On a sunny Autumn morning a few years ago, Pinataland's Doug Stone, Dave Wechsler and Bill Gerstel drove over a Queens bridge onto New York's Rikers Island, home to an infamous city prison that's existed since 1932. Why? To play a gig, of course. "A teacher who works there heard us on NPR and asked us to come and play some history songs for the inmates, and we thought – well, you don’t get an invitation like that every day." says keyboardist/singer Dave Wechsler, whose band has played numerous shows at various unconventional sites, from cemeteries to loading docks to underground tunnels.

After checking their gear through metal detectors, the three men found themselves in a dank gymnasium performing their exuberant countrymeets- Kurt Weill songs for a couple dozen young prisoners. "We played a bunch of New York history tunes, like the one about the pygmy who wound up in a monkey cage in the Bronx Zoo, and another about the ship that burned up just off of Riker's in 1904. The inmates seemed a little confused, but I think they genuinely enjoyed it." says singer/guitarist Doug Stone.

But it wasn’t just the inmates who were confused, Doug recalls.

After the show a very worried looking prison administrator came huffing up to us and demanded to know what it was all about. “What kind of music is this? Is this education or entertainment? I need to write a report about this! What is it you do?!”. And I thought, “Good luck buddy. We've been trying to explain that for years."

Such is the conundrum of Piñataland, a band that for the past decade has been confounding all sorts of expectations by focusing relentlessly on their
singular obsession: the weird, dark corners of forgotten history.

In 2003, Piñataland released their critically lauded Songs for the Forgotten Future, Vol. 1, a musical "secret history" of a United States where progress,
immigration and technology looked forward to a future that never quite showed up.

Now, Brooklyn's finest “weird dark old world history orchestrette" (The Village Voice) returns with Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2, produced by JD Foster (producer Richard Buckner and Calexico, bass for Dwight Yoakum and Lucinda Williams).

According to the band, this record is a musical "move Westwards". "Volume I had echoes of Eastern Europe immigrating to the states. Volume II has its feet more firmly planted in American soil, with Gerald Menke's high lonesome pedal steel throughout.", says Dave. Other players joining Pinataland were fellow history-centered banjo player Curtis Eller (Curtis Eller’s American Circus), Bob Hoffnar (Hem) and cellist Jane Scarpantoni (Tiny Lights).

Ranging from a jaunty romp through a pre-colonized Manhattan Island of 1609 (illustrated by the Mannahatta Project on the cover of the CD package) to a melancholy tune about the colonization of Mars, Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2 continues Pinataland's ambitious exploration of a truly strange country's secret past - and future.

Here, 10 character songs inhabit the minds of people both real and imagined, channeling their stories of delusion, obsession, failure, crackpot schemes, murder, and utopian dreams – themes that resonate as much with the America of today as they have for the last two centuries. Set against a backdrop of the Americans' conflicted relationship with the natural world, Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2 rewards the close listener just as it punishes the casual one.

So do history and music mix? Artists as diverse as the Bee Gees, Frank Black, Gordon Lightfoot and Iron Maiden have all written great history tunes. With "Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2", the obsessed and devoted Pinataland carries the torch for a proud and fertile tradition.