Hang on tight — it’s another edition of “Five Questions”, our interview series with noteworthy accordion personalities from around the globe.

Few accordionists can cross genres as comfortably as Bradley Jaye Williams. Born in Michigan, Williams moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and then to Austin, where his music career really took off, playing with the likes of Flaco Jimenez and Mingo Saldivar. He currently plays in three bands: an authentic Texas-style conjunto called Conjunto Los Pinkys, a Cajun/Zydeco dance band known as The Gulf Coast Playboys, and The Fabulous Polkasonics, a combo that plays Polish-American “honky style” polkas, waltzes, and obereks.

When and why did you first start playing the accordion?

In 1986, I started playing the 2-row button accordion while living in a tiny studio apartment in Berkeley, California. My neighbors listened to me struggle with “La Cucaracha” and “La Nopalera” for a few months! Why did I start playing? I love accordion music! It was the natural thing to do. It felt right. To me, the accordion was always cool and it’s at the heart of many styles of dance music I love. I grew up in Saginaw, Michigan around all kinds of music… Motown, country, Dixieland, jazz, rock n’ roll and polka music… mainly the Polish-American and German music of Marv Herzog and Lawrence Welk (of course).

Living in the Bay Area in my 20’s, I experienced the music of Flaco Jimenez and it really struck a chord with me. Here was good old polka music being chopped and customized in a new and different way. I loved it. Ultimately, I think I was drawn to the international and cross-cultural appeal of accordion music and polka… the songs, customs, dance, food and pure FUN we all share. Of course, there is also something very compelling about the accordion itself: a magnificent machine…beautifully designed…and a challenge to play.

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It’s probably no surprise that Weird Al Yankovic is on the cutting edge of accordion technology and, indeed, Roland has a fun little interview with him about their V-Accordion line of digital accordions. Apparently Al has been an FR-7 user for quite some time and just picked up the smaller, lighter FR-2. In the interview, Al talks about the appeal of a digital accordion versus an acoustic one:

“I really like the idea that it is a direct connection. The accordion is a hard instrument to mic, because if you put an acoustic microphone next to an accordion — especially the left hand — the bellows are always moving. So it’s kind of hard to get an even sound, because the mic is always going to be closer and then further away from the sound source. Internal microphones are also always a problem, because you still get the sound of the bellows. So just the simple fact that there’s a digital solution out there where you get a clean accordion sound is very appealing to me.”

Weird Al will be on tour this summer supporting his latest album, Straight Outta Lynwood; keep an eye on our calendar for dates. (Interview found via Wired).

This month’s issue of Keyboard Magazine has an excellent profile of one of our favorite polka artists: Big Lou, the Accordion Princess. The piece covers her double life as a geophysicist/accordionist, her squeezebox arsenal, and how she made the transition from Texas honky-tonk piano player to polka princess:

“The only thing that a piano player has to pay attention to is phrasing, or breathing [compressing and expanding the bellows]. That’s kind of a sure giveaway when accordion players listen to piano players who don’t really learn how to play the accordion.”

To learn more about Big Lou, be sure to check out our interview with her (conducted in late 2006). You can also catch her weekly radio show online at 247PolkaHeaven.

It’s time for another installment of “Five Questions” — our occasional interview series with notable personalities in the accordion world.

Today, we’re talking to Skyler Fell, owner of the Accordion Apocalypse Repair Shop in San Francisco. A professionally trained accordion repairwoman, Skyler offers repairs, parts, lessons, and free advice out of her humble shop in Hunter’s Point. Accordion Apocalypse has become a Bay Area accordion hub, hosting bi-weekly jams and shows by touring bands and wild circuses. She also plays in a couple bands herself: the Hobo Gobbelins and the Accordion Apocalypse Circus Sideshow.

When and why did you start playing the accordion?

I started playing accordion when I was around 20 years old, after walking into Boaz Accordions in Berkeley. Feeling inspired by live circus bands featuring fierce and independent women with a hardcore edge in Europe and the Bay Area, I decided to have a go at the accordion. What has happened since has been a truly magical and eye-opening journey.

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There was a great interview on NPR today with Dominican accordionist La India Canela. She has twice won the Cassandra award for her hit songs and is now releasing an album in the United States, Merengue Tipico from the Dominican Republic.

She had a tough start; her father didn’t want her to play the accordion, so she had to hide to practice. Then, after she was discovered, she had to convince him to let her play in the city. Overcoming the social stigma of the accordion being a man’s instrument was a challenge, but her love for the music was deep and she was determined to stick with it.

“Accordion is very profound, and you feel it probably from the moment you are in your mother’s womb.”

Now she’s one of The Dominican Republic’s most famous musicians. You can listen to the NPR interview as well as some clips of her playing here.

