SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

How did we do? This was our third appearance at the festival without Thomm Jutz, wunderkind from the Black Forest. The core group, Richie Schörnig on bass, Peter Götzman on drums, Mätze Schulz on keyboards and accordion, have backed Thomm in a blues rock group, fronted an Elvis entertainer, and a soul singer from Brooklyn via Berlin named Sidney ‘Guitar Crusher’ Selby. I played with them for five years— and made as many records— before Thomm won the U.S. State Department green card lottery and moved to Nashville. Richie is a German from Romania, part of a diaspora from two centuries before. Peter fronts a jazz group. They both teach. Mätze produces music for video games. Nobody makes all their money gigging. The old outfit is still intact. With Sergio and Zürich guitarist Giampiero Colombo trading leads they worked like a Swiss watch—or a Schwarzwald cuckoo clock. Albert and a couple of his guys congratulated us afterwards and seemed genuine enough; after all, they didn’t have to. We racked up good CD sales for an opening act.

Sergio had his eye on an accordion at the Heilsarmee Brocki, the Salvation Army store in Schaffhausen. Displayed in a glass case it was gray mother-of-pearl, a diatonic model with two rows of pearl buttons. The finish was chipped away in a couple of places. It looked old, with a silver-plated screen. They were asking 250 Swiss Francs. Edith asked the woman behind the counter to open the case and let us have a look. The notes all seemed to work but an important piece was missing, the valve that allows you to close or open the bellows without pushing air through the reeds.

“Man, this thing could tell stories.”

“Did you ever read Accordion Crimes, by Annie Prolux? If you buy the accordion you’re going to have to read the book.”

Sergio considered his predicament. “It’s worth the money, but I don’t know if I can afford it. I’m going to have to think it over.” We made arrangements with the woman to reserve the accordion for a week while we pondered.

A Google search, revealed there had been an accordion maker named Zimmerman in east Germany, who moved to Philadelphia in the late 1880’s.

We were booked for a duo gig on the 17th, the beginning of a series of duo and trio gigs in Switzerland before heading on to Scotland and the Netherlands. From heroes to nobodies—the best gig in Switzerland to what must be the worst—we were booked for a night at the Bonanza, a line-dancing club deep in Canton Thurgau. They were paying 600 Francs. I looked at the contract. They wanted three sets; PA provided; sound check at 1700 hours; show to begin at 2100, or nine o’clock.

Sergio and I talked things over. “Holy shit, that’s four hours we have to wait before we even go on.”

“We don’t need no stinking sound check.”

“Let’s call the club and tell them we only need a couple of minutes, with just a duo.” I called the number on the contract, telling the man who answered that we didn’t require an hour to sound check. He had no English, grounds for suspicion of someone running an American-style country saloon. Maybe he was only the bartender, I thought. Running out of Swiss German, I called Edith to the phone. I soon understood there was no PA at the club. Edith held his feet to the fire…. “The sound is your responsibility,” she said. “I have the contract right here in my hand.” The conversation went on. Suspicious from the beginning, I had never liked the sound of this place; their cheesy Western theme-park web site, nor the cheap price. Had they offered us a better deal we might have played as a trio with Hans-Ruedi and used his sound system. A landscape gardener by trade, he had already knocked off work by the time I reached him. I could tell he was already a beer or two beyond the .05 alcohol limit. We have a little more room in our new Fiat but we could never have carried three people, guitars, and a sound system. We cancelled—or they did— by mutual agreement.

We played as a trio the next night at the Dolder 2, a club just down the road in Feuerthalen, our first trio gig. Hans Ruedi did a credible job on upright bass, despite all the new songs we threw at him. Sunday the 19th I turned 64, and the four of us had raclette, melted cheese over new potatoes, with bacon and little sausages cooked at the table. We sat around picking until late. Sergio’s wife Julie flew in from Nashville Monday. On Tuesday we drove back to the Brocki and looked at the Zimmerman accordion again. Edith pointed out to the guy behind the counter—a man this time— that it had a piece was missing. He is a poor musician, she said, referring to Sergio. “I am also a poor musician,” he countered. “That is why I’m working here; I’m a drummer.”

“And I know accordions; and I’m telling you that you cannot play this instrument until this piece is fixed.”

“Okay, you can have it for two-hundred.” Sergio had his money ready.

We played a Bierria down in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland the next night, returning the following afternoon. We played a line dancing club in Canton Zürich where I met a friend named Werner, a photographer and close follower of the Swiss country music scene. He asked how I was feeling. “Me? I feel good, why do you ask?”

“I was at the Bonanza club last week. They said you had cancelled because you were sick.”

Never mind what I told Werner… We had some decent record sales at this gig, and even had the line-dancers listening to the last set; we’d only sold one CD down south, and that at a discount to the sound man.

Looking for a bag or case to hold Sergio’s accordion, we made another run of the Brocki houses. Edith found another accordion, a red Hohner, also diatonic, not nearly as old as the Zimmerman. The synchronicity—and the price— was too hard to ignore; she bought it for 30 Francs. Sitting on a chair behind me, it looks to be in fairly good shape. “Play me,” it seems to say, “I dare you”. Huh? I read somewhere that bizarre travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God. Is this a place I want to go, to accordion land? ….Right; and I could take up bungee-jumping. Two days back from Scotland / Netherlands, and still catching up, I don’t know if I can summon the nerve.