Although the members of Marcy Playground met in New York City during the mid-90s, both singer/songwriter and guitarist John Wozniak and bassist Dylan Keefe originally hail from Minneapolis, while drummer Dan Rieser is a former resident of Ohio. The group took their name from an experimental elementary school that Wozniak attended in the late 70s (called the Marcy Open School), a time that saw Wozniak intimidated by a few other students, which led to the youngsters refusal to join his peers on the schools playground during recess. Subsequently, Wozniak claims that this tough period of his life served as a foundation for a future self (in an early bio for Marcy Playground, Wozniak described the origins of the groups name as follows — The strange way in which I see the world today can be directly traced back to the time when, as a little boy, I sat paralyzed by the unfortunate realities of life as I looked out of a school window and down onto the Marcy Playground).