group’s electric performances, reflected by impassioned crowds, are a testament to its incredible chemistry.
“There are certain songs in the set that I definitely look forward to the most because of how they feel to perform,” Carter says. “When you’re onstage performing as viscerally as we do … it’s a huge release of energy. You can completely lose yourself in it.”
In 2023, the band played several gigs during South by Southwest, released a new single, “Peachy Keen” — its video has garnered over 132,000 views — and debuted its newest EP, “Lost Time // New Fix.”
We’re making up for lost time. ... All we’ve given, we still live in, Carter sings on “Lost Time.” “Evan had this idea to completely rework it, to play it in drop C,” she says, “and it had this completely different sound than anything that we had played.”
Now, fresh off of a cross-state tour, Off-Leash has been able to showcase a new name — and a more mature image. Grungy, crowd-focused and positively intense, the band’s star continues to rise: Fans drive up to eight hours to see its shows.
“We were children when Detention formed, and we’ve gotten more serious,” Carter says. “We feel like it’s time to graduate.”
