Brave Combo
Brave Combo
Miller Outdoor Theater
Houston, TX
After an evening of conjunto and zydeco at the 22nd Annual Accordion Kings and Queens Festival, the “nuclear polka” band from Denton, Texas, took the stage at Miller Outdoor Theater in the heart of Houston accompanied by accordion player Ginny Mac from Fort Worth. The sweltering afternoon had calmed into a beautiful, breezy evening and the crowd stretched over the hill was canopied by a dimly starred sky. As he plugged in cords and adjusted straps for the show, frontman and band founder Carl Finch asked the crowd, smiling, “You guys ready to polka?,” and made a request for people to come to the front and fill in the dance floor, converted from the orchestra pit.
The microphone checks ended and the band dove right into an hour of lovingly irreverent covers starting with the “Jenny Lind Polka,” which ended with a clarinet flourish leading straight into the next tune, a waltz with highlights of jazz saxophone. As the triple time sped up, so did the couples spinning on the dance floor. Conventional dances soon took a brief absence from the floor when the band proposed to combine kids’ music with salsa. Touted as the perfect family experience for a family event such as this, the tune began with “Chopsticks” on the keyboard before being joined by the accordion and a salsa line on the saxophone. After a conjunto tune the band played the “fourth most popular polka of all time,” “The Clarinet Polka,” capped with the introductory solo from “Rhapsody in Blue.”
After a dizzying array of tunes including the Venezuelan “Caballo Viejo” and a Greek Tsamiko complete with head-banging, the band brought out the winner of the Big Squeeze Competition from earlier in the evening, Ignacio “Nachito” Morales, a Dallas area high schooler. Keeping with Brave Combo’s trend of being integrative not just musically but player-wise, Nachito led the band through “Viva Seguin,” and in reply to the energetic applause he was asked to stay onstage for a bright polka tribute to legend Esteban “Steve” Jordon. It went so smoothly that one would never expect that Nachito didn’t yet know the tune, and indeed the band seemed quite impressed.
An hour into the show came a mash of the classic “Hernando’s Hideaway” with “The Twist.” On the dance floor and atop the grassy hill over Hermann Park, there were Twisters everywhere and of every demographic. Already on their feet, the masses were happy to enjoy “the Brave Combo ‘Chicken Dance’ experience,” followed closely by the last tune, a rock-heavy “Hokey Pokey.” As the laser lights flashed and spun for one last flare, the audience danced and laughed along to a rap solo by Carl Finch. The show had tired out the kid in many of the audience members and by the time that Brave Combo left the stage, the faces in the crowd all held similar looks of elated exhaustion.
by Marie Meyers
Miller Outdoor Theater
Houston, TX
After an evening of conjunto and zydeco at the 22nd Annual Accordion Kings and Queens Festival, the “nuclear polka” band from Denton, Texas, took the stage at Miller Outdoor Theater in the heart of Houston accompanied by accordion player Ginny Mac from Fort Worth. The sweltering afternoon had calmed into a beautiful, breezy evening and the crowd stretched over the hill was canopied by a dimly starred sky. As he plugged in cords and adjusted straps for the show, frontman and band founder Carl Finch asked the crowd, smiling, “You guys ready to polka?,” and made a request for people to come to the front and fill in the dance floor, converted from the orchestra pit.
The microphone checks ended and the band dove right into an hour of lovingly irreverent covers starting with the “Jenny Lind Polka,” which ended with a clarinet flourish leading straight into the next tune, a waltz with highlights of jazz saxophone. As the triple time sped up, so did the couples spinning on the dance floor. Conventional dances soon took a brief absence from the floor when the band proposed to combine kids’ music with salsa. Touted as the perfect family experience for a family event such as this, the tune began with “Chopsticks” on the keyboard before being joined by the accordion and a salsa line on the saxophone. After a conjunto tune the band played the “fourth most popular polka of all time,” “The Clarinet Polka,” capped with the introductory solo from “Rhapsody in Blue.”
After a dizzying array of tunes including the Venezuelan “Caballo Viejo” and a Greek Tsamiko complete with head-banging, the band brought out the winner of the Big Squeeze Competition from earlier in the evening, Ignacio “Nachito” Morales, a Dallas area high schooler. Keeping with Brave Combo’s trend of being integrative not just musically but player-wise, Nachito led the band through “Viva Seguin,” and in reply to the energetic applause he was asked to stay onstage for a bright polka tribute to legend Esteban “Steve” Jordon. It went so smoothly that one would never expect that Nachito didn’t yet know the tune, and indeed the band seemed quite impressed.
An hour into the show came a mash of the classic “Hernando’s Hideaway” with “The Twist.” On the dance floor and atop the grassy hill over Hermann Park, there were Twisters everywhere and of every demographic. Already on their feet, the masses were happy to enjoy “the Brave Combo ‘Chicken Dance’ experience,” followed closely by the last tune, a rock-heavy “Hokey Pokey.” As the laser lights flashed and spun for one last flare, the audience danced and laughed along to a rap solo by Carl Finch. The show had tired out the kid in many of the audience members and by the time that Brave Combo left the stage, the faces in the crowd all held similar looks of elated exhaustion.
by Marie Meyers
