On "Vicki's Polka"

Giving it to you straight

We will never stop making polka. It’s in our bones. In fact, I was just interviewed by Taron Cochrane of CBC Saskatchewan about Polka, about its past and its future. Have a listen!

But a lot of listeners have sent in questions about the new track, “Vicki’s Polka”, and I thought it would be good to answer some of them here.

One of the toughest things about making music is that you have to try to make it universal; if it didn’t appeal to lots of people, then you wouldn’t be trying to get lots of people to listen to it.  But the problem is that you can get too universal and impersonal.  How many more songs about love do we need?  How many more about standing tall and being fierce?  These themes are so played out.

So the first thing I want to tell you about “Vicki’s Polka”  is that Vicki was indeed a real person, a real dedicated polka fan, and that she was indeed lost to her family in 2020.  I don’t want to say much more about her, but I know that her family has heard the song many times, and that it was even played at her graveside. 

And I can’t really communicate what this means to me, to you, dear reader.  It’s pretty personal.  But let’s just say that after a few years in punk rock you start to get a little bored of the endless clichés, the self-absorbed fist-pumping about how drunk you’re going to get or about how you and your friends are going to smash the system (though we can still knock those tunes out with gusto when it’s called for).   Vicki’s sister says that when she hears “Vicki’s Polka”, “it’s like she’s back with us again”.  That’s all I need for this one, and if that amazing sense of meaningfulness can’t come across to you in the song, well, then so be it.

But the song does have some more universal elements.  To wit: the most punk rock thing you can do in 2022 is to write a song about the white boomer generation who kept polka alive from the 70s through the 2000s, when the entire world had decided that it was a joke.  As you all know, it is now entirely fashionable to seem edgy or progressive by blaming all the world’s problems on that exact demographic, as though it even makes any sense at all to blame big, insanely diverse groups of people for anything.  The trickster in me liked the idea of having a punk rock album with a song narrating the ordinary life of a white boomer guy meeting an extraordinary woman who lets him live out the polka dream. It’s not going to catapult us to the front page of the Georgia Straight. But that’s kind of the point.

Also: a weekend at Holy Toledo Polka Days in Toledo, Ohio in 2019 was one of the most incredible and eye-opening experiences of my life.  Fuck Paris, fuck London, go to Toledo.  Seriously.  My buddy and I drank 5 beers each for $10.00USD total at a wild place called Beer 30.  We went to Tony Packo’s famous weiner joint and saw all the hot dog buns signed by millions of famous people. We took in a pro hockey and a pro baseball game from the front row for maybe $40 total.  We met these wonderful people who had lived through the slow demolition of local industry and had emerged proud of their battered, bruised town that wouldn’t quit, and who were simply over the moon that anyone under 50 would intentionally come to Toledo to see polka music.  So yeah Denise, Vicki’s Polka is also for you.

So I knew I had to start the song off there, and after asking some Toledo-based family I found out that in the 70s they used to hold massive polka dances at Raceway Park, where people would gamble on horses all morning, enjoy a late buffet lunch, and then drink and dance through the evening with polka masters like Lil’ Wally, The Six Fat Dutchmen and of course Frankie Yankovic. Can you imagine a better time than that? No, no you can not, and if you think you can, you’re absolutely deluded.

And so that’s where the song begins: with Billy K. daring a guy to go over and ask Vicki to dance. Also, Billy K. is a real person too, and he’s a real swell guy.

Musically, this track is my favourite on the album.  Polka might be one of the only genres where you can secure the services of two of the top-10 players in the genre just by sending a couple of emails.  Alex Meixner is a force of nature accordionist with about 8,103 albums and a relentless passion for promoting polka and related styles.  Carl Finch heads up Brave Combo, the alt-polka pioneers whose influence on the Dreadnoughts cannot be overstated.  And of course there’s sax/clarinet player Mike WT Allen of “Polka Time” fame, and banjoist extraordinaire Mike Franklin of the inimitable Chardon Polka Band. 

This collection of musicians playing in their own studios in Ohio, Florida, Texas and Vancouver turned this moderately decent polka into a true polka, a whirlwind of sounds and themes.  Just listen to Carl’s bellow-shakes in the second half of each main verse. Alex’s runs around the gaps in the verses. At moments the careening craziness feels, to me at least, like what it must have felt to be out on the floor with 300 other revelers at Raceway Park.

When Nirvana released In Utero Kurt Cobain famously declared that the world was going to find out if Nirvana fans could handle real punk rock.  I felt the same way about “Vicki’s Polka”: alright you little shits, you say you’re with us, you say you like polka, let’s see if you can handle it straight.

And it turns out that you can. Say it loud, and say it proud, friends: Polka never dies.