Jeffrey Barnes (Brave Combo)
Phone Interview
1996

This was my first phone interview. The receiver was taped to the mike stand with duct tape. The photo is from West Fest, 1997.

Hello, I'm calling for Jeffrey Barnes.
This is him.
This is Judith Day from Keos and I am calling with an interview for you.
Thank you.
Isn't that nice? You are saxophonist with Brave Combo?
I am.
For some of the people who don't know who Brave Combo is, would you like to tell us what it is?
Brave Combo is a band...a band that's been together for 17 years now out of Denton, Texas and it's a highly unusual band for the music it chooses to play. We've chosen to champion two musical styles which are generally looked down upon, we believe unfairly.
Like maybe polka?
Like polka. Which is a pop culture JOKE generally speaking but actually is very fine music and is as deserving as any other kind of roots music that anybody's listening to, and if you're listening to Cajun music as much of the country seems to be and seems familiar with, I think that polka might be right up your alley. But we play that and we play lots of ballroom styles. We play mambos and cha-chas and many different styles...schottische, waltzes, twists, a lot of different sorts of music.
Now I remember seeing you I think it was at...it was at the Stafford Opera House here, you seem to not play things exactly straight. I mean there's something funny about the way you play things.
There is sort of a mixing of incongruous elements happening when we play partially because we're a bunch of guys who grew up playing in garage bands, in rock bands, and then went to music school. And so we, instead of trying to do the music in a traditional manner, we try to play it like we would play it.
Like in a garage band?...no, I'm sorry.
Yeh.. But as I was saying most everyone but me went to the University Of North Texas here and its home of a very fine music school and particularly for jazz studies so we're...and these are pretty good musicians.
So when did you start doing this, when did you get together?
In 1979, Brave Combo was first formed.
And were you playing these polkas to begin with?
Yeh. Polkas almost exclusively to begin with. But here, with the ubiquitous Spanish influence and Mexican-American music and they picked up on a lot of other different styles that were happening. Like, well of course waltzes, but cumbias. It's...our indigenous Texas polka very often comes from Mexico and a lot of the stylings...the pongo which is kind of a 6/8 and a 3/4 combined, a traditional folk dance. And the cumbia and a lot of different Latin styles started appearing in the band because of the music that we were listening to then.
Now you did a whole album of Spanish style stuff, didn't you?
A whole album of Latin dance music called No No No Cha Cha Cha. Yeh, we love Latin music. We love world music of all sorts. We have short attention spans and we go from one style to the next you know we don't ever stick in one particular thing too often and that's part of the joy I think of Brave Combo for dancers that is that there is many different styles to try out your footwork on.
Now you mainly play for dances, is that it?
No, we play anywhere! For concerts, dances, wedding receptions, nightclubs, Bar Mitzvahs...everywhere!
You play mostly in Texas?
We play all over the continental United States and Canada, we've played...we've gone to Europe 4 times...and to Japan 3 times.
How do you get time to do this? Do you have a job?
This is our job. We're professional musicians.
Wow. You had one that came out recently called Girl that I heard played here on KEOS quite a bot...how did that come about...and what is it?
It is a collaboration with the 60s pop icon Tiny Tim, who I am sure you well remember from his 1968 hit...
I do.
"Tiptoe Through the Tulips." He was married on the Tonite Show as everyone knows. Yeh, Mr. Tim was introduced to us by the president of his fan club who has a record store here, Mr. Big Bucks Burnett. He's...during the course of 8 years, a lot of finagling and working things around, we managed to put together this record, Girl, if you consider 8 years that's the entire recording career of The Beatles!
Right.
I'm not drawing any parallels here, but it took a long time. But it's out now and I don't know if your listeners know that Mr. Tim has been in the hospital. He had a heart attack on stage in Massachusetts so he's been in...I think he's probably out of the hospital now. I haven't had an update but he was in serious but stable condition there in intensive care. And I don't know if he's going to be able to pursue his playing career quite as avidly as he was. He was always always traveling and working.
Were you traveling with him...performing with him on stage?
No...we've played with him a number of times before Girl came out and 3 times since. We played for...actually a radio program out of Louisville, Kentucky and we played with him in Kansas City, Missouri, and in Seattle at an outdoor concert...festival.
Do you have something else coming up in the way of albums? You had another album...Polkas For A Gloomy World I think it was.
Polkas For A Gloomy World. Yes, was up for a Grammy this year what to our surprise and delight. We never anticipated but there we were with our heroes the great polka stars, competing, kind of frightening.
Who is the big polka star out there?
Oh well, there's...the Grammy this year was won by Jimmy Sturr, who has a shelf full of Grammies and he's a band leader from Florida, New York. He's got a marvelous band of musicians from Nashville and it's a great band. We'll be playing with them next month at Wurst Fest in New Braunfels.
