Brave Combo

Band History

Brave Combo. 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 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. And zyedeco, acid rock, Muzak, bubblegum, cumbia, classical, and the twist, to still not exhaust the list. 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.

Information from the band's site

Members

• Jeffrey Barnes clarinet, flute, glockenspiel, harmonica, saxophone, vocals
• Alan Emert drums
• Carl Finch accordion, guitar, keyboards, vocals
• Danny O'Brien trumpet, vocals, washboard
• Ginny Mac accordion

Former Members

• Bubba Hernandez bass, guitar, keyboards, strings, tuba, vocals
• Ann Marie Harrop bass
• Arjuna Contreras drums

Albums by this artist