The band that played Springfield (think “The Simpsons”) comes to Fort Smith

Carl Finch is the leader and founding member of Brave Combo, an award winning polka-rock combo from Denton, Texas. Brave Combo will appear 7:30 p.m., Jan. 15 at the Fort Smith Event Center (12 N. 11th St.). Doors open at 6:30. Tickets can be purchased for $45 at the door. Student tickets are available for $25 for students under 21 with valid ID.

Brave Combo’s appearance in Fort Smith is a part of the Second Street Live Concert series.

Second Street Live is a non-profit performing arts organization. While the venue at 101 N. Second St. awaits completion, the organization uses the Event Center space for its monthly concert series. The new theater is scheduled to open in the fall of 2009 and will seat between 250-270.

THE BRAVE INTERVIEW
Peter Lewis, the arts and entertainment guru for The City Wire, recently interviewed Finch ahead of his visit to Fort Smith.

Peter Lewis: Did you have any conception of what Brave Combo would become when you started out in 1979?

Carl Finch: Nah, not really.  I just wanted to follow the concept just to see what would happen but I had no expectations at all. We just kind of followed our noses.

Lewis: How has your artistic vision changed over the years? Or has it really?

Finch: In a way it hasn’t really at all. The original idea was to take a specific kind of music, polka, and expand it a little bit. It was chosen number one because I was really digging it. My impression of polka growing up, I grew up in Texarkana where there was no Polka awareness, the notion that pretty much all people had in “non-Polka areas” was as the butt of a joke. I always had that feeling about it. I stumbled across a bunch of polka records one time and I liked the jackets, mainly. It was just kind of kitschy and fun, and they were real cheap. It was in the late 70s when distributors started dumping vinyl.  It was a revelation to me. My impression was totally wrong … and for whatever reason that this was the most maligned music. And I was really digging it. But then I thought you know what, “this is pretty unfair.” Then I thought about the broad spectrum of music then and the top heaviness of the pop world at that time was disgusting. The big bloated stars of the time there was no place for anyone else to grab a piece of the buy. Which I think motivated a lot of the punk movement and certainly some people went headlong into disco but both of those were reactions against the corporate rock world that dominated everything then. In some ways I was just following suit, reacting in my own way, saying “screw that” I’d rather play this stuff and it’s cooler than anything that I’ve heard in the last ten years anyways. So, our idea was to shake peoples conceptions of that (polka). I think that what the band stands for now is that it’s just not fair to the music for a person or anybody to just blanket a whole style of music and just label it a certain way and it’s not good for them either. It’s just amazing to me now because it seems that all of our fans have one thing in common, they seem to really like the fact that we opened up a different world of music. And a lot of people that were open to us became less judgmental about music in general. If there is anything that we’re doing that is positive, that’s it. It wasn’t a goal so much, we were just wanting to see what would happen if you played polka as a rock band. So, that was the original concept. And that’s still there, we just went into so many different situations that were fueled by opportunities we never would have imagined.

Lewis: I guess it is fairly ironic then that, all of this as Brave Combo, the Grammy wins, the successful career, it was spawned as a result of you buying a polka record because you were attracted to the sleeve. Especially since it’s been so successful and so accepted.

Finch: That aspect, the fact that we’ve actually been accepted to some degree in a mainstream way, that does blow my mind. Because I really didn’t think we would ever have enough fans that would convince me that some aspect of this was right. The thought was, if we could just eke by, make a living, then that’s good enough. But people really seem to respond to the concept.  World music as a term didn’t really exist when the band formed. I think around the world certain people were looking to be influenced by other things outside their own world. Going beyond, if you’re a white rock guy and being influenced by the blues. I mean leaping totally outside of your culture and into another one. I can’t even tell you how rewarding, going into the polka world as mutts, outsiders, who weren’t Slovenian, Czechs, Poles, Germans, or Italians; we were just mutts basically but to work our way into that world and then be accepted full on by that world 100%, to be part of their realm, which is totally under the radar in the pop world, even the indie pop world. And it’s a huge world, it’s a big audience.  And the fact that they now accept us, that’s one of the coolest things and that’s something we’re very protective of. We respect those who came before us and paved the way and made polka music what it is.

