I have a new accordion!

Nancy did a magnificent job telling the story of the accordions in my life and the journey to collect this one, so I’ll refer you to that if you haven’t already seen it. For my part, I’d like to present:

Exhibit One

(From the back cover of Zap Comics #1)

Turns out, if you play that song backwards, you get this:

Exhibit Two

(At the Strawberry Music Festival, two accordions ago)

I’m so grateful to be able to make music with my friends, especially in the woods!

The new accordion is lighter, more responsive to the bellows, and has a great voice. I have a lot of wood-shedding ahead of me to get my technique up to the level of this instrument. Fun times!

And for those of you who might be missing the lack of bird content in this post, I thought of pointing to one of the several YouTube tutorials on how to play Free Bird on accordion, but decided on this instead: the album cover of Her Name Is Calla’s 2011 release, Maw. I love the image, but, um, the accordion is upside down. Hey, it’s a pigeon; give it enough pellets and it’ll learn to do just about anything.

(Posted on accordionuprising.wordpress.com. Maw is available on streaming services; HNIC was a British “post-rock” band described on Bandcamp as “massive, pastorally apocalyptic music.”)