Brave Combo have made frequent appearances on such public radio shows as "Fresh Air," "Lonesome Pine Special," and Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion." For the past eight years, the band has been in and out of the studio helping falsetto warbler Tiny Tim record a comeback album. Girl, which Rounder finally released a few months ago, is a one-of-a-kind collection of pop classics that ranges from "Stardust," "Over the Rainbow" and the Lennon-McCartney tune of the title to a cha-cha take on "Hey, Jude" and a lounge-jazz reading of "Stairway to Heaven." And now they're back on the road. Frontman Finch and his five bandmates -- reedman Jeffrey Barnes, trumpeter Danny O'Brien, bassist Bubba Hernandez, drummer Alan Emert and percussionist Joseph Cripps -- will be bringing their traveling polka party to Wilbert's this Sunday, July 21.
SCENE called Barnes, a 44-year-old Northeast Ohio native who worked as Marcia Bull's sax player before joining Brave Combo in 1983, at his home in the college town of Denton, Texas (about 40 miles north of Dallas) to talk about the band and its music.
SCENE: First things first: Will Tiny Tim be with you guys at Wilbert's?
Jeffrey Barnes: Uh, no.
SCENE: You mean there's no chance he might just drop in or something?
JB: It would be a surprise to us.
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| Photo courtesy of Gina Barnes |
SCENE: Bummer! OK, well then let's talk about your other album. Polkas For A Gloomy World seems like the perfect title.
JB: Well, you know, polka is the music that banishes care, and there is no bein' morose when a good polka band is playin.' You can't do it. If your dog died that day, you'll be dancin' anyway. I mean, a lotta people don't know this, because there's plenty of misconceptions among the "hip" -- or supposedly "hip" -- as to what polka is. But you know better, of course, because you're in Cleveland.
SCENE: Uh, not really. We pretty much hate it here, too.
JB: No kidding? I didn't realize that. Well, it's really marvelous, sanguine, upbeat, cheerful, sophisticated, hip, wonderfully played music by fantastic musicians. They play it in ways that are absolutely blood-curdling, and it makes my hair stand on end when I hear a good polka band doin' it. I have an impression of something magically floating in the air, spinning and shooting out rays or sparks when I hear bands like Scrubby & the Dynatones, and Eddie Blazonczyk & the Versatones, and the Treltones -- all these various "-tones."
You know, I think, Man! I mean, this is some absolutely incredible music!
SCENE: Maybe it's just on record that it sounds so boring.
JB: Well, there are some great records out there. And I don't think if people actually did hear it that they could consider it to be boring at all.
There's a lotta people out there who consider music as, like, a lifestyle accessory: "So, I got these cowboy duds and ah'm gonna listen to country-western!" Or: "I put a safety pin through my nose and I'm gonna listen to punk, man!" But if you can destroy all these various auditory prejudices and actually get down to the nitty-gritty and think about music as somethin' more important than that -- maybe, if I may be a little mystical here, kind of a soul-healing force...
I mean, quality is quality, and you can hear it if you listen to the music of these guys. There's no gettin' around it.
SCENE: Cleveland is considered a polka capital, isn't it?
JB: Oh, yeah -- the home of Frankie Yankovic. And coincidentally, I have on my Frankie Yankovic T-shirt, surprisingly enough: "America's polka king!"
Yeah, that's the Slovenian sound, with the banjo and stuff like that. That's kind of different from what we're very often listenin' to, but we listen to that some, too. Like the Polka Poppers: They have a banjo player who runs his fingers up and down the board while the accordion is playin' and sounds like the electric jug player in Roky Erickson's famous psychedelic band, the 13th Floor Elevators!
SCENE: And the polka is a big part of Tex-Mex music, too, right?
JB: Yeah, sure. Mexico is a melting pot, just like the U.S., and they had German and Czech immigrants down there, as well. So a lot of European culture found its way over there -- expecially into the northern borderlands.
SCENE: So why do you guys call yourselves a "nuclear polka band"?
JB: Oh, that was just a media hook, I suppose. Actually Carl thought it up on the spur of the moment, when he was gettin' his master's in drawing and painting over at the university [of North Texas] here. They asked him, "What are you gonna do now?" And he said: "I'm gonna form a 'nuclear polka band' and play mental hospitals."
And everybody laughed -- but actually, that's what happened. A few years later, he found a few like-minded people who were sorta interested in polka, and indeed, they booked a tour of state hospitals for their first gigs.
SCENE: Why state hospitals?
JB: Oh, I don't know. I guess he found a way to actually make some money. And also, [the mental patients] are enthusiastic. They don't have any preconceived ideas about what's hip!
SCENE: How would you summarize Brave Combo's musical mission these days?
JB: Well, a certain thesis sentence might be: "To jangle people's conceptions about what is 'hip' and what isn't." That's a definite one.
And I think as a by-product ... this is a heavy gig, but essentially, "playin' music of other cultures, and, you know, providin' maybe a greater understanding of some other people's music. Hence, lettin' our little light shine and maybe tryin' to do our little bit for cultural understanding -- and see if it leads to somethin' like maybe world peace, or somethin.'"
I mean, I know that's a pretty tall order. But hey, it don't hurt!