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Home  Archive music profiles Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players
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Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players |
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Written by Jim Dunn
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Friday, 16 December 2005 |
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This all started back in Seattle, where Jason
would spend his days tending to their dog-walking business and his
nights in the local clubs, playing guitar and singing.
I was the AV guy in high school: 16 mm projectors, record players,
videos—all loaded on a cart and rolled down the hall, put together with
my fat ass, dorky hair, and clothes—classic geek. Like all geeks, I
wanted to be Angus Young, but I believe the closest Angus and I ever
got was vinyl—he recorded on it and I played it. Turns out I was closer
to rock stardom than I thought. My instrument, the slide projector, is
the hot new instrument, especially in the hands of Tina Pina
Trachtenburg.
Tina, along with her husband Jason (vocals and
guitar/keyboard) and their nine-year old daughter Rachel (drums), are
the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. Last month, they played to a
packed house at the Mad Art Gallery. As Jason and Rachel played a loopy
set of songs, Tina showed the slides (meticulously timed) that inspired
the songs.
This all started back in Seattle, where Jason
would spend his days tending to their dog-walking business and his
nights in the local clubs, playing guitar and singing. One day, Tina
picked up a packet of slides and a projector at an estate sale.
Obsessed with the anonymous family’s tale they told, Jason wrote a song
to go along with the slide. Thus, “Mountain Trip to Japan, 1959” was
born, and next came the coordination of the family into the act (Rachel
started on harmonica and moved to drums). What was one song at the end
of his act soon became the act and a hot ticket around Seattle. The
Trachtenburgs decided to move to Brooklyn, and soon they were appearing
twice a week at local clubs to sellout crowds, opening for They Might
Be Giants and becoming the first unsigned act to appear on Conan
O’Brien’s show.
Talking with Jason Trachtenburg can be
somewhat disorienting. He has the look, mannerisms, and enthusiasm of
the guy who rhapsodizes eloquently—too eloquently—about how good the
tofu at Whole Foods is. There is a part of him that knows this act is
part unique art rock and part Second City TV skit, but he is as earnest
as can be. He declared that the TFSP was “formed as a necessity to save
entertainment. We have had it with all the sorry, sad, monotonous,
predictable music out there. We have been commissioned by a higher
power, whatever that means, to bring entertainment back to the
masses…and good songs.” No small job this band has set up for itself.
Using the slides-as-inspiration method, he has come up with songs like
“Fondue Friends in Switzerland,” “Eggs,” and the irritatingly memorable
“European Boys.” The songs are good and fun and any thought that they
might not hold up on their own without the presence of the slides or
the nine-year-old drummer with pigtails and poise were dispelled the
first time I put it in my CD player. The songs fall somewhere into They
Might Be Giants territory and, like TMBG, carry all sorts of underlying
messages. According to Jason, the band has raised audience
expectations. “Some of our songs can be interpreted three or four
different ways depending on how you look at it. There are many
different levels,” he said, adding, “We are really deep.” He theorized
that the recorded output of the band must be strong. “People say ‘Is it
going to be OK without the slides?’ Then I feel defensive and we have
to prove ourselves, moreso than almost any other band out there, by
making the best CD possible.”
Though they are unsigned, TFSP
have talked with several labels, including Bar None, Minty Fresh, and
V2. Signing with V2 would put them on the same label as the White
Stripes, who have turned out to be fans. They showed up at their
concert in Detroit and Spin ran a piece comparing Rachel’s drumming
style with Meg White’s.
Some of the slides shown during the
performance edge into people’s private lives. During one song called
“Look at Me,” the mundane slides show the lives of two women as their
friendship takes them through war, marriages, and life. Suddenly the
slides take a detour, as one of the women appears topless. The
Trachtenburgs walk that thin line between an invasion of privacy and a
shot at immortality. “I think, for some of these people, we have made
their lives worth living,” Jason said. “Their life was meant to be
immortalized in our song. That was the whole purpose of it. Not working
for Boeing.”
While we talked, Rachel Trachtenburg was
running around the gallery, chased by a person wearing a cheesy fake
mustache. He turned out to be her drum teacher. It is sometimes easy to
forget that this girl is nine. She has amazing poise, whether staring
out into the audience while keeping a steady beat, or reacting
(sometimes disdainfully) to her father’s joke-heavy stage patter. One
minute she is Ringo Starr and the next you realize that her father is
carefully making sure that her equipment is put away for her. Having
once been nine, I think this must be a totally cool life for a kid. But
the more adult me wonders if this is any kind of life for a little
girl. Wouldn’t she rather have a nice, “normal” life?
“As
fate would have it, our real life is the exact same thing as the show,”
says Jason. “Rachel is brought up in this environment where everything
we do is part of our act and that is normal for her. We wouldn’t work
in a traditional situation.” That is not to say they don’t have their
moments. Jason went on to say that there are time when he would want
himself or Tina to be a better parent, or Rachel to be a better child;
this is true of all families. However, he noted, “There are those times
during the day that we do these miraculous things together. Totally
full of synchronicity and universal connectiveness parenting, music,
rock and roll, slideshow situation…” At that moment, in his normal
earnest way, Jason Trachtenburg was nothing but a proud parent, content
to have combined his family and his musical passions all into one
basket.
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