The Process of Being Brave Combo
by Keith Tuxhorn

You would think a band that's been around for 21 years wouldn't have to face dilemmas like this. In February, Brave Combo's Polkasonic album won the 1999 Grammy award for Best Polka Album. This has forced the band to think about slowing down. And in April, the band's latest recording was released — a decidedly pop-oriented collection, assembled specifically to aid the band's efforts to attract a more diverse fan base, and more radio airplay.

Slowing down? Finding more diverse fans? It's all part of the process — and The Process — of being Brave Combo.

But "slowing down" has been happening only in the tempos of the polkas the band currently performs, an adjustment made to accommodate the many new (and hard-core) polka fans gained since Brave Combo's Grammy recognition. "The way that we think about polka dancing is kind of a passé style," said Carl Finch, band leader and founder. "The real breakneck-speed stuff that we do, you're dancing a typical polka style, or a Tejano style, just a shuffling, or step-hop-step. The hip way of dancing polka, and a more prominent style, is a side-by-side, more of a clogging, that's twice as fast."

The Grammy award brought Brave Combo numerous invitations to "...some heavy Polish festivals for the first time, the ones where the most discriminating polka fans will be, and we're going to work at bringing our tempo down and still having the heaviness of the groove and the rock 'n' roll sense, but playing it slower," Finch continued. "This kind of dancing is something we didn't even know existed until we started touring the Northeast and upper Midwest, where the polka fans are the most ravenous. We're playing all that stuff from Polkasonic slower. We're trying to get ourselves in condition — it's a funny thing. We're playing too fast, we're out of shape."

Bassist Cenobio "Bubba" Hernandez admitted, "I'm scared someone may throw something at us. You can play polkas like speed metal, but simultaneously, the Tejanos and Polish people have slowed them down almost to a dirge — slow and funky."

The Grammy award was an unexpected surprise, after the band's previous two nominations, Polkas for a Gloomy World (1995) and Polka Party With Brave Combo (1998), didn't take the prize. "None of us were going to the Grammy awards show," said Finch. "We just thought, 'It's an honor to be nominated again, and we already know the way this is gonna end.' Literally at the last minute, Bubba had the sense that, well, just in case…Bubba's been there the other two times, he's a little more social creature than I am."

Hernandez was sitting with his brother, who teased him about not winning. But when the band's name was announced, "I jumped, all my papers went everywhere, I completely forgot my brother was there." Once he reached the stage, he gave a brief but memorable speech: "Say it with me: P-O-L-K-A! What a beautiful word!"

This is an excerpt from issue #90. To read it all, buy it on the newsstand or subscribe!