A startling alchemy of strange-but-true history, haunting instrumentation, and sterling songwriting, Pinataland is the creation of David Wechsler and Doug Stone, Brooklyn-based performers/songwriters who have formed a band centered around their fascination for the stories and sounds of what they call "the weird old world". After meeting at Hampshire College in the early 90s, Doug and Dave made their way to New York City, where early incarnations of the band churned out amped-up Tex-Mex polkas. Eschewing that particular style but inexplicably keeping their name, Pinataland found themselves lured towards darker territories, inspired, no doubt, by the dubious wealth of tragic history found within the city. Since then, the now 5-piece (occasionally 6-piece) Pinataland have become experts at conjuring the sad strangeness of history to life with violin, tuba, accordion, guitar and drums. The band's music, lurching from the epic to the aching and elegiac, evokes some never-existing strain of pre-WWII chamber-rock. "We're not old-timey purists at all," clarifies Dave, "and we wouldn't know how to be if we wanted to. What we want is to sound modern - except with these instruments, and with songs about pygmies and railroads." Finding interesting places to perform has recently become an obsession for Pinataland - the more eclectic (and historically site-specific) the venue, the more appealing. They have performed in the dark underground of the historic Atlantic Avenue Subway Tunnel (underneath Atlantic Avenue and Court Streets in Brooklyn); on a loading dock at the New York Times Building (where they were celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Time's switch to color printing); the American Museum of Natural History's Margaret Mead Film Festival (in honor of onetime museum resident Ota Benga); the Thomas Edison Historic Site (where they demonstrated wax cylinder recording), and, of course, Coney Island. The band has also been featured on NPR's All Songs Considered, performed on New Jersey's famed WFMU and mounted their own multi-media show in 2001 at HERE Theater in NYC.
