Part 3 of the Summer July 1999 Tour -
Bratwurst, Beer and Bavarians
We're in Southern Minnesota, one of the bands playing the main stage at Heritagefest (that would be German heritage). New Ulm is almost as German as the original Ulm. They bring in traditional bands from Germany and Austria; some of these bands use some electric instruments (maybe an electric bass or sythn), but play the folk dance music of Germany - you can call it "oompah" music or whatever you want, you'd recognize it immediately and probably want to dance. One thing they all have in common in an accordion.
This festival has been going on for many years (25?)
Southern Minnesota is largely made up of people of German extraction, Southern Germany, specifically. Catholic Germans in many cases. My Mom's side of the family - German Catholics all - is from this area, about 40 miles northeast of here, over near Cannon Falls, Miesville and Hastings.
I'm half German, half Danish. Having grown up in the Twin Cities and spending summers with my Southern Minnesota relatives, this music, food and the way of speaking seems familiar to me. One of my unclec used to blast polka music out of the radio (well, polka music and the farm market reports) in the barn while milking the cows; he said it made the cows give more milk, but I think it probably also made being in a barn with a bunch of stinky cows two hours before the sun came up in the middle of January a little less hellish. The music's familiar for another reason, too.
My Dad played piano, as well as a bunch of other instruments. And, in Minnesota, if you played piano and wanted to work, you played accordion, too. He certainly did, although that was in the days before the accordion revival and I think he may not have been real eager to have been thought of as an accordion player. Mostly, he played in small combos (drums, bass, guitar and accordion) or played solo piano (piano bar, as they used to call it) in the Twin Cities area while I was a kid - a weekend player. (But he traveled with a band when he was younger and even did some playing at lumber camp dances in the Pacific Northwest when he was there with the Civilian Conservation Corps as a kid in the 1930s.) Accordion is a tough instrument to play well, but accordion players didn't get a lot of respect from some musicians. Still, I wish he had seen this festival. Accordion players rule here. They're the studs of the yard. I haven't heard one accordion joke. (I haven't even heard any jokes about those guys in the leather pants. Come to think about it, these Germans are a pretty stern lot.)
I was walking through one of the vendor areas - I bought a Hard Polka Cafe, New Ulm, Minnesota t-shirt - and figured that was about it for me. No cuckoo clock, no more sausage, just say no to leather shorts with suspenders, when all of a sudden I saw a music stand covered in posters for Minnesota polka bands going way back to the early part of the century. The guy selling the stuff turned out to be the grandson of Whoopee John Wilfirth, a legend here. Had a radio show for a long time. Everybody knew who he was. There were also posters and recordings by The Six Fat Dutchmen and other polka bands I remembered. I looked through a book on Minnesota polka bands to see if there were any pictures of people I recognized. I did see a picture of Whoopee John's band when my Dad's friend, sax man Curley Karels, was in the band. It's definitely OK to play the accordion here. And it will continue to be OK long after the pop artists move on to something else. It's always been OK to play the accordion in Southern Minnesota.
So, hello. My name is Dan and I have an accordion. (It was my Dad's, a great old 120 bass Hohner Gola. And I can't really say that I can play it; on the rare occasions when I take it out, I go at it more like a chest piano. Maybe someday...)
The town of New Ulm, about 13,000 people, could pass for a town in Germany. Its streets are lined with immaculate yards and houses that look like they are meticulously maintained. It reminds me of some of the small towns I saw in Germany. I guess that's the idea. They even have a brewery, the Schell brauerie (I think that's the spelling). The Schell's flows at the festival. None of this politically correct crap with having to drink a beer in some kind of penalty box, as with most festivals. There are sausage stands with fresh local German-style brats and landjaegers (I think that's an all-beef sausage). Haven't seen any tofu dogs, tofu ice cream or tofu period - and I don't think I will.
They're treating us well here. A local couple (Kim and Rhonda Olson) gave us their house to use. No kidding. Beats a motel. No contest. They even cooked us dinner (The Mollys do not live by sausage alone).
And the crowds, though a bit reserved at the first show today, became increasingly enthusiastic throughout the day. Tonight, for our third set and the closer for the day, they were dancing a kind of polka line dance around and through the main concert tent, where we were playing.
The German and Austrian bands are hot, playing a very precise kind of music without the other ethnic musical influences we rub into our polkas and other dance songs. Instead of tubas, the bass players are using baritone horns; a couple of these guys are amazing, playing intricate lines I'm not sure I could play on a bass guitar or my upright electric. There are also clarinets, saxes and the occasional alpen horn (those long horns - like in that Riccola coughdrop commericals or in "Heidi.") And, yes, there has been quite a bit of yodeling.
Well, The Mollys are known for employing a bizarre mix of influences, and I'm sure it'll get even more strange after playing here. I definitey want to take a run at a baritone horn, even though I haven't played a brass instrument since I was about 12. But most of all, I want to learn how to do that insane German polka scream. I call it the "Goofy falling off a cliff" scream. It's truly nuts; it sounds like someone screaming in terror and joy at the same time. Seems like it would be a good thing to know how to do - if not for using with the Mollys, maybe it would be good for self-defense. I wouldn't want to mess with anyone making that noise.
Joyce and Cleo, the leaders of the Mollys Southern Minnesota Polka Posse and Fan Club, are here. So are our friends, Scott and Sandi, from Kasota, as well as a bunch of people we met while playing at the Blue Moon in Kasota, and later in Mankato - just a few miles east of New Ulm.
The festival organizers have been urging us to do our Irish and other stuff and not try to stick to polkas. They're being very open minded. It makes sense; the crowd is hearing German-style oompah from masters so there's not much we can add to that. Our function is to show them a good time while demonstrating the connections between German music and Mexican and Tex-Mex.