About The Pietasters
The Pietasters are an American eight-piece ska/soul band from Washington, D.C., with additional members from Maryland and Virginia.
In 1990, Stephen Jackson and Chris Watt met at Virginia Tech, through mutual friend Tal Bayer, who was attending nearby Radford University, and they formed a ska band called the Slugs with their former schoolmate Tom Goodin, and an architecture classmate, Ben Gauslin. They changed their name to the Dancecrashers for a few months, before taking the name the Pietasters.
The newly formed band convinced the local college booking agency to bring the band Bad Manners from England to perform at the Virginia Tech auditorium, with themselves as the opening act. This was their first public performance, following shows they had staged in the living room of Jackson and Watt's rental house. The two bands later toured the U.S. and Europe together.
In the early 1990s, a similar band from the DC area, the Skunks, asked the Pietasters to play a local ska night at a bar in Georgetown, which was followed by a series of shows at dive bars in DC, Maryland and Virginia. The manager of one of the bars, Nick Nichols, befriended the band and helped them record their first record, The Pietasters, also known as Piestomp.
In the summer of 1993, the Pietasters set out on their first national tour in a used school bus they had bought for $900. By the end of the tour, almost all of the original members quit the band, with only trumpeter Carlos Linares and lead singer Steve Jackson now remaining as original members.
The Pietasters recruited Jeremy Roberts, Toby Hansen, and Alan Makranczy as their new horn players, Rob Steward on drums, and Paul Ackerman on keys. Tom Goodin remained on guitar. The new line-up continued to tour, and soon came to the attention of Bucket Hingley, front man of the Toasters and owner of Moon Ska Records, who invited the Pietasters to join a tour package called "Skavoovie 94" with the Toasters and the Scofflaws. They also performed with artists including No Doubt, the Dance Hall Crashers, Hepcat, Let's Go Bowling, and the Skatalites. By the end of the tour, the Pietasters began recording Oolooloo on Moon Ska with Victor Rice producing.
Oolooloo came out in the summer of 1995, after which bassist Chris Watt left the Pietasters to perform with Eastern Standard Time, and Todd Eckhart moved from rhythm guitar to bass.
Map & Directions To Venue
