We consider ourselves lucky if there’s one accordion festival going on during a given weekend; two festivals is practically an embarrassment of riches. And yet, that was the case last weekend. While the International Accordion Festival took over rainy San Antonio, some trailblazers in Southern California hosted the first-ever Orange County Accordion Festival.

• Tejas to France to Arabia: Accordions Popularity Keeps Growing
  The San Antonio festival continues to draw an incredibly diverse roster of artists. This year, performers included Elias Lammam’s Arabic accordion, Miguel Afonso from the Canary Islands, and Basque accordionist Kepa Junkera. (Check out some festival photos here.)
• Accordion players celebrate ‘Big Squeeze’
  Great collection of photos (and a video) of the Orange County festival, which featured performances ranging from Los Fabulocos with Kid Ramos to the Martin Music Center Accordion Orchestra.
• Give Me a Big Squeeze
  The Orange Country Register’s pre-festival article talks about the growing accordion renaissance and some of the characters in the local accordion scene. (Including Norm Panto, who we spotted on Sunday’s episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.)

This weekend, accordion lovers will flock to San Antonio for the 9th annual International Accordion Festival. This free, two-day outdoor festival always features a stellar lineup of concerts and workshops featuring accordionists from around the world in a variety of genres — from Balkan to Basque, Acadian to Arabic, and beyond. Performers at this year’s festival include Buckwheat Zydeco, Guy Klucevsek, Ivan Milev, the George Lammam Ensemble, and many others. There’s also a pre-festival concert on Friday night featuring conjunto/Tejano greats like Mingo Saldivar and Joel Guzman.

So where’s the controversy? Some conservatives have singled out the $25,000 grant given to the festival by the National Endowment of the Arts as an example of misguided government spending during the economic downturn. The SA Current has a good rebuttal from festival organizers, as well as local restaurant and shop owners who benefit greatly from the tourists that the festival draws to downtown San Antonio. Clearly anyone who doesn’t think an accordion festival will help stimulate the economy — or at least stimulate the people attending — has never been to an accordion festival.

Last month, the American Accordionists Association held its annual festival in Memphis, Tennessee. The gathering featured performances by Riders in the Sky (with Joey Miskulin), Jeff Lisenby and the NashVegas Jazz, Tony Lovello, Bruce Gassman, Joe Natoli and Mary Tokarski. In between the concerts, workshops and competitions, a small band of accordionists made their way over to the King’s house for a little rock and roll… accordion-style.

Under the direction of Frank Busso, the fifty-strong accordion band played “Love Me Tender” and “Blue Suede Shoes” on Elvis’ doorstep:

We’re still unwinding from a fun weekend at the Cotati Accordion Festival, but there’s no time to rest. Not when the Monsters of Accordion are about to unleash their fury on the West Coast. The brainchild of accordion madman Jason Webley, this annual event showcases some of the best accordion-toting singer-songwriters around in a whirlwind, week-long tour.

Joining Webley for this year’s edition are Stevhen Iancu of the Dolomites, Eric Stern of Vagabond Opera, and Geoff Berner. At various stops along the way, they’ll be joined by special guests like Mood Area 52 and Mark Growden. This year’s tour kicks off in Seattle on Wednesday and makes stops in Portland, Eugene, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento before winding up in Ashland next Tuesday. (Check our calendar for dates and times.)

Street performer turned cult musician, Jason Webley is known for his gravelly voice, his caterwauling squeezebox, and his unique ability to involve the audience in his shows; most of his concerts end with the entire crowd locked arm-in-arm, singing at the tops of their lungs. (We’ll share some video evidence of this from the Cotati festival later this week.)

Jason Webley: Dance While the Sky is Crashing Down mp3

Stevhen Koji Iancu is a Japanese/Romanian British Immigrant who puts together a fiery blend of Gypsy music, fusing older Japanese styles of Enka with subtle elements of Cumbia, Ska, Punk, Balkan and Romanian music, and many other styles from around the world. Iancu has also performed with numerous groups, including Balkan Beat Box, and was a touring member of Gogol Bordello.

Dolomites: Yoidore mp3

Eric Stern is the bandleader and primary composer of Vagabond Opera, Portland’s favorite absurdist cabaret ensemble. A premiere operatic tenor, accordionist, composer and showman, Stern commands the room with his incendiary stage presence and devilish virtuosity. Son of an accomplished Gaullic accordionist, he is adept at countless styles, at times performing on a specially-tuned quarter tone accordion to play complex Arabic melodies.

Vagabond Opera: Russian Jazz Waltz mp3

“I want to make original klezmer music that’s drunk, dirty, political and passionate. As a Jew of eastern european descent, I feel I have a calling to make this music live, not just preserve it under glass like something in a museum.” Berner’s music, inspired by traditional Jewish folk song and fueled by whiskey, dresses his wry wit and biting social commentary in shockingly beautiful, plaintive melodies.

Geoff Berner: Whiskey Rabbi mp3

If you need more convincing, check out our recap of the Monsters of Accordion 2007 show in San Francisco, including photos and a video of Corn Mo doing the best solo accordion rendition of “We are the Champions” you may ever hear.