How do you guys get along with traditional polka fans?
I think that they like us. Some purists may not appreciate too much the mixing of styles and also many people think that we play them too fast. Oh I don't know, it's a matter of style and taste you know. I think that they appreciate though that they really do admire the people that they admire, emulate them and try and learn from them and to play the music with the respect it deserves.
If I were going to go to a polka festival here in Texas who would I want to listen to? Who's good?
Ah...Texas polka bands. Well, you might hear us. You might hear the Harvesters, formerly known as the Czech Harvesters. I would definitely if you were wanting to hear polka musicians here in Texas pick up on some Mexican-American artists such as Esteban Jordan who prefers to be called Steve Jordan, the man with the eye patch, the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion, one of the heaviest musical dudes on the planet today, I think. What he coaxes through the accordion putting it through all kinds of electronic devices and just his own fingers is incredible. Many many fine accordionists out there as far as that goes in that scene. I'd have to mention Mingo Salvidor, and I would have to mention Tony de la Rosa, and , well there's just so many! Santiago Jimenez and everybody knows his brother Flaco. But other than that there's Czech bands to see, you might see the Jody Mikula Orchestra. There's only one Polish radio program in Texas; it's out of Houston. The guy who runs that...I've drawn a blank on his name is a marvelous fiddler and he has a band that you might be able to catch if you can find his name. You will find an amount of indigenous polka here generally speaking. I mean there would be some German oom-pah bands maybe you could find, but generally you in Texas polka very often comes from the Czechs that settled all through Texas. They came over some time during the Civil War. They had lost a revolution against the Hapsburgs you know the Austro-Hungarian empire and had to cut out and many of them came over in boats and landed in Galveston and settled in Texas and Oklahoma and all over the middle section of the country, especially Nebraska. And there've been a lot of cultural collisions here, like say all the Mexican polka that you hear, well, Mexico is a melting pot too and they've had German immigrants and how about...let's see they used to be under the rule of Maximilian who was Austrian. The French set him up before the Mexicans kicked them out, beat his armies in...I believe assassinated him.
You must like history!
Yeh, its quite a history, but anyway there's plenty of European influence and culture happening there south of the border and north of the border and that's why they picked upon the accordion and the polka.
OK, now do you have a couple more albums coming out, not to change the subject.
Oh no! Yes we do!
What are they?
Right. October 15^th. Rounder Records will put out an album called Mood Swing Music. And that has sort of rare historic Brave Combo recordings that have not been heard at least in this country. Some new stuff that hasn't been heard anywhere. Except by us. Well, let's see, it contains lots of interesting things. One of the most interesting things is 5 cuts...of course 4 of then are the same song done in various different different styles.
That's different.
Yeh. We did a song called "Three Ducks." Four different ways as asked by a Japanese record company. And one would be "Ondo" Ondo is a traditional Japanese music played at summer festivals. Another would be polka, another would be cha cha, another would be waltz. So you'll hear "Three Ducks" you'll hear this song put through four very different arrangements.
You're sort of branching out into Japanese music?
Sorry?
Branching out into more things than you were before.
Oh yeh. This was out on a record only released before in Japan called Kitsui Mato Meets Bravo Combo. Subtitled Ondo Saves the World. Mr. Kitsui Mato is Japan's most controversial and iconoclastic ondo artist. He...this is a kind of a song styling that uses like usually long, traditionally long storytelling songs. But he does short poppy kinds of songs that deal with topical topics. And with lots of hooks, like pop songs. Like say, the single, the hit off the record had to do with AIDS, AIDS coming into Japan, which they haven't...unfortunately they'll have more trouble with that as time goes on, but Japan is still to this day, like units history a little isolated from the rest of the world..
OK, you've got another CD coming out too...
Oh yes, that is Kiss Of Fire which is a collaboration with singer-songwriter Lauren Agnelli. Who used to be with Washington Squares.
So she sings, then?
The record is kind of torch songs. As a matter of fact it wasn't planned this way but it kind of works on the metaphor of, you know, fire is passion. Whether it's the kind that warms you or it's the kind that consumes you. It seems to work on that. There seems to be a lot of fire imagery in this record. I was surprised when I heard it and ...but I think it is a very good record and that will be out November 5^th on Watermelon.
So it sounds like you're prolific now.
Yeh, we've been kind of busy.
OK, is there something else that you'd like to tell us?
How about "Support Community Radio?"

Photo: West Fest 1997

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