Category: Accordion, Instrument of the Gods
And what better way to mark the start of both Pride Month and National Accordion Awareness Month than with a rainbow accordion?
Weltmeister makes a couple of rainbow accordions — the 30-key, 72-bass, 5-register Juwel (US$3,000), and the slightly larger 34-key, 72-bass, 5-register Achat (US$3,300). Accordions aren’t cheap!
Happy Pride Month and happy National Accordion Awareness Month, everybody!
Need context? Here’s the Wikipedia entry for Daft Punk.
This Saturday, April 15th, Clearwater will be holding its annual Ukulele Fest in the District in their downtown area, and I’ll be playing on Cleveland Street near the Capitol Theatre with Tom Hood and the Tropical Sons at 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m..
Ukulele Fest in the District is described as:
A fun-filled and educational day for families, couples, and singles of all ages featuring free beginner Ukulele lessons, advanced classes for experienced Ukulele players, continuous music by world class ukulele/ acoustic groups along the streets, face painting; food, drink and merchandise vendors, great restaurants and an exciting early evening concert. Bring your ukulele and strum along!
Come on down, bring a ukulele, and catch me for some good ol’ accordion-and-ukulele rock and roll!
Last night, I joined Tom Hood and the Tropical Sons at Bayou Bistro, a little bar and restaurant located right on the bayou just east of the Greek “village” in Tarpon Springs.
Wednesday is “open mic night” at Bayou Bistro, where anyone can hop onstage and play for the patrons. Since there’s no guarantee that anyone will bring an instrument, most open mic nights feature a “house band,” which in Bayou Bistro’s case is the Tropical Sons.
While Bayou Bistro is a short drive away for most of the other band members, it’s a fifty- to eighty-minute drive for Yours Truly, depending on the traffic. I can’t do it every Wednesday, but I try to play when I can.
Bayou Bistro is a charming down-home bar. If you drive past it, you might not even realize that it’s a bar — it’s hidden away by the water, and you could easily mistake it for a fishing shack. But it is indeed a bar, with friendly staff, and sandwiches that don’t disappoint (I’m fond of their mahi mahi, shrimp, and banh mi sandwiches).
As you might expect, a band called the “Tropical Sons” has a sort of uniform, and in our case, it’s aloha shirt and shorts with optional hat. For last night’s gig, I went with my “Disney Polynesian” shirt, which is one of my favorites. It’s a gift from my friends Natalie and Eldon, who somehow found it at a market in Ottawa:
We played from about 5:15 until 8:30, with a break to get a bite in the middle. Here’s what my view looked like at the start of the gig…
…and here’s what the audience saw:
This is the “accordion’s eye view:”
When we took our break, Mary took the stage:
She attended the gig to catch our act and collect the ukulele she won at the raffle for Tampa Bay Ukulele Day, which took place last Sunday in Dunedin.
She played a number of amusing songs, including one called Pink Flamingos, the unofficial symbol of Cheektowaga and other towns in the Buffalo area. As a long-time resident of Toronto, I got the reference.
A short while after, we started our second set, also known as the “Sunset Set.”
And we played on into the night, wrapping up around 8:30 (Bayou Bistro closes at 9).
Once again, a fun gig! I’m going to be busy for the next couple of weeks, so it may be a little while before I get a chance to play at Bayou Bistro again.
I’m playing more classic rock on accordion this evening with Tom Hood and the Tropical Sons at Bayou Bistro in Tarpon Springs!
The fun starts at 5:30 and wraps up around 8:30. If you’re in the area and like seafood, beer, and great live music, come on over! It’s an open mic night, so if you feel like playing with us, bring your instrument!
Here are some scenes from the last time I played there, a few weeks ago:
Tampa Bay Ukulele Day takes place this Sunday in downtown Dunedin! It’s a day of workshops where you can hone your uke skills, a “strum and stroll” event where you can see scenic Dunedin while playing, and see local talent, including Tom Hood and the Tropical Suns, which includes Yours Truly on accordion!
