At the Tavern

The bar-room end of the polka tradition

Polka radio lives or dies on the person behind the microphone. A playlist alone will not carry three hours; what carries it is somebody who knows which band recorded which arrangement, who remembers the hall it was cut in, and who can tell you why a particular version of a standard is the one worth hearing. Every show on this schedule is built that way — put together by hand, week after week, by people who have spent decades inside this music.

A great deal of this music was written for rooms with a bar along one wall, a small stage at the end, and a floor in between that had to be kept moving. At the Tavern is the show that remembers where the repertoire came from: the neighbourhood taverns, the social clubs, the Friday nights that did not make it into anybody's history of the genre.

The selection favours the recordings that work in that setting — drinking songs, novelty numbers, the standards everybody in the room could sing, and the bands who made their living three sets at a time rather than on the festival circuit.

It is the least reverent hour on the schedule, and probably the closest to how most people actually encountered polka music in the first place.

About the Music

Polka in North America is not one style but several, and the differences matter to the people who play it. The Chicago-honky sound leans on trumpets and a driving push beat; the Eastern style favours a fuller horn section and a smoother swing; the Cleveland-Slovenian tradition puts the button box at the centre and takes the tempo down a notch. Add the Polish-language repertoire, the crossover bands, and the younger groups mixing rock and jazz phrasing into a two-step, and a well-built show has more range than most listeners expect on the first hour.

Times shown are Eastern. Shows are pre-recorded unless a live broadcast is announced, and the schedule can move at short notice when a host is broadcasting from a festival or a hall. If a show you are following is not where you expect it, check the programming grid, which is kept as current as we can keep it.