Lewis: So you don’t find it to be a challenge balancing the difference between the spin you put on polka while also pleasing the purists?

Finch: Yeah, we play Polish festivals, Slovenian festivals, German festivals. I think we weren’t accepted for awhile. We were hated by a lot of people because we were bringing in subversive elements to the music. A lot of the polka purists felt that. Not because rock n’ roll carries a lot of negative stuff as the world might see it but just that we were introducing elements that were either watering down the music or taking it away from the tradition. People had to go through a lot to accept what we do. Now we are really trying to be real contributors to the evolution to some of this music within their culture. I think we are actually having influence on the flow, the development on Polish style polka. We’re one of the first bands to translate a lot of the Polish stuff into English and make it work. Following Polish song form, trying to get the rhyme scheme right but at the same time try to stay true to not just the concept but the phrasing, how they would say it if it could be in English. And there are some Polish bands now choosing to use our English lyrics when they’re performing these songs for their audiences.

Lewis: After all these albums and all these years, do you ever find any difficulty in staying inspired artistically?

Finch: No, not really. There’s actually a back log of things we want to do. It grows with each year, we don’t get around to doing things we want to do. There’s too much to do.  I’m pretty wired most of the time, I always was…  I’m hearing great stuff all the time and I’ve kinda been listening lately, oddly enough, to American pop from the early 60s — pre British invasion pop, and thinking about how that can adapt to what we do. Because there is a lot of those old songs that have been, like polka, kind of tossed aside. It hit and was hot and then the Beatles, all the British bands, they hit and that stuff just got dropped to the bottom of the barrel. It was just totally dorky, and in a way it was.

Lewis: I’ve spent some time in Denton. So I wasn’t very surprised to see the Paste Magazine declare Denton, Texas, the best Music Scene in 2008.  And your group was declared “the grand poobah of Denton bands.” I was wondering what it was like to be a “poobah?”

Finch: You know, it’s actually a little too much pressure. I’m glad to see all of this because Denton needs to be known for more than Brave Combo and the One O’Clock Lab Band

Lewis: I actually have a favorite band from Denton, well I believe they are from Denton. But before I reveal that I was curious as to who your favorite Denton band is other than Brave Combo.

Finch: Oh, god! There is so many. I really like Midlake a lot. The Drams, Slobberbone.  There is a band called Zest of Yore that is still a little bit underground right now but I try to catch them every time. I like Record Hop a lot. God, there is just a ton of them.

Lewis: There are quite a few. I have listened to Midlake. I’ve never seen the live show but I have an album of theirs and it is great. My personal favorite, I don’t know if you have heard them but I’ve always been under the impression they are from Denton, is The Theater Fire.

Finch: Oh! Yeah! They are from Fort Worth actually. I think a couple of the horn players are from Denton. We did a show with them just six months ago at Dan’s. They’re great.  That’s a terrific bill for us too.

Lewis: I really enjoy their music. It was kind of a similar experience to you getting into Polka.  I was in Waterloo Records in Austin and was intrigued by the cover art for their “Everybody Has A Dark Side” album. Bought it and the next thing I know I’m at their show. This is kind of off the subject but I drug a bunch of friends along with me to their show one night.  After the show, my good friend was rather inebriated and was talking to one of the band members about how much he loved their album. He says, “you know that’s great. We really appreciate you buying our music.” My friend looks at him kind of funny and says, “Oh I didn’t buy it, my friend Peter burned it for me!”  I of course just slap my forehead and said, “oh, damnit!”

Finch: Believe it or not, first of all a band that’s at a level that we are and those guy, we don’t really care. We’re just happy if people want it.  But people always seem to say something stupid and either catch themselves or fly by with no awareness. Your friend’s timing was just perfect though. He knows just what to say at the right moment.