The schedule
There’s a lot going on, and it’s happening all day. I’ll be with Tom Hood and the Tropical Sons at Dunedin Brewery at the start, then moving to Pioneer Park later on in the day.
| When | What | Where |
| 10:00 a.m. | “Plays Well With Others” workshop | Scottish Cultural Center |
| 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. | Ladies of Uke | Nature’s Food Patch |
| 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. | Anne Milanese, SpermWhale and D’Uke’Leles | Dunedin History Museum |
| 11:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. | Tom Hood and the Tropical Sons (and me on accordion!) play 3 sets: 11:30, 12:30, and 1:30 | Dunedin Brewery |
| 11:30 a.m. | “Finding Your Inner Chord” workshop | Scottish Cultural Center |
| 12:00 noon | Free beginner ukulele lesson with Norine and friends | Pioneer Park |
| 1:00 p.m. | Family concert with Julie Austin and Connie Mason | Pioneer Park |
| 1:00 p.m. | Percussion workshop | Scottish Cultural Center |
| 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | Big Tiki and The Mai Tais | Honu Restuarant and Tiki Bar |
| 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | Jct 27 | Fenway Hotel |
| 2:00 p.m. | Dunedin Ukes lead a strum and stroll through Dunedin | Starts at Pioneer Park |
| 2:00 p.m. | Children’s Art Music Shaker | Pioneer Park |
| 2:00 p.m. | Emmitt Carlisle Uke the Planet | Pioneer Park |
| 2:30 p.m. | Chris Tracy — funk to punk | Pioneer Park |
| 3:00 p.m. | Dunedin Ukes playalong jam | Pioneer Park |
| 4:00 p.m. | Renee and the Rollers | Pioneer Park |
| 4:30 p.m. | Tom Hood and the Tropical Sons (and me on accordion!) | Pioneer Park |
| 5:00 p.m. | Jay Nunes Jam Band | Pioneer Park |
| 6:00 p.m. | The Flea Bitten Dawgs | Pioneer Park |
| 7:00 p.m. | Super Uke Dance Band | Pioneer Park |
Workshops with The Flea Bitten Dawgs!
Improve your skills with these workshops hosted by The Flea Bitten Dawgs, a band who describe themselves as “ukulele jazz Americana!” The fee is $30 per workshop, or you can attend all three for $60:
- Plays Well with Others (10:00 a.m.): This workshop is created to help a group of players playing the same instruments to sound exciting to an audience. The challenge is to become a group with individuals playing separate parts of a song. We’ll break into different groups, with each group learning their section of the arrangement, and we’ll then put it all together to create the song.
- Finding Your Inner Chord (11:30 a.m.): This workshop is about think of chords as sounds instead of a form on the neck. You’ll learn how to make your songs interesting and how to get away from the habit of just strumming through a song. If you write songs, you’ll find a better voice for your chord progressions. While this is not a class about theory, we will touch on the basics of chord construction.
- Percussion Workshop (1:00 p.m.): Explore how different beats give a song its character. Learn how beats move the music and engage better with the audience. We’ll start with basic rhythms and work into more complex ones. Our goal is to move away from strumming four beats to a measure and dig into the structure of the song. While this is a percussion workshop, you can use this knowledge with any instrument you play. We recommend you bring a shaker, or small hand drum, but tapping on your ukulele will work. This workshop comes with take-home lesson sheets.
Register for any or all of the workshops here.
The Flea Bitten Dawgs are:
- David Henry Spangler on ukulele and lead vocal,
- Thom Pallozola on lead ukulele and vocals, and
- Lee Kram on percussion and vocals.
Their song list crosses ten decades of music. They mix originals in with the covers they love. One of Thom’s songs was recorded by Supe Granda of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, and two of David’s songs were recorded by the group for the Narrow Boat Sessions, Great Britain’s premier folk music organization. PBS produced a segment of Thom’s involvement with the ukulele which featured The Flea Bitten Dawgs.
Raffles!
You can buy raffle tickets — $5 each or 5 for $20 — to win one of the following:
- Ukuleles!
- a $100 gift certificate to Pisces Sushi Bistro
- Two tickets to Jake Shimabukuro’s show at the Capitol Theatre on April 14th
Accordions and beer!
And of course, I’ll be there, with a couple of accordions, playing first at Dunedin Brewery from 11:30 until about 2 or 2:30, then at Pioneer Park around 4:30. Join me!