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Sarathan Records
Released: August 1, 2006 |
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The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players
When you’re in a band as unique as the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, it’s okay to be a little confident.
“We’re an indie-vaudeville-conceptual-art-rock-slideshow band,” says singer/songwriter Jason Trachtenberg. “We’ve got the market cornered. There’s no band that can hold a candle to us. In that department.”
He’s got a point there — the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players are a domestic trio (dad Jason, mom Tina Piña, 12-year-old daughter Rachel), who play quirky indie pop songs in the key of unironic good, clean fun (think They Might Be Giants meets the Partridge Family) with one major catch: All the songs’ carefully rhyming lyrics come from the vintage slide collections they’ve found at estate or garage sales that accompany their performances. What’s more, from their retro fashion sense to their disavowal of modern conveniences, the Trachtenburg Family, themselves, are a charming relic — a vintage throwback to simpler, more self-sufficient, family-oriented times — just like their music.
Tina Piña and Jason met at a Greenwich Village open-mic in 1989, and the pair later relocated to Seattle by way of Austin and San Francisco after reading about the so-called grunge capital in Newsweek. They had a daughter, Rachel, and ran a dog-walking business while Jason worked Seattle’s open-mic circuit, sometimes playing as many as three sets a night. When his eccentric indie pop was failing to find an audience, Tina suggested he augment his act with slide imagery. Jason now admits he “poo-poo’ed the idea,” but Tina wasn’t deterred.
On a subsequent dog-walking trip with Rachel, she found an old slide projector at a garage sale, then a box of slides from a random family’s 1959 mountain trip to Japan. One morning in 2000, Tina awoke to find Jason had spent the entire night writing a song to accompany the slide presentation (appropriately titled “Mountain Trip to Japan, 1959”). Six-year-old Rachel was recruited to play harmonica on the track (she later moved over to drum duties), Tina was appointed projector operator/backup singer, and the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players were born (“We’re a family, there’s a slideshow, and we’re players — in the industry and just in life,” Jason explains).
The remarkably favorable reaction to the family act was nearly unfathomable. The local press went wild; their coffee house shows boasted lines out the door. Says the group’s singer/guitarist/keyboardist, “The only thing I can compare it to is Beatlemania.”
In July 2002 the family relocated to New York’s East Village and befriended artists like Regina Spektor and Nellie McKay on the city’s alt-folk scene. After being covered by The New Yorker, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, the Village Voice, and The Onion, Bar/None released their full-length debut, which showcased Jason singing in his playful, nasal manner about topics are varied as enjoying fondue in Switzerland to training employees to work at Wendy’s to eggs. Vintage Slide Collections From Seattle, Volume 1 (2003) was recorded in Seattle before the big move and features guest spots from a handful of the city’s local stars and a cameo by Guns N’ Roses guitarist Duff McKagan’s acoustic guitar. Six months and a lot of DIY-campaigning later they were the first unsigned band to appear on Late Night with Conan O’Brien (he held up their handmade demo during the introduction), and Volume 1 climbed to No. 79 on the CMJ chart.
Thanks to a grueling tour schedule that has the act playing approximately 150 shows a year, “We became a really tight touring outfit,” Jason says. “We wear tight touring outfits, as well, which is why it’s important not to eat too much before shows.” They’ve played Bonnaroo (where they battled the slide projector’s mortal enemy: daylight), the Edinburgh festival, the alt-comedy circuit, “every city in the continuous 48 states” — all the while winning over famous fans like Meg White, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, comedians David Cross and Eugene Mirman, and John Waters, who says the family’s show is “like The Lawrence Welk Show gone insane.”
But despite their meteoric ascent to indie rock stardom, the Trachtenburgs are still devoted to being their simple, quirky selves — which only gives rise to more quirky songs. Jason shuns cell phones and microwave ovens, and has collected between five to seven thousand slides from the “golden age of American slideshow photography” (the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s) while also cultivating his other career as an avant-guard solo musician. Tina Piña used to sell her own brand of salsa in stores, is writing a book about her daughter’s unique life, and makes all the band’s clothes (the group’s Vintage Fabric Tour ’04 netted a ton of material for band outfits and merch, which includes reusable grocery bags and a Rachel doll). The act’s secret weapon, wise-beyond-her-years workhorse Rachel, plays bass, spreads awareness about avoiding animal-tested products, is considering starting an all-girl band called the Oh My God Girls, and she’s also pursuing an acting career.
The group’s latest effort is The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players: Off & On Broadway, to be released by Seattle indie, Sarathan Records on August 1, 2006. It is a DVD of performances and day-in-the-life footage that demonstrates exactly how this one-of-a-kind band works. It’s also another step towards fulfilling their goal of fixing what’s wrong with the entertainment industry: “We are totally tuned in to what audiences need to experience,” says Jason, “in terms of bands not communicating with audiences, not breaking down the fourth wall — we need to make up for that in the hour and 15 minutes we get onstage.”
Oh, and one more thing: the entire family is listed in Wikipedia as being amongst the world’s most famous vegetarians. They’re listed next to Tolstoy, alphabetically, which is just the kind of vintage company they’re accustomed to.
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