The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players
“We’re an indie-vaudeville-conceptual-art-rock-slideshow band,” says singer/songwriter Jason Trachtenburg. “We’ve got the market cornered! There’s no band that can hold a candle to us in that department.”
The Trachtenburgs are a domestic trio (dad Jason, mom Tina Piña, 15-year-old daughter Rachel), who play quirky indie pop songs in the key of unironic good, clean fun 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, including their retro fashion sense inspired by Mom Tina, the Trachtenburgs are a charming relic: a vintage throwback to a simpler, more self-sufficient, family-oriented time … just like their music.
Tina Piña and Jason met at a Greenwich Village open-mic in 1989, and the pair later relocated to Seattle. They had a daughter, Rachel, and ran a dog-walking business while Jason worked Seattle’s open-mic circuit. When his eccentric indie pop was failing to find an audience, Tina suggested he augment his act with slide imagery. On a subsequent dog-walking trip with Rachel, she found an old slide projector at a garage sale, and a box of slides from a random family’s 1959 mountain trip to Japan.
The next morning, 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; (she later moved over to drum duties), Tina was appointed projector operator/backup singer, and the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players were born.