“Indianola Pizza Dough” is like an audio journey through the history of Anthony LaMarca’s family and of the Mahoning Valley.

LaMarca, who is a member of the Grammy-winning rock band The War on Drugs and releases solo albums under the name The Building, weaves his own songs around polkas — a melody written by his grandfather, “Happy Time Polka” performed with Youngstown polka legend Del Sinchak — snippets of conversations recorded decades ago at a pizza shop owned by his great-aunt and great-uncle, and recording studio / radio soundbites by Peppermint Records owner and polka radio host Gary Rhamy. It also features a song written by Tony March, founder of Youngstown label Tammy Records, and a sample from the 1973 debut album by Blue Ash.

The album, which will be released April 23 on Peppermint Records, may be the most Youngstown record ever made. With his fragile tenor, LaMarca at times sounds like Neil Young, and “Indianola Pizza Dough” would fit alongside some of Young’s more adventurous concept albums.

That concept evolved from what LaMarca originally envisioned. He recorded “Happy Times Polka” with Sinchak and a version of “Beautiful Ohio,” the state’s official song, during recording sessions for his 2019 album “Petra.”

“I had this vague idea of having Gary from Peppermint narrate it as if he’s doing his Sunday polka show,” LaMarca said.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, Rhamy gave LaMarca a cassette deck he could use to record at home, which changed the structure of the record.

“It ends up being more like a mix tape than a radio show,” he said. “The tape player definitely set me off in that direction. I had recorded some of Gary’s shows off the radio just for fun and the sake of having them, and the tape transitions ended up being a happy accident. When I ended recording (a new song), that’s what was left on the tape. That’s when I first realized that sort of works. How can I piece together all of this?”

Peppermint Records is located on Indianola Avenue, the same street where his great-aunt Margaret and great-uncle Rocco Seminara owned a pizza shop in the ’70s called Margie’s Pizza. That connection between his real family and his musical family further informed the album.

“It was a way, stylistically, to add some of those ethnic elements into my own songs, imagery wise,” he said “Those polka guys were singing about pierogies, I guess I’ll sing about pizza … I want to be known as a musician from Youngstown and make music that could only be made here.”

In many cases, LaMarca is writing about things for which he has little or no first-hand memory. Margie’s Pizza was closed before he was born. He drew inspiration from the stories he’s been told, the things he remembers and shapes them into a narrative that feels authentic even if it may not be 100 percent accurate.

“We all have these romanticized ideas of the past in our own lives and our own family,” he said. “Things we think are true, if you actually went back and dug into them, maybe that’s not where the pizza place was.”

One of the pizza metaphors he uses in the liner notes is, “What I thought was a whole pizza was only a slice.” And those local themes allow LaMarca to explore larger issues of trust and truth and reconciliation.

“Indianola Pizza Dough” did give LaMarca a chance to experience something he didn’t get to do in real life — make music with his grandfather. He remembers his grandfather playing the accordion and loving ethnic music. LaMarca believes those experiences planted the seed for his own love for the Mahoning Valley’s ethnic music, even if it didn’t take root until he was in high school, more than a decade after his grandfather died.

When his uncle was cleaning out the shoe repair shop originally owned by his grandfather in New Castle, Pa., he discovered a manila envelope with handwritten music from LaMarca’s grandfather with the title “Adio Amico.”

“My uncle gave it to me to see what this is and to try to make a tune of it,” LaMarca said. “I had a tape of my grandpa playing accordion, just playing by himself, and I took it and overdubbed on top of it. My grandpa died when I was 4. I never got to share music with him, obviously I was too young to play with him, but this was a way to make music with him.”

LaMarca’s last album, “Petra,” was written and recorded while going through a relapse of multiple myeloma, a cancer that grows in white blood cells, and receiving chemotherapy treatment. That experience put him at greater risk during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it also prepared him to deal with it.

“For me and my wife, we feel we’ve kind of been down this road already,” he said. “When the pandemic hit, we thought, this feels so familiar. I had to have a bone marrow transplant early on, and you essentially have to rebuild your immune system from nothing, wear a mask, be careful. This COVID s—? It’s nothing. I got this. We feel we’ve been through that emotional training camp already, but obviously the length and scope of it are different.”

Recording during the pandemic, LaMarca didn’t think about if or when he would be playing “Indianola Pizza Dough” live. Now that he’s had both COVID-19 vaccination shots, playing these songs live is at least in the back of his mind.

“I’d love to. Hopefully the opportunity comes up to do a local show at some point.”