A Mad, Mad World

Connecting the Polka Dots

“Polkaholics”, the new documentary by filmmaker Wes Hranchak premieres this Friday at the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival. This loving tribute and celebration of polka tells the story of L’il Wally Jagiello and his coming together for a show with the Polkaholics at Zakopane Lounge in Chicago.

I have had the pleasure of sharing the stage with the Polkaholics. They dish up high octane rock polka. Leader Dandy Don Hedeker, besides being a shredding rock/polka guitarist and professor of biostatistics, is a super knowledgeable polka fanatic historian.

The Polkaholics most recent CD is “Wally!” – an original Polka-Rock Opera that tells the story of Li’l Wally’s Chicago polka glory and Florida sunset.

Read the cool Chicago TimeOut article.

I highly recommend catching this band in the act!

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Two of our tunes, “Pica Pica Polka” and “Musical Priest S” have been nominated in the Just Plain Folks Music Awards 2009.

Only 1/3 of 1% of the 560,000 submitted songs made it to nominee status. Wow! This is indeed an honor.

The tunes are from our 2nd CD, “Magdalena’s Revenge” released in 2007.

This award period was for material released before August 31st, 2008. It takes JPF some time to sort through the hundreds of thousands of entries. Thousands of judges — industry pros, peers, fans — go through the submissions.

In celebration we give to you for your listening pleasure these free mp3 downloads:

Musical Priest S – based on a traditional Celtic reel.
Pica Pica Polka – lazy border-style polka. Pica Pica is Latin for Magpie.

Enjoy!
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“Luna Marie” & “Street Dog” from “Crazed and Enthused” were nominated by JPF in 2006 in the cabaret and cajun song categories respectively.

I’m looking forward to submitting “Skull &Magpies” for next year’s JPF Awards.

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Speisekammer Restaurant owner, Cindy Kahl taped us performing “Magdalena’s Revenge” at their recent Spring Fest. Thanks, Cindy!

The Springfest was so much fun! Here’s more proof:

Beer Holding Contest with Johny Blood adding tuba excitement. Our Brian Rourke and David Groff tried their arms at it.

Women’s Beer Drinking Contest with yours madly competing.

And the Beer Drinking Contest. You’ll here our “Pica Pica Polka” underscoring the guzzling.

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