Starting on April 7th and until June 16th, beginning at 6:30pm at Green Valley Park.
Free admission and free parking.
Food and drink will be available for sale during concerts
Seating will be on the lawn and spectators are encouraged to bring blankets and lawn chairs.
Don’t Mess with Texas Music CDs will be sold at the concerts in support of the Texas Music Project, a statewide initiative with a mission of restoring and strengthening music education in Texas schools. Proceeds from TMP music sales during the concert series will benefit the Birdville ISD music program.
Friday, April 7 – Watusi opening for Brave Combo
Friday, April 21 – Drop Trio opening for Fingerprints
Friday, May 5 – Grupo Amistad opening for Zayra Alvarez
Friday, May 19 – meridianwest opening for Radiant*
Friday, June 2 – Fishing for Comets opening for South Austin Jug Band
Friday, June 16 – Blake and Fallon opening for The Django Walker Band
April 7th - Brave Combo
with Watusi opening
GRAMMY AWARD WINNERS FOR THE ALBUMS, POLKASONIC and LET’S KISS
Rarely, if ever, has a band name been more apropos, not only at the group's inception, but even more so 26 years after the fact. At first glance, back in 1979, the Denton, Texas-based outfit was, in shorthand, pegged as a New Wave polka band, a courageous if not almost oxymoronic endeavor during that particular rebirth of the cool. Yet it clicked and launched a stunning run that has now catapulted it into the new century. Over the last 26 years, Brave Combo has collected a dizzying array of descriptive musical pegs, boldly going where few bands have gone before, and even fewer could (or would) dare to venture. Succeeding in its first mission, Brave Combo is America's premier
contemporary polka band, and a Grammy winning one at that. In the same breath, to name some but hardly all of the colors found on Brave Combo's musical palette, one can describe them as a groundbreaking world music act, a hot jazz quintet, a rollicking rock'n'roll bar band, a Tex-Mex conjunto, a sizzling blues band, a saucy cocktail combo, a deadly serious novelty act, a Latin orchestra, and one of America's dance bands par excellence. It's all in a night's music for Brave Combo, often in a synergistic fashion that includes everything from klezmer surf rock to rocking cha cha to what The Washington Post calls "mosh pit polka," as well as to the hokey pokey and the chicken dance. This plethoric multitude of musical styles and flavors is frequently mixed, matched, and melded, into delicious, new concoctions by an imaginative team of musical gourmet master chefs.
"We're just trying to be a brave combo," is how bandleader Carl Finch explains what Billboard calls the band's "world-wise, unclassifiable music." The prime directive is to "break down people's perceptions about what's cool to like in music. Our deal is to shake up people's ideas about what they label hip, or right or wrong." In the process Brave Combo also shakes listeners' hips and tail feathers, sparks delight, provokes imaginations, rocks all night long, and elicits more than a few chuckles.
In 2004 Brave Combo launched its silver anniversary year with the ultimate cultural sanctification by making one of its most prestigious appearances, of many, to date. On March 21, 2004, they played Oktoberfest in the beloved American burg of Springfield on an episode of "The Simpsons." As followers of both Brave Combo and the long running animated hit should not find
surprising, "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening is a devoted Brave Combo fan. "They prove you can be hip and still be happy," says Groening. "Really, Brave Combo should have their own cartoon." After all, Brave Combo's quarter century of music certainly displays a fascinating yin and yang mix of the utterly and delightfully surreal, juxtaposed with perfect sense and wisdom.
Brave Combo remains a band, despite all the achievements, whose music all but begs wider airing, even if they have succeeded in winning over the various, finicky, disparate factions of the polka world, garnered consistently high praise in the music press, and picked up new fans every time they’ve played.
See more of Brave Combo at their offical website: www.brave.com
