The most wonderful time of the polka year!

Greetings, Scandinavian fans!

September has come to the Pacific Northwest with its cool, cloudy mornings and its warm afternoons. I like this weather; I can wear a heavier shirt in the morning and switch to a light t-shirt around 1pm. It's nice. July was too hot for my comfort and so was much of August. September is the end of summer; it's when the best fruit is ripe and juicy and the kids finally go back to school. It's also the beginning of that most wonderful of all seasons: Oktoberfest! In Bavaria the Oktoberfest is celebrated in September as it has been for nearly 200 years. In this country, however, it's celebrated pretty much any time from the beginning of September to early November. For our band that's a good thing. It means two months out of the year when, as my late friend Lynn Schaefer used to say, "People may not like accordion music but at least they tolerate it." The Smilin' Scandinavians have always found that when we play people love it!

This weekend we're kicking off the Oktoberfest season at the Bremerton Blackberry Festival. We'll be on the Boardwalk on Sunday, September 6th starting at 10am. Our next event is our triumphal return to the Fremont Oktoberfest on September 19th. They're one of the cutting-edge Oktoberfests, and I'm not referring just to their chainsaw pumpkin-carving contest. The Fremont Oktoberfest has their own iPhone App! I've already downloaded it and installed it on my iPhone. You can find it at the App Store on iTunes. The app gives all the necessary information about the Fremont Oktoberfest (including the music schedule) right on you iPhone!

We'll be playing the following weekend at perhaps one of the best Oktoberfests in the Pacific Northwest. The Swiss Sportsman's Park in Bonney Lake is hosting their Oktoberfest on September 26th. It's a fantastic event at their park and dance hall. They have souvenir beer steins and they put on a fantastic dinner of fresh crab or traditional sausages and sauerkraut. It's $25 for tickets but that includes dinner and the stein. What a deal! Be sure and buy your tickets early. They tend to sell out close to the event.

October 3rd has us in Seattle's Meadowbrook neighborhood for the Maple Leaf Lutheran Church Oktoberfest. As Martin Luther once said, "It is better to think of church in the ale house than the ale house in church." Ol' Martin was a good beer drinking German himself. I'm sure he would love this event so much that he'd write 95 Theses extolling its virtues. This event is doubly good because it's only a couple blocks from the banjo player's house. Short commutes make for more beer drinking.

October 9th-11th is our busiest weekend of the year. We're doing four gigs that weekend. We'll be back at Oktoberfest Northwest at the Puyallup Fairgrounds on the 9th and 10th. We go to Fort Lewis to bring a little bit of Bavaria to our troops the evening of the 9th. We're up in Enumclaw for their Oktoberfest the evening of the 10th. And on the 11th we return to the Fairgrounds in Puyallup for the Scandinavian Heritage Festival. It's our one non-Bavarian gig of the season and we enjoy it very much.

We have a lot of private engagements set for this season which will be keeping us very busy right through the end of October. I choose not to list our private gigs because I don't feel there's any reason to promote events that the public cannot attend. Why should I tantalize you with performances that you can't go to? It just doesn't seem fair. Rest assured, we are keeping busy. You can get all the details about our upcoming performances on our website at http://www.smilinscandinavians.com/upcoming.html. All the info you need is right there.

So that's the plan. Before you know it the magical season of beer and bratwurst will be upon us. Please take the opportunity to come out and see us perform. You'll be glad you did.

Skål!

Or, in German...

Prost!