Accordion-O-Rama Photos

Ready to go

Four accordions on one stage in a former Carnegie library in Zumbrota. I had heard about Accordion-O-Rama for years but we finally made it down ("down" meaning about 65 miles south of the Twin Cities) on Saturday night, Oct. 23. I was thoroughly charmed by the whole experience. Here are some photos from the evening. And here's my review.

The crowd gathers

L2R: Dan Newton, Patrick Harison, Simone Perrin, Denny Malmberg

Patrick Harison

Dan Newton

Denny Malmberg

Simone Perrin

L2R: Dan Newton, Patrick Harison, Simone Perrin, Denny Malmberg

 All performance photos by John Whiting.

Concert review: Accordion-O-Rama: Magic on a moonlit night in Minnesota

Originally published at MinnPost.com, Monday, Oct. 25, 2010 

Live music is about the music, of course, and the musicians, but it’s also about the setting. We all have our favorite place to hear music, whether it’s a booth at the Dakota or a bar stool at the Artists’ Quarter, the main floor at First Ave. or a corner table at a coffee shop.

Last Saturday night, the setting for Accordion-O-Rama was a Carnegie library in Zumbrota turned art gallery/concert hall, where nearly 100 people gathered to hear four accordionists from the Twin Cities.

Accordion-O-Rama, an annual event with a tongue-in-cheek name, was conceived in 2004 by Dan Newton, a.k.a. Daddy Squeeze, and Marie Marvin, who runs Crossings at Carnegie. The idea was to hold a miniature accordion festival, showcasing different musicians and musical styles, in a town where people were likely to show up, a stronghold of Polish and German heritage and polka.

Three CD release events to cure those February blues

You can count on having a good time at a CD release event. The months and sometimes years of work that go into creating a CD are over, and the artist has shiny new music to share. Friends and relatives show up. (They're fairly easy to spot because they're the ones who make most of the crowd noise and pay the least attention to the performance.)

If you like, you can meet the artist and "take the band home in a box," as Craig Eichhorn will suggest at the Dakota.

February brings three CD releases by three area artists, each a unique talent and a major presence on our music scene. The first happens tonight (Wednesday).

Dan (Daddy Squeeze) Newton: 'Hi-Top Sneakers'

When: 8 tonight, Feb. 13
Where: The Varsity Theater
How much: $12

This is a jazz column, and "Hi-Top Sneakers" is not a jazz CD, but I've been a Daddy Squeeze fan since he came to my house several years ago and played for a bowling party. He's so busy with his other bands (Café Accordion Orchestra, the Rockin' Pinecones) and gigs (he's a frequent guest of the Guy's All-Star Show Band on "A Prairie Home Companion") that I'm surprised he had time for a solo CD, especially one with all-original tunes.

It's a rollicking mix of roots music and Western swing, jug band, Latin jazz, Colombian cumbia, gospel polka, Parisian romance and kitchen sink. If you can sit still while hearing it, you're probably dead.

Newton's CD releases often include dancing, and although the Varsity is not a dance hall, "people can feel free to make their own space to dance," Newton says. "Almost all the music I play is dancer-friendly."

A self-taught musician who began on piano, Newton earned his name and fame playing the accordion, an instrument widely considered uncool. By mastering a variety of musical styles and surrounding himself with other fine musicians, he made it cool.

"I guess I've never been too concerned about being a part of the accordion world," he says. "One of the things that sets me apart from the stereotypical accordionist is the music I choose to play. Fortunately, most musical traditions before rock had a history of accordion. So it was easy to find recordings of accordions in Jazz, Western Swing, Country, Tex-Mex, Blues, Cajun, Latin, Scandinavian, Irish, et cetera … all the music that I liked to play. Or maybe it's because I'm just an old hippie at heart."

For the Varsity gig, Newton will sing and play accordion and piano, maybe tambourine and kazoo. He'll bring the musicians who joined him on the CD, including Pat Donahue, Gary Raynor, Bob Ekstrand, Tom Lewis and Steve Kaul.

Apologies for the late notice, but imagine what this music can do to lift the "it's-too-cold-for-February-won't-winter-ever-end?" blues. See him perform here.
 
Connie Evingson: 'Little Did I Dream'

When: 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 25
Where: The Dakota
How much: $20

"My Attorney Bernie," "Zoot Walks In" and "Peel Me a Grape" ("Pop me a cork/French me a fry") are a few of the smart and witty tunes on Evingson's latest CD, her eighth. Earlier releases spotlight gypsy jazz, the Beatles and Peggy Lee. This time it's songs by St. Paul native and jazz great Dave Frishberg, a four-time Grammy nominee the New York Times described as "the Stephen Sondheim of jazz songwriting."

"I've been in love with Dave Frishberg's work forever," Evingson says. When she discovered that Frishberg and Twin Cities saxophonist Dave Karr had been classmates and friends at the University of Minnesota in the 1950s, she thought it would be fun to bring them together in the studio. (Karr also provides the hipster spoken introduction to "Zoot Walks In.")

The songs are first-class, including better-known and lesser-known Frishberg gems. Some are wry and others are romantic, giving Evingson ample room to display her impeccable interpretative skills. She's in beautiful voice on the CD and you can expect the same at the Dakota, where her band will include Karr, Gordy Johnson, Phil Hey, and Mark Henderson — everyone who appears on the CD except Frishberg. His place at the piano will be taken by Phil Aaron, and you won't mind a bit. It will all be very classy.

Irv Williams: 'Finality'

When: 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 29 and March 1
Where: The Artists' Quarter
How much: $10 

True, Williams already had a CD release event at the Dakota in early January. But if he wants another one across the river, who's going to stop him? There will probably be at least one table full of his grandchildren, and plenty of the AQ's regulars will come out to celebrate "Mr. Smooth," who's "88 and playing great."

Some of the songs on "Finality" are wistful and nostalgic — "Wee Small Hours," "Old Folks" (he'll try to tell you this is his theme song), "Too Late Now." Others, like "Come Rain or Come Shine," swing hard. His tone is sublime. For the CD release, it's likely he'll be joined by Peter Schimke, Gordy Johnson and Kenny Horst.

I waited too long to start listening to Williams and I've been trying to catch up ever since. This is jazz everyone can enjoy, full of emotion, wisdom, experience, and soul. View a video of Williams performing at his own 88th birthday party at the AQ here.

Originally published on MinnPost.com on February 13, 2008

MinnPost: Three CD Releases

Dan "Daddy Squeeze" Newton, Connie Evingson, and Irv Williams all have new CDs and they're all having CD release events this month. Good news for local music and worth writing about for MinnPost. My column is short and so was my time so I interviewed just one of the three, Daddy Squeeze, who celebrates the release of Hi-Top Sneakers at the Varsity tonight. I asked him, "When did you start playing accordion? Did you choose it or did your parents make you play?"

Dan: I started on piano. I was "self-taught" or learned by ear. I also played some guitar, dulcimer, harmonica, recorder, mandolin, ukulele, and other odd instruments. In 1978 I was playing piano in a country band in my home town of Lincoln, NE. We got booked in a bunch of bars that didn't have pianos. I was complaining to a friend that I wouldn't be able to do the gigs. She said she had an instrument with piano-shaped keys in her attic that her uncle used to play. I brought it to the band's next rehearsal and the leader, who had just returned from a trip to Texas and Louisiana, said if I was going to play accordion we had to learn some Cajun, Zydeco and Tex-Mex tunes. It got quite a reaction from the hippies and cowboys that hung out in the Nebraska clubs back then. By 1987 I was living in the Twin Cities, playing only accordion.


Photo of Dan Newton from his Web site.