“I was born to entertain. You need to stick with it. If you give up, you don’t do it.” – Jake Kouwe
Chardon Polka Band attract all ages with their foot-stomping favorites, musical talent and upbeat quirky charm during the sultry summer nights in and around the greater Cleveland area.
“Their music makes us happy,” Stella Fischer said, alongside twin sister Ann, of Chardon, at a recent outdoor Burton Public Library performance. “We love their music so much that we wore out their first two CDs and had to buy a third.”
In addition to the band’s loyal fans and increasing fan base, the polka pioneers are leaping into a new and blazing spotlight starring in a new half-hour TV reality series called “Polka Kings,” premiering Jan. 6, 2015 on Reelz channel.
The show follows the five Chardon Polka Band members — Paul Coates “The Weird One” – sousaphone and bass; Jake Kouwe “The Ego” – front man on accordion and vocals; Emily Burke “The Legs” – saxophone and flute; Pops Magooch “The Curmudgeon” – drums; and Mike Franklin “The Ladies Man” – banjo, bass, backup vocals and yodeler — as they try to survive each other and keep their personal and professional troubles from derailing their quest for stardom.
“Polka Kings” brings a fully relatable story of the American spirit through the experiences of a band that’s as close as family and absolutely determined to achieve their dreams, according to a statement from Reelz.
The band finds themselves in crazy situations, including private parties in nursing homes, Ukrainian summer camps and the Avon Heritage Duct Tape Festival.
Each week, “Polka Kings” follows the dynamic group’s attempts to achieve mainstream status and their ultimate goal of headlining their dream event: Oktoberfest in Germany.
“It’s weird,” Burke said. “All your life you see these other people on TV and you never imagine you yourself will be on TV.”
Chardon Polka Band was co-founded by Kouwe and his best friend Coates.
Kouwe, a former Chardon High School student, never gave up his passion for the music since the band’s inception 10 years ago, especially after being told there was no place for accordion in his high school’s marching band.
“Back then I was a choir nerd,” Franklin added.
Since then, the band’s had 22 different members contributing to their eclectic style.
“I was born to entertain,” Kouwe said. “You need to stick with it. If you give up, you don’t do it.”
Kouwe’s perseverance paid off when “Polka Kings” Executive Producer Patrick Jager from High Noon Entertainment out of Denver, Colo. started casting for “quirky in the Midwest” and said, “what if we found someone like John Candy’s character in Home Alone – the Polka King…”
“That’s how we came on the radar,” Kouwe said.
Reelz CEO Stan Hubbard added, “High Noon then pitched the idea to us.”
“In a world of 200 to 300 channels accessible, there is a lot of copying,” Hubbard said via phone from the cable channel’s headquarters in Albuquerque, N.M. “No one’s ever seen a show like this and a band so committed.
“We like stories that are upbeat, that have ambition and good values working toward goals. They are a clean cut all American group of friends just having fun. We love the positive.”
Kouwe said they have been working hard. Taping for the new reality series kicked off at the end of April with about 10 hours of filming per day, in addition to the band playing a packed schedule of evening performances.
“It will be surreal when it airs,” Coates said, adding the band has been spending quite a lot of time together.
They continue to perform at local parks, festivals, parades, parties, weddings, fundraisers and regularly at nursing homes. In the fall, they are scheduled to headline at some of the nation’s largest Oktoberfest events.
Reelz said, “They are a group that brings new life and energy to this traditional music. While the group has an extensive catalogue of traditional polkas, they are not afraid to bring their own tunes into the mix along with polka-pop covers of artists like Justin Bieber and Lady Ga Ga.”
“They are so relatable because they are young,” friends and fellow Chardon High School alumni John Kozelj and Genna Yeater said while sitting on their front row lawn seat. “What other music can do that? They span all ages. They are not like these unreachable rock stars.”
Though they do have “movie star good looks,” Hubbard said.
It did take a bit of convincing for Yeater to attend her first show awhile back, not knowing what to expect from an up and coming polka band.
“But I got her hooked,” Kozelj said.
Yeater said after the second song, “Brown Eyed Girl,” she was a fan.
“I said, I know that song,” Yeater said. “These guys are so cool. We’re ecstatic for them. It’s pretty unbelievable going from high school side project to a reality series.”
Chardon Polka Band’s first studio album, “Pirates, Women, and Beer,” was released in 2010 with the majority of the songs written by Kouwe in addition to the band’s renditions of some classic polkas.
Following albums include “Free Beer Polka” and “A Fistful of Polka.”
Soon, Stella and Ann Fischer, who said they met Frank Yankovich years ago and grew up watching polka variety shows on TV, grabbed hands and teetered back and forth as they danced to their favorite song, “The Two Sisters Polka.”
“We love their music and want to have fun,” Stella Fischer said. “We have their music blasting every Saturday.”
