Pumpkintown, a multimedia concert

Songs, Stories and Magic Lantern Projections from an Imaginary Village

 

A mysterious old trunk found in a Yankee attic, full of leatherbound tunebooks, letters, musical instruments, 8 track tapes, a handwritten sheaf of ballads, a machete, and even an old “magic lantern”—an ancient projector, with a box of painted glass slides… Was this the trunk Silas had been looking for? The one his antiquarian great uncle Josh Billings Jr. promised would be full of answers, missing verses, the truth behind local legends, and the details of Silas’s own murky past?

“Pumpkintown” offers a fresh take on history and American music, from a region rarely associated with a regional sound: New England (Northern Appalachia?). Beyond the truck stops and broken hearts of “Americana,” “Pumpkintown” reveals a reality that has never been just a faded, black-and-white photograph but evidences a deeply multicultural dynamism where history, imagination, dreams, and genealogies collide.