The Machine’s Pump Volume 29 – #3 – March 2026

I’m not sure exactly when I locked-on to polka as a guiding light in my life, but I think it was in 1977. Tim Walsh (Brave Combo’s original woodwind player) hired me to play piano for ballet classes at NTSU (North Texas State University, now the University of North Texas), in Denton, in 1978, and I was fully hooked on the genre by then. This recording by Scandinavian accordion star Andrew Walter was one of the first polkas to seriously grab me, and we still play our own version of it today.

So, Tim played for modern dance classes right next to the studio where I was mainly playing waltzes, and between classes, I would teach him polkas I was learning, and he got all revved up, too. He already knew a bunch of Irish reels and jigs, so I was getting an earful, as well. Before we knew it, the dance students were hanging around after class, too, digging our vibe, and it just felt like we’d stumbled onto something bigger than that moment and that we sorta discovered something brand new. Now it’s 2026, and Brave Combo is only three years away from turning 50. You can’t imagine how hard this is for me to fully wrap my head around. I remember the very first review of Brave Combo appeared in a Dallas jazz paper. The reviewer said that we just sounded like another zany band from NTSU, which would be together one semester and then break up. You know, I had to prove that guy wrong, so we continued to exist, and things got out of control pretty quickly. It’s, frankly, too much to think about; the history of Brave Combo. Too much! So, I can’t dwell on it other than to laugh at all the ridiculous things we’ve been through. The weight and the bigness of it all is overwhelming at times. I’m not a nostalgia guy. I don’t ever long for “the good ol’ days.” I always try to let the past support and educate the present and the future. And making new stuff is the fun part; stuff that reflects where we all are now. Tim kept a great diary of every gig he played with us, the first four years of Brave Combo, and it’s linked from our website. It’s a great place to see how naïve and innocent we were. But you can tell we were driven. And drive we did, relentlessly, for about 30 years. We drove and flew everywhere, over and over! And it felt like a million things were happening every day. And a lot of it couldn’t be easily explained, except to just realize we created something people enjoyed enough to experience multiple times. On top of that our little business was making enough money for us to continue and actually grow. When the recession hit in 2008/2009, we started scaling back the long tours and started focusing on specific dates around the country, and just travel to those locations and back home. It was a nice compromise to playing non-stop. Then Trump was elected president in 2016, and Covid hit a couple of years after that. The entertainment world fell apart. Everything since then has felt like we’re all just propping stuff up, pretending like there is still a “normal” somewhere. Of course, change always must happen because nothing is permanent, but no one expected everyone’s rugs to be pulled out from under them. I don’t need to elaborate on that. I’m sure you have experienced your own version and get my point.

Whatever, it is 2026, three years from turning 50 in April of 2029, and we’re still here. These days my interest in making music is tied into my desire to protest the horrible things horrible people are doing to the world right now, so I’m letting that be the rich source of my inspiration. As well, I’m trying to wrap up a couple of pesky, but very exciting side projects. And then there are cats. I guess I am learning how to be a cat and the daily challenges are immense. But I’d rather help the situation than eat or sleep. I’m in my home office and I can hear our huge tuxedo cat, Bennett, singing away on the catio. Here he is.

Brave Combo does have some cool gigs coming up. The Main Street Festival in Fort Worth is always great, and we are returning to the amazing Incognito Ball in San Antonio! Please come out if you are anywhere on the planet. Check our itinerary for dates and times. And now, litter boxes! Don’t be scared, be clever!