{"id":973,"date":"2011-08-19T13:04:18","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T20:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/billchapin.net\/allthecitylights\/?p=973"},"modified":"2015-01-12T09:31:52","modified_gmt":"2015-01-12T17:31:52","slug":"worthy-of-a-shout-out-cotatis-got-a-squeezebox-festival-rohnert-park-never-sleeps-at-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/billchapin.net\/allthecitylights\/2011\/08\/worthy-of-a-shout-out-cotatis-got-a-squeezebox-festival-rohnert-park-never-sleeps-at-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Worthy of a Shout-Out: Cotati’s got a squeezebox festival, Rohnert Park never sleeps at night"},"content":{"rendered":"
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San Francisco's own Those Darn Accordions are the prime attraction at the annual Cotati Accordion Festival (photo by Jim Merithew via www.thosedarnaccordions.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I own an accordion, but I wouldn’t say I know how to play it. (I once told an accordion player whom I was interviewing that calling me “a fellow accordion player” was like calling someone a doctor because they owned a stethoscope.)<\/p>\n

Accordions, as you may know, have a piano-style keyboard on one side of the bellows and rows of buttons capable of playing a different chord or bass note on the other.\u00a0Any damn fool with a working knowledge of piano can play the keyboard side, and that’s usually the case whenever an indie-rock band’s keyboardist straps on an accordion\u2014they don’t bother with the baffling arrangement of buttons.<\/p>\n

True accordion players, on the other hand, can work all kinds of magic with those buttons. I once watched an award-winning polka bandleader up close, and his fingers were blazing up and down both sides of the instrument, working in concert to produce music in a way no other instrument could.<\/p>\n

That’s the sort of mastery I expect will be on display at the Cotati Accordion Festival<\/a> on Saturday and Sunday. Just off U.S. 101 in Sonoma County between Petaluma and Rohnert Park, Cotati (population 7,265) has been turning its unusual hexagonal downtown plaza<\/a> into a mecca for accordion fans for 21 years\u2014an annual tradition that apparently<\/a> grew out of nothing more than one well-connected, civic-minded citizen’s admiration for a locally recorded accordion album.<\/p>\n

What impresses me about the festival, other than its mere existence, is its diversity. Bands of all genres that prominently feature accordion are invited to perform. Headlining the event is\u00a0Those Darn Accordions<\/a>, a San Francisco rock band featuring four\u2014four!\u2014”extreme squeezeboxers” backed by a rhythm section that does everything from Led Zeppelin covers to goofy originals. The bill includes at least three more San Francisco bands that combine traditional accordion music with rock ‘n’ roll: Irish folk-rock band Culann’s Hounds<\/a>; more general accordion-driven folk-rock band\u00a0The Mad Maggies<\/a>; and\u00a0Polkacide<\/a>, which answers the eternal question, “What happens when you mix punk and polka?”<\/p>\n

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Also performing:<\/p>\n