Wilkommen zu Oktoberfest!

Greetings, Scandinavian fans!

Oktoberfest season is about to start for us again for another year. We had a great warmup for Oktoberfest season over the past weekend. We kicked off the Blackberry Festival in Bremerton and then played a great wedding reception at the Triple Door. The band is sounding as good as it ever has, which is pretty good as you die-hard fans well know. I've been working over the summer to update the band book (the music from which we play) and add some new tunes. It's shaping up to be the best version of the book yet. I'm sure you'll agree when you hear us.

We're playing some of our favorite Oktoberfests again this year, including Leavenworth on October 5th & 6th. It's definitely worth the trip over the mountains to see the show. They have actual bands from Germany which come to the festival. The food and beer are both excellent. The Festhalle and the tent out back are both great venues and are each great places to see music.

One of my favorite moments from last year's festival was when I went to a food booth for a bratwurst. I walked up to the food server and said, in my finest German, "Ein bratwurst, bitte." The lady stared at me in stunned silence. Her helper came to me and said, "I'm sorry; she doesn't speak German. She speaks Spanish." After thinking about it for a minute, I said, "Uno bratwurst, por favor." Her face lit up and she handed me a brat on a bun.

Another great show of this year's Oktoberfest season will be on October 7th at the Fairgrounds in Puyallup for the Scandinavian Heritage Festival. It runs concurrently with Oktoberfest Northwest. You can go to the Oktoberfest and have good German bier and then pop into the ScanFest and have some aebleskiever and lefse. Part of the fun of the two events is that all of us musicians who rarely get to see each other because we're always performing actually get the chance to hang out together and see each other perform. A novel idea.

On September 22nd we'll make our first ever appearance at the Tri-Cities Nordic Fest. We're very excited to make our first appearance in the Tri-Cities. The Nordic Fest has really pulled out all the stops to make this a great event. We're looking forward to seeing all of our Tri-Cities fans at the Fairgrounds in Kennewick later this month.

A note about the podcasts: they haven't been updated since February. My producer, the inimitable Dave Conley, has been rather busy producing for a major video game maker. That makes it difficult to get new episodes finished. He assures me that we should be able to get a new episode out soon so please stay tuned. And for those of you who would like to catch up on the back episodes (both of them) they're available on iTunes. Just launch iTunes and go to the Podcasts section and then search for "Smilin' Scandinavians" and you'll find us.

We now have the beginnings of a Fan Club. One of our regular fans, Michael from Puyallup, has volunteered to start an official Smilin' Scandinavians Fan Club. You can email him at mowrerms@hotmail.com to get the info for the Fan Club. This is pretty exciting stuff!

That's all the news about your favorite polka band. C'mon out and see one of our upcoming shows. You can check out the latest list at http://www.smilinscandinavians.com/upcoming.html.

Prost!