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Oktoberfest Season is Here

For years, I’ve dreamed of playing Oktoberfests.

I’ve seen the original in Munich; it’s cool, huge, crazy, a lot of slow-ish oompah music and giant beers and men who make loudmouthed American assholes look like Anne of Green Gables.

But the American Oktoberfests are different. Though a few people have told me that attendance has been declining over the years, the USA still hosts several bang-up festivals every year where people gather in tents and on city streets to enjoy Sauerkraut, beer, wurst, schnitzel, pierogi…. and of course, Polka.

So the Dreadnoughts have finally taken the plunge, and are playing two Oktoberfest gigs in a few days. All thanks to the masterful Alex Meixner tossing us one of the gigs he couldn’t do. That one is in Waukesha, WI on Sep 21, and we have no idea what’s going on there except that there is a tent and that we get to play three sets in it.

In order to become a little more Oktoberfest-friendly, we’ve added the following trad-polkas to our set, songs that were absolute bangers when “Polka Time!” did them back in Vancouver:

• Who Stole the Keeshka?

• Who Likes Pierogi?

• Pennsylvania Polka

• Beer Barrel Polka

• Fiesta (a Pogues Cover featuring their version of the “Liechtensteiner Polka”)

And I’ve given the poor guys in the band a single practice to learn these from shitty recordings I made years ago. Then it’s off to the Land of Cheese to play them all in front of some wurst-munching Wisconsinite weirdos. Hooray! Nothing can possibly go wrong with this plan.

The plan, of course, is part of a larger long-term plan to develop us into an alt-Oktoberfest act, with 25-ish polka/trad-folk songs we can do with two accordions and no electric guitar.

I had an epiphany after last week’s pessimistic post; I put on a polka playlist and on came the brilliant “Polka Hero” by Eddie Blazonczyk (1941-2012) and the Versatones.

The lyrics are kind of interesting:

When I was a little boy, my father said to me
come sit beside me son and tell me what you’d like to be
I thought a while and then I knew
just what I’d really like to do
I smiled at Dad and this is what I said

I wanna be a polka hero
I wanna be a polka star
(something in Polish)
In the ballrooms and the clubs of cities near and far

Now I am a polka star the leader of the band
Radio and TV shows playing clubs throughout the land
This music has been good to me
It’s what I love to do, you see
Let me tell you once more if I can

It’s great to be a polka hero….

This song really hit me in the right spot, because of how brash and confident it is. It’s a bold assertion of the Polka musician’s right to ascend the ladders of status and fame. It’s a man talking about his destiny in the wild world of traditional dance music. In other words, it has the same vibe as “Polka Never Dies”. Not pessimistic, not backwards-looking. Forwards-looking, on the offensive. It says: there must be a space for us, and if there isn’t one, we’ll make it.

So that’s it. No more pessimistic bullshit about polka fading away. Time to walk the walk. Wisconsin, here we come.