Is it just me, or are accordion festivals popping up everywhere these days? The organizers of last year’s Los Angeles Accordion Festival are back with SqueezeFest LA this Sunday night at the Ford Theatres in Hollywood. It’s an excellent accordion triple-bill featuring Portland’s Bohemian cabaret Vagabond Opera, up-and-coming Cajun band Feufollet, and LA’s own Conjunto Los Pochos. The Los Angeles Accordion Festival itself will return in August with Flaco Jimenez as a headliner (dates/venue are still TBD). For information on Sunday’s Squeeze Fest LA, check the listing on our calendar.

Our accordion event calendar is always full of great concerts, festivals, and hootenannys, but this weekend is especially jam-packed. Here are a few noteworthy events you might want to check out:

• Leavenworth International Accordion Festival (Leavenworth, WA)
  The 15th annual Leavenworth Accordion Festival includes workshops, jam sessions, a film/video series, a parade, and four nights of concerts and dances. Performers include Lynn Marie, Janet Todd, and S-Bahn.
• Petaluma Accordion Festival (Petaluma, CA)
  Bay Area accordion fans know all about Cotati, but nearby neighbor Petaluma has its own two-day accordion celebration, too. We’ll be there on Saturday, so if you see a guy with a red Let’s Polka shirt, come say hi! (There’s also a great accordion triple-header on Friday night in Petaluma with Vagabond Opera, the Mad Maggies, and Amber Lee.)
• Make Music New York: Mass Accordions (Brooklyn, NY)
  Tired of playing alone? Join a mass gathering of accordion players at the Old Stone Church The Bell House in Brooklyn and play music with the Famous Accordion Orchestra and Main Squeeze Accordion Orchestra. (Update: Moved indoors to The Bell House due to potential rain on Sunday.)

For polka fans, there’s also the International Polka Fest (Carleton, MN) and the Syracuse Polish Festival (Syracuse, NY). Check our calendar for more great accordion events in your neighborhood.

It’s June 1st and that can only mean one thing… it’s the start of Accordion Awareness Month! Established in 1989 by our pal Tom Torriglia — formerly of Those Darn Accordions, now with retro-Italiano band Bella Ciao — Accordion Awareness Month was created to spread the word about the accordion’s resurgence in popularity and to educate people about the accordion’s true musical potential. Basically, the same mission we’ve adopted at Let’s Polka, except we do it year-round!

This year, we want you — our humble, accordion-loving readers — to help promote the virtues of our favorite instrument. Sit on your porch and play some tunes for your neighbors, attend a show on our accordion event calendar, fill up your coworker’s iPod with Flaco Jimenez songs when he isn’t looking, tell all your friends about Let’s Polka… the possibilities are limitless. Me, I’m going to sit on my balcony every night, directly above a pizzeria, and serenade patrons.

To encourage you, we’re giving away over $100 worth of accordion-related goodies to readers who pledge to promote the accordion this month. To make your pledge, write a comment on this post and tell us how you plan to celebrate Accordion Awareness Month — doesn’t matter if it’s something small (making a YouTube video) or big (writing an accordion concerto). One lucky, randomly-chosen pledger will receive a prize package stuffed with accordion CDs, books, and more. Contents include:

• Geoff Berner’s indispensible how-to book, How to Be An Accordion Player
• Bob Bove’s biography, Accordion Man: The Legendary Dick Contino
• New CDs from Los Texmaniacs, Copper Box, Cirkestra, The Polka Floyd Show, and more
• A selection of vintage (1950s) accordion sheet music
• A few classic accordion and polka LPs (vinyl, baby!) from our collection
• And a bunch of Let’s Polka stickers for your accordion case

You have until the end of Accordion Awareness Month to make your pledge, so get out there and become an accordion awareness ambassador!

Make Music New York is a unique festival of free concerts in public spaces throughout New York City, all on Sunday, June 21st, the first day of summer. Along with hundreds of individual concerts, this year’s MMNY includes a type of gathering called “Mass Appeal” where hundreds of musicians perform pieces written for a single instrument. And, you guessed it, there’ll be special event just for accordionists.

Accordionists of all shapes, sizes, and abilities are encouraged to join the accordion gathering at the Old Stone House in Brooklyn. You can participate in the performance of a new piece by composer Bob Goldberg for the Famous Accordion Orchestra, in which visitors discover an “accordion forest.” Players are also invited to play-along to some old favorites with the NYC’s all-female Main Squeeze Accordion Orchestra conducted by Walter Kuhr. See the listing on our calendar for more details, including RSVP information so they know how many squeezeboxes to expect.

Bruce at Accordion Noir forwarded us a strange Russian news article about a “Monster-Accordion” that will be unveiled at the Kremlin in April. The instrument will be the centerpiece of a celebration of the accordion’s 100th birthday:

“Precise dimensions of giant accordion remain unknown, but according to the art director of the holiday concert the height of the instrument will be several meters. To make the instrument sound two people will draw bellows and several people will push keys of the instrument.”

“Several meters” high? I wonder if this giant accordion is related to this one built by Giancarlo Francenella in Castlefidardo, Italy. That accordion — which is more than 3 meters tall and 2 meters wide — requires two people to play it, one on the keys and another to push the bellows. (Sounds like the punchlinke to a “how many accordionists does it take to screw in a lightbulb” joke…) If you want to see it in action, the accordion was recently transported to the Tate Modern in London for an exhibition and will be there through April 26th.