Texas Folklife has extended the deadline for its second annual Big Squeeze contest until next Friday, April 19. The contest is open to accordion players under 25 who will compete for a $500 prize and a day of recording time at the historic SugarHill Recording Studios in Houston. Four semi-finalists will be chosen to perform live on May 11 at Austin’s new Mexican American Cultural Center. Two finalists will then perform at the 19th annual Accordion Kings & Queens concert featuring Step Rideau & the Zydeco Outlaws and La Tropa F.
As an accordion player, you’ve heard your fair share of ‘em — today is the day to give back. In honor of April Fools Day, we’re opening the floodgates and holding an accordion joke contest. Share your favorite groaner and you could win something in the process.
To enter: Write a comment on this post and tell us your favorite accordion joke. One lucky joker — chosen at random — will receive a grab bag of Let’s Polka goodies. We can’t make any promises, but the package will likely include a mix of Let’s Polka stickers, albums from our collection, and whatever other squeeze-worthy goodies we have on hand.
The contest ends tonight at midnight, so start posting your jokes!
Update: Congratulations to our lucky winner, Ed Ploski! Thanks to everyone who contributed a joke!
Thanks to everyone who entered and recommended an artist/album (either here or on our MySpace); we got some great suggestions. If you entered, but didn’t win, drop us a line with your mailing address and we’ll send you some Let’s Polka stickers. Everyone’s a winner!
Fall is here and it’s high time for another Let’s Polka giveaway! This time, it’s a two-fer: the winner will receive Bob Dolgan’s excellent biography, America’s Polka King: The Real Story of Frankie Yankovic, as well as Eddie Blazonczyk’s Versatones’ Grammy-nominated CD, Batteries Not Included. We’ll even throw in a handful of Let’s Polka stickers to boot.
How to enter: post a comment on this entry and recommend an accordion album you’ve been listening to lately. That’s it! It can be something old, something new, something borrowed… you get the picture. You’ll have until Friday at midnight to post your entry; then we’ll pick a random winner and send out the prize next week.
Good luck! We’re looking forward to your recommendations!
Think you’ve got what it takes to be the next accordion king or queen? If you’re a young (under 28), talented Texan accordion player — or know someone who is — visit the Texas Folklife website to learn more about their upcoming Big Squeeze competition.
The top prize is $1,000 ($500 and $250 to 2nd and 3rd place winners) and famed Texas director Hector Galán will film the competition for a documentary. The top three finalists will also squeeze their stuff in front of thousands at the 18th annual Accordion Kings & Queens concert on June 2nd at Houston’s Miller Outdoor Theatre. If you’re interested, hurry — entries are due by April 16th.
To celebrate the occasion, we’re engaging in our favorite hobby: giving away free stuff! But first, you have to give us something in return.
Your mission:Write a comment on this post and tell us about an accordion artist (solo or group) that we should hear. It could be a musette accordion player from the 1930s, your cousin’s conjunto band, or a punk/polka combo you found on MySpace. If there’s an accordion involved, we want to know about it!
We’ll send a handful of Let’s Polka stickers (see photo above) to everyone who posts a comment. Three lucky, randomly-chosen commenters will also receive one of these items from our holiday gift guide:
Craig DiBiase’s polka documentary, It’s Happiness, on DVD
We’ll hold the drawing for those three prizes next Monday, so you have one week to post your comment. (If you comment after Monday, you can still get stickers but you won’t win one of the three prizes.)
Sound good? Then start posting — and winning — today!
Remember our post about last week’s attempt to set the Guinness World Record for fastest accordion player? Thanks to the Irish Post we’ve discovered that the accordionist was Irish button box virtuoso Liam O’Connor. Liam rose to fame as a featured musician with Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance, and has also recorded three albums with vocalist Lisa Aherne.
According to his site, Liam set the record for “Fastest Fingers in the World” by playing an amazing 11.64 notes per second under the watchful eyes of Guinness judges. The record-breaking tune was the venerable classic, “Tico Tico”.
Unfortunately, Liam’s site doesn’t have any sound clips, so we can only wonder what his fast fingers sound like. Leave a comment if you know where we can find clips of Liam’s music online.
When you were a kid, did you ever spend a Saturday trying to set the Guinness World Record for “Longest Time Balancing a Broom on Your Chin”? Okay, maybe that was just me. But this past Thursday, aspiring record holders around the world attempted everything from Largest Tea Party to Most Rattlesnakes Held in Mouth during Guinness World Records Day.
Buried deep in news stories about the event, though, was a line about someone in Dublin, Ireland, attempting to become the world’s fastest accordion player. I haven’t been able to track down much information about the attempt other than the photo above, and that the attempt took place at an Eason’s bookstore. Anyone know who this guy is? And how exactly do you measure such a feat? Most notes per minute? Do you have to play a particular song or can you just flail aimlessly? Is it easier to play fast on a button box or a piano accordion? So many questions!
Always wanted to write and record your own album, but find yourself scared away by the time and effort involved? NaSoAlMo (National Solo Album Month) is for you. Inspired by NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) — an annual event where aspiring writers attempt to write a novel in just thirty days — the idea behind NaSoAlMo is to let loose, silence your internal critic, and just do it.
The rules are pretty simple: albums should be at least 29:09 long (same as the first Ramones album) and, like that album, can include one cover song. Anyone who finishes their album by November 30 is a winner. Anna is taking part in this year’s NaSoAlMo and has already started work on a couple tunes today, so hopefully we’ll have an album of original accordion music to share by the end of the month. Go Anna go!
Why not spend the weekend with the Italian family you never had? The Italian American Heritage Foundation’s 26th annual Italian Family Festa is happening this Friday through Sunday at Santana Row in San Jose, CA. There’ll be ample accordion entertainment, including performances by squeezebox legend Dick Contino, as well as the Silicon Valley Accordion Society. And like any good Italian festival, there’ll be plenty of food, a grape stomping contest, a tarantella dance contest, and a bocce ball court. We’ll be there Saturday, so say ‘hi’ and — assuming our faces aren’t stuffed with cannoli — we’ll give you some Let’s Polka stickers.
September 27th, 2006 at 10:01 am · Posted by Chris
Fall is here and it’s high time for another Let’s Polka giveaway! This time, it’s a two-fer: the winner will receive Bob Dolgan’s excellent biography, 
Can you believe it’s been a whole year since Let’s Polka first came kicking and squeezing into this world? It seems like just yesterday we were interviewing 
Remember our post about last week’s attempt to set the Guinness World Record for 
When you were a kid, did you ever spend a Saturday trying to set the Guinness World Record for “Longest Time Balancing a Broom on Your Chin”? Okay, maybe that was just me. But this past Thursday, aspiring record holders around the world attempted everything from Largest Tea Party to Most Rattlesnakes Held in Mouth during 