Lewis: He’s got that reputation. So of course the band member starts ragging him, giving him a hard time about how he has a wife and kid to feed. My friend’s response, which just made it worse, was “Well, I tell you what. If you make an album as good as the last one, I’ll buy it.”

Finch: Well, you know what? That’s a good challenge to have for an artist. I am amazed at the stuff that comes out of people’s mouths. But to a degree you can’t do this without getting a thick skin. You can’t even let major reviews and major magazines that are bad, you can’t really let anything get you off track or you’ll get knocked off track really fast.  You just kinda gotta go with blind faith and hope that there is enough along the way to make it better than anything else out there.

Lewis: You guys have been around for such a long time, two Grammys under your belt and multiple nominations. What moment sticks out in your mind? What was your proudest moment as a band? 

Finch: Well, the first Grammy nomination; that one made us really think that anything is truly possible.  You can poopoo that to a degree but when you’re right there and when you really look at it … And when I realized that there had to be a sizable number of people in the polka world trust us and believe in us you know, we couldn’t have won otherwise. There’d be no way.  Most of the voters that care about the polka category are going to be academy members that are probably polka people. That’s pretty mind blowing. And I think being drawn on The Simpsons was pretty much … that’s the point where you go, “God, in a way we can’t top this. How do we top this? How is this even possible.” So then we knew, wow, if we did something that in someways it can’t be beat, then god, we kinda did it. We were the band hired at the Springfield Oktoberfest.  

Lewis: I guess it’s hard to beat The Simpsons in terms of being ingrained into the American consciousness.

Finch: Those are things that represent acceptance. I don’t know if that’s the same as feeling artistically validated. I remember we were working on a record in Minneapolis and we were trying to zoom out of town to beat an ice storm that was bearing down on us. Musically this was a long long time ago. I remember listening to the rough mix of what we had just done and thinking, wow this is not like anything else but it sounds like us and it sounds like we are actually starting to get it. It didn’t sound like a punk band doing it to me anymore, it sounded more polished, more true to something. It didn’t sound like we were just slamming through something for the sake of kitsch. It really sounded like we were getting a handle on something important.

Lewis: I’m a big fan of High Fidelity and am always interested in hearing people’s Top 5 Albums, so before I let you go, what are your Top 5 Albums?

Finch: Oooh.

Lewis: It’s a tough question but I always like to pin that down on people.

Finch: Alright, well…right now my top one is … I got this out last night. It’s called “Inimitable, Incomparable, Inequable Tonya!” It’s a collection of this girl’s albums … I think she’s Puerto Rican. I have no idea. I can’t tell you anymore than that.  Right now that’s number one. Okay, let me think…real impact.  Single songs lately, I’ve been really into that Laibach version of “Life is life.” They’re a Slovenian minimalist band. Man, I’m looking at 3,000 LPs right now and I can’t tell you.

Lewis: So no formative album that really got you?

Finch: Oh, yeah! That first Led Zeppelin album, in terms of just a moment in my life was pretty darn important. I had a wreck that day and spent the night in bed with my headphones cranked suffering from bruised bones. Great anticipation leading up to that record. I was a big Yardbirds fan when I was a little kid. Saw the Yardbirds when I was in 7th grade.  Word was spreading that Jimmy Page was putting together a new Yardbirds so I was expecting that. But that is definitely in the top five. You know, maybe a Kinks album. Maybe the second, third, or fourth Kinks album … Kinkdom, that was a good record. That’s pretty high up there. You know almost anything I would put in this would be a rock album. I’m thinking back on things that had influence at a certain age.  Oh okay! Live Wire by Scrubby and the Dynatones. That’s a great polka record by a band called the Dynatones out of Buffalo. They were sort of young upstarts in the East coast Polish polka scene in the early 70s and they introduced some elements into the traditional polka scene up there and were both loved and hated. Kind of a brave combo approach but within the community and their album Live Wire is now considered a classic. It captures a lot of really intense energy.

Lewis:  Well, I appreciate it and I appreciate you taking the time out to speak with me, Carl.

Finch: Thank you for being prepared. You asked some great questions.