Chicago Public Radio had a great story today on the local Chicago bands and fans who are working hard to keep polka alive. The piece starts out at the weekly “Therapy Tuesday” dances held at Major Hall and goes on to include interviews with Eddie Blazonczyk Jr. of the Versatones, as well as “Dandy” Don and “Jolly” James of the Polkaholics. James talks about how playing in the punk-rock Polkaholics changed his mind about polka:

“I thought polka was kind of square. I thought old blue-haired ladies listen to it, and they do, and they rock, and they can dance my butt off, which I’ve learned.”

You can listen to the story — or read a full transcript — on the Chicago Public Radio website. There’s also an accompanying photo slideshow.

We’re launching a new feature today called “Five Questions” — a series of brief interviews with notable personalities in the accordion world.

Our first subject is San Francisco accordionist Tom Torriglia. Tom has been in the music business since the late 1960s and has been an incredible accordion promoter over the years. He was an original member of Those Darn Accordions, is responsible for making June “National Accordion Awareness Month,” and campaigned to make the accordion San Francisco’s official instrument. Today, you can catch him playing a variety of gigs around the Bay Area, often with his retro-Italiano band, Bella Ciao.

When and why did you start playing the accordion?

I started taking lessons in 1962 at Theodore’s (Pezzolo) House of Music on Union St. in San Francisco. This was at the famous “accordion house.” My teacher was Theodore Pezzolo and I was his last student. I studied there for about eight years. When I left, he gave me all his original hand-written sheets of music, which I still have.

Before starting with the accordion, I had taken a year of piano but that didn’t work out and then one day, an accordion player came to the house to rehearse with my father who played sax and clarinet, and I was very taken with the instrument — with all the buttons and bellows and such — and I asked my parents if I could give it a try. Also, I think I was fated to play the accordion because, as everyone knows, there has to be one accordion player in each Italian-American household. And since I was the youngest child…

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Few performers connect with their audiences as well as Seattle songwriter/accordionist Jason Webley. Known for his gravelly, Tom Waits-ish voice and feverish foot-stomping and bellows-pumping, he’s built a loyal following with theatrical shows that not only invite audience participation, but practically demand it. He also has a thing for tomatoes.

Jason is the brains behind the Monsters of Accordion tour, an all-accordion extravaganza taking place on the West Coast this week. We recently had the chance to talk to Jason briefly about the tour and his work.

If I’ve counted right, I think this is the third or fourth Monsters of Accordion tour. How did it all start? What was the inspiration?

We got the idea for the Monsters tour at an event I was invited to headline at Smythe’s Accordion Center maybe 4 years ago. I had never seen so many other accordion freaks before, and I really fell in love with a couple of them (Daniel Ari and Duckmandu) so we decided to try and do a little accordion only tour. So this is actually year three for “Monsters of Accordion.” The three of us did the west coast together twice, I think. But I was always the main draw on those tours and somewhere I decided that, if I was going to do it again, I wanted to make it bigger than just me. So I invited Corn Mo and Geoff Berner, who both tour all over and have their own followings. And they are amazing. I think it is going to be a great run.

Continue reading ‘Interview with Jason Webley’ »

As the dog days of summer take hold, who can resist the siren call of the ice cream truck? I sure can’t; the stacks of Choco Tacos in my freezer are proof.

Gothamist today has a fun interview with Michael Hearst, who loves ice cream but grew tired of hearing trucks play the same old songs summer after summer. So he sat down and created an entire album of new music for ice cream trucks, appropriately titled Songs for Ice Cream Trucks, with song titles like “The Popsicle Parade”, “Tones for Cones”, and my favorite, “Chocolate, Vanilla or Swirl?”

As with his work in One Ring Zero, Hearst uses a variety of eclectic instruments — including accordion, melodica, claviola, glockenspiel, and theremin — to evoke memories of childhood summers, but without the tinny, repetitive renditions of “Pop Goes the Weasel.” The album was featured on a Today Show segment and more than fifty trucks nationwide are now playing his music. The track linked below is one of the album’s more melancholy tunes: a rumination on where ice cream trucks go during the winter.

Buy Songs for Ice Cream Trucks by Michael Hearst (Amazon)

Michael Hearst: Where Do Ice Cream Trucks Go In the Winter? (MP3 download)

Orange County may not sound like a klezmer hotspot, but the Orange County Klezmers are bringing the sounds of Eastern Europe to sunny Southern California. This week, the Orange County Weekly has a brief interview with their founder/accordionist, Barry Friedland, who gives an overview of klezmer and its history, along with a testimonial to the accordion’s power to impress:

“Accordion has never been the cool instrument to play. But I stayed with it and remember playing at the school talent show in high school… I blew everybody away. It was really exciting… People had never heard an instrument do what an accordion can do. It’s a very versatile machine.”

The Orange County Klezmers’ album, Echoes of Vilna: Songs of Remembrance from the Ghettos, is a collection of klezmer music written in World War II-era ghettos. Even when played as instrumentals (Friedland worried that most people would be unable to handle the emotional lyrics), the music is moving, haunting, and captivating. The Orange County Klezmers do an excellent job of keeping this music alive.

Orange County Klezmers: Tzi Darf Es Azoy Zayn, In Lager (MP3 sample)