We got the same message about eight times: “Stoked to see you in Pittsburgh/Cleveland! Weird venue tho.”
At first, we chose the Pittsburgh Winery and the Music Box in Cleveland simply because they reached out, were available, and weren’t going to involve any useless promoters/fees/merch cuts that end up slashing like 30% off your income.
But I’ll admit, when I saw the tickets they were selling, I got a little nervous. Table seating? Dinner seats? We are (amongst other things) a punk band that spits beer at the audience while band members accelerate off the stage and fling themselves into the audience. Table seating?
So the arrival at each venue was pretty similar: “Hey! Cool looking room, great stage, great sound system, great vibes! That’s… a lot of tables!” Table seating for literally hundreds of people. Candles. Tablecloths. Centrepieces. Wine glasses. Huh.
The guys in the band, all relatively new to this gig, were visibly nervous. Their last gig was to 1200 screaming punk/folk fans in Portland, OR. This was what we call a contrast. These poor kids looked a little nervous.
So what do leaders do on moments like these? They lead. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Ol’ Nicky’s got a plan. I’ve got more than a few tricks up his sleeve for a venue like this.”
This was a lie. I had no tricks. I was going to wing it. But it seemed to reassure them. It’s leadership 101: you don’t necessarily need a plan, you often just need the unit to get the morale boost that comes along with thinking that there is a plan.
Oh, and of course, in Pittsburgh, the morale boost from getting all-inclusive free wine all night from an amazing winery. This is us working our way through our seventh bottle backstage before the show:
At the start of the first song in Pitt, I explicitly instructed everyone to remain seated and to not approach the stage for any reason. That was the rule. And for the first two songs, the audience complied, and I looked over at my bandmates whose fluid performance was straining against their obvious discomfort: this was weird. King Louie sarcastically called over to me after the second song: “Yeah we should do this all the time, eh?” As he heroically slashed away at the fiddle. But then Roll The Woodpile Down came on and the enormous tension that had been building in the crowd broke loose like a floodgate, and they rushed the stage, grabbed Jungle Jim, carried him off to the bar and the party was on. It never stopped.
It was wild, and roughly the same phenomenon played out in Cleveland, only twice as insane and even more fun. Seven or 8 kids, aged 4-12, leapt up on stage and started to dance around to the Surfin’ Turnips’ Turbo Island:
The thing is, polka is supposed to be inclusive music that it cuts across generational boundaries, and at some dingy punk-metal bar there just isn’t anywhere for 12 year olds or 81 year-olds to be, legally and spatially. There were older Polka fans watching gleefully from tables in the back as a four year old did something like an Irish jig on stage. Swish.
And despite being a vet of a few hundred shows, I saw something during Vicki’s Polka I’d never seen before… a 100-person polka train/conga line snake in a circle around the huge venue and double in size until the back and the front of the train connected and there was just this huge circle of dancers rolling around and around the room under beautiful chandeliers, their joyous faces lit up by candlelight, the whole scene framed by the beautiful Cuyahoga River as it made its final push out into Lake Erie. There, in the home of Cleveland-style polka—the greatest of all polka styles—people of all ages joined together in communion. Bloody magic.
This has been my attitude for years: no matter the show, no matter the venue, we make it fun or we absolutely destroy ourselves trying. Never give up. Never surrender. But that’s a lesson that you have to learn, and it was awesome to watch the new NYC dudes learning it: this trad-punk music is powerful enough that if you just refuse to accept the possible limitations of a venue or a crowd, you can just push through and come out having even more fun than at a regular old boring old punk club.
And it doesn’t hurt when you have cool bands like Fuck Yeah Dinosaurs opening for you, an amazing punk band that sings only about dinosaurs. Oh, and of course, in Cleveland, the mighty Captain Tom and the Hooligans, whose fast, raucous, manic trad-polka scared the shit out of us during the sound check, making us realize that we had to put on an amazing show or risk getting upstaged:
Tom was nice enough to let me and Pauly Shoreman up on accordion for In Heaven There Is No Beer and Who Stole The Keeshka, and I, drunk on Polka, stormed the stage and picked up the squeezebox when I heard the opening lines of Kevin Quain’s Mr Valentine’s Dead. It was big, it was messy, it was the absolute best.
So look: the dingy metal-punk hellholes have been fun over the years, and the muddy festivals have been a blast, and even the pubs have had their charm. But I think it’s time to announce it: the Dreadnoughts are officially a dinner party band. We want to play nothing but lavish indoor supper clubs and sit-down wineries, and if some of you are alienated by that well then you can just bugger off. But somehow I don’t think many of you will be…
I completed my groupie status and, after blowing off my job's holiday party to go to St. Vitus in December, I literally flew out to Cleveland just for one night, just for this show. My buddy drove down from Detroit, and we had an absolute blast. I knew it would be an awesome show in the polka heart of the United States, and it didn't disappoint.
I'm the one that tweeted (X'd?) the video of you singing along with In Heaven There is No Beer. I also have the entirety of Vicki's Polka, including the polka line, if you want it. I can try to share on X but I think it's too long, and it doesn't look like Substack lets me upload stuff unless I'm missing it somewhere.
As an aside, if your clarinet player is ever under the weather for shows in NY/NJ/PA, I'm your dude.
Kidding, but not really.
In all seriousness, my friend had come from a funeral that morning, and when you said polka would cure the sadness (coming from the Browns losing, for much of the audience at least), you were not wrong. It was the most fun we've had in a long, long time. Went back to the hotel and provided sloppily drunk renditions of our favorites to the poor, bemused bartender until they kicked us out at 2:00 A.M. What a fucking blast. Thanks so much again.
That was a hell of a show in Cleveland, can attest to the polka train/conga line circling the room (my ass struggled to keep up but we linked up dammit!)
I can't even deny I was excited all week for this show, and now a week later dunno what I'm gonna do with myself this Saturday. But, great show all. Polka never fuckin dies!