There’s a time when polka music and baseball blend.
THE STORY LEADING TO THE ACCOMPANYING PHOTO IS A SWEET ONE.
Musician Pete Gordon loves the Astros. He particularly loves Jose Altuve. So having watched Altuve and the team rebuild from a losing franchise to a winning one, he wrote a song about the second baseman as the 2017 season drew to a close. Then Gordon and his merry band of longtime Houston music-scene vets recorded his song about Altuve, then another about the Astros.
“My buddy Jason made a video, I figured it’d be fun if 100 people saw it, you know, a little exposure for us,” Gordon says. “So after a few minutes, it had 100 views. That was nice. Then 1,000. At that point, I was like, ‘What??’ Then 10,000. The news outlets shared it. It ended up with over a quarter-million people who watched that thing. To me, it was really simple. He was the league’s MVP. Even though he hadn’t won the award yet. Some of the stuff in that song hadn’t come true yet. But I believed it would.”
That song landed Gordon and his band — Polish Pete and the Polka? I Hardly Know Her Band — a spot on a float during the Astros World Series victory parade. Even then, it was a bit of a struggle.
“We had to walk to the parade from the club,” Gordon says. He’s referring to the Continental Club, which he has managed since 2000 when he moved to Houston from Austin, where he managed that city’s original Continental Club, while also playing keyboards for Mojo Nixon.
“But that was fine because we just played songs along the way, and people really seemed to dig it.”
Gordon has been a central figure in Houston’s local music scene that extends from the Continental, playing in numerous bands with others like Allen Hill, James Henkel, Tomas Escalante and John “Goodtime” Smith. Gordon took on the Polish Pete moniker, and the other four became the Polka? I Hardly Know Her Band. All of them ditched their usual instruments to play different roles in the Polka? band.
Both the Altuve song and “I Love Those Houston Astros” are a throwback to decades ago when baseball moved musicians to write songs.
“I try to watch every pitch of every game every season,” Gordon says of the Astros’ schedule. “So that song, like those old songs, it’s something that comes directly from the heart. It poured out of my heart. I love watching that team. And I loved Jose Altuve. During those losing seasons, he was always smiling out there. Nobody worked harder than he did. He created this fun atmosphere that started what came later.”
Houston is a gateway to a trio of accordion cultures — from the eastern European beer hall culture of central Texas to the Norteno that rose along the Texas/Mexico border to the music that rose along the Texas/Louisiana border. Gordon’s grandfather played polka for him when he was young. “It was just a joyful music,” he says.
He’d visit polka events and dances just outside of Houston. About five or six years ago, he decided to start squeezing the accordion.
“I love playing it,” he says. “You walk into a place and people immediately have a blast.”
So Gordon and polka were started to come together as the Astros began to dig out of a losing crater. Two different rebuilds, if you will.
He’s planning to release a full Polish Pete and the Polka? I Hardly Know Her album later this year. In the meantime, Gordon and the band will play Cactus Music Saturday and sell an Astros-orange 7” single with their two Astros songs.
The polka thing sounds like it will stick with Gordon, regardless of the Astros’ future. But he clearly loves the connection that earned him a World Series ring. And a spot in that parade, where Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan and Astros general manager Jeff Lunow joined the band.
“It was such a beautiful scene,” Gordon says. “And I love the photo your photographer, Karen Warren, took of us. It has that fish-eye thing, but there’s this other quality to it … . She told me her camera still had champagne on the lens from the celebration in the locker room. So that’s kind of cool.”