Band Leader Hears the Polka Wave Rolling In

There was this television commercial showing a thirsty customer trying to belly up to a bar, but he couldn’t find room. So he went to the jukebox and played a polka.

The bar emptied.

But Dave Banasiak, 50, believes polka music is about to make a charge, much like the emergence of country music.

“Now is the time,” said the leader, director and accordionist for the California Connection, a six-piece polka band. “More and more people are turning to polka music and dancing.”

In fact, says the Irvine man, the polka is catching on in such places as Florida, Tennessee, Colorado, Texas and Georgia, in addition to California.

The Orange County Polka Club has 200 members, and about the same number have enrolled in the Southern California Polka Boosters Club, Banasiak said. These are in addition to private organizations that hold polka dances.

Banasiak, a Santa Ana glass company employee, said that one indication of the polka’s emerging popularity is the decision of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Science in 1985 to present Grammy Awards for best polka song and best album.

And it also didn’t hurt when Banasiak took his band to Nashville to record his latest album, called “The California Polka,” which he says presents a “happy and healthy sound.”

It also describes California in Polka tempo and seeks “to overcome a couple decades of fun-making of the polka.”

While Banasiak hopes to cash in on what he believes will be an increasing awareness and appreciation of polka music, he said, “I don’t think I’m going to make big-time money.”

It’s going to be a pittance contrasted with what country and rock bands make, he said. “Those bands deal in terms of millions of dollars and I’m talking in terms of hundreds of thousands of dollars for polka groups.”

He’s banking on his new sound and new style of polka music to attract a new crowd of listeners in addition to the old-guard polka advocates. It’s also a new adventure in dancing, he adds, contending that the polka is more invigorating than jogging.

“We’re presenting a new style and a new sound that’s different than any other sound in polka music today,” he said. “It’s got a clean and brilliant sound that features the brass and clarinet, and there will still be the accordion. That will always be.”

Older polka lovers are accepting the new sound, he believes.

“They like what they are hearing and the younger group approves of it because it doesn’t have the old traditional polka sound,” he said, pointing out that all vocals are in English.

Banasiak said that while the polka has its roots in Europe, one of the numbers his bands plays “is an old Mexican polka that dates back to the days of Pancho Villa. It’s called Jesse’s Polka.”

Besides helping to promote the polka nationally, one of Banasiak’s goals is to establish an Orange County polka dance club. His first attempt will be a program open to the public on Nov. 16 at the Phoenix Club in Anaheim.

“We’ll be introducing ourselves to the public and I know it’s going to be the next big musical sound and style,” he vowed. “People are waiting to greet it.”