The 6^th Annual National Button Accordion Festival

  2012 Button Box Festival News

(from Polka Times January 2012)

by Ron Pivovar

Our National Button Accordion Festival Committee has started work for this year’s Festival which will be held, as always, in May.  Our partners, The Bessemer Croatian Club in Bessemer, PA, will again host the event over Memorial Day Weekend of 2012.  The specific dates will be: Friday, May 25, Saturday, May 26, and Sunday, May 27.

Players came from 17 States including Florida, Alaska, Oregon,and California as well as Canada last year.  After four years of having the Festival in Bessemer, PA we have worked out most of the details.  A momentum has developed.  A lot more people now know what to expect when they walk into the Croatian Club Ballroom.  While we realize we cannot make everybody happy, nonetheless we try to do so.

Our National Button Accordion Festival is the direct successor of the Fontana Button Box Jamboree which ended in 2004.   With few exceptions our Festival follows their format and model closely in an attempt to continue the wonderful flavor and tradition of their Jamboree. 

It might be helpful for readers to know that our approach to the Festival has always been to “put back”.  This means we do not attempt to make a profit out of the Festival.  Our main goal is to promote polka music.  The Committee and the Volunteers work hard to create a positive environment for people to come and play their accordions, to dance, to socialize, reacquaint with old friends and to make new friends.

The “put back” simply means, after all the expenses...and they are significant...we put the money back into polka music.  We advertise on local and regional polka radio shows, we advertise on internet polka radio, we hire sidemen to provide you, the player, with the best backup musicians available.   And by doing all of this we are helping an ethnic club survive. But most of all, we believe we are being successful in promoting polka music.

We are in the process of updating our website: www.nationalbuttonaccordionfestival.com during these weeks of January.  Our 2012 Festival flier should be available for downloading by the time you read this article.  The flier has a lot of information on the festival as well as area maps and motel listings.  We will also be adding excellent photos to the website taken at the 2011 Festival by Tim Cimperman.

For more information on the Festival please visit our website mentioned previously.  Or if you prefer to receive a flier by email or through the U.S. Post Office call: Ron Pivovar, 724-588-3786, or Paul Mirkovich, 724-0530, or Judy Adamczyk at 724-658-6790.  For email contact: rpivovar@verizon.net for Ron or polish_princess@comcast.net for Judy.  We wish you a Happy New Year with lots of accordion and polka music!

Also available for download as a pdf Polka Times January 2012 article