My Love Affair

With the Button Box

by Ralph J. Muscatell

My wife, Ann, and I attended the second Accordion Festival in Cotati in 1992. We enjoyed it so much that we made sure we would be in Cotati in 1993 for the next one. It was at this Festival that I heard the Northern California Button Box Band from Sacramento. I was fascinated by both the instrument and the folk music that was played. I spoke to one of the players and expressed my interest and desire to learn to play a diatonic button box accordion. Nothing much came of this conversation as the band came from Sacramento and we were living in Rohnert Park.

For the next three years we never missed a Festival in Cotati, but it was in May of 1996 that we were awaiting the completion of our new home in Windsor, CA and we met Marjorie Konrad, one of the ladies in the sales office of the development. We discovered that she played the button box! She also taught piano accordion lessons. She informed me of the newly formed Accordion Club of the Redwoods that met, at that time, in Volpi’s Italian Restaurant in Petaluma. At Marjorie’s urging, my wife and I attended the third meeting in June, 1996 and Marjorie introduced me to Joe Smiell, a virtuoso on the button box, who runs a button box camp in the Sierras in July and Sept. of each year. WELL!!! I was getting closer to my goal!

July, 1996 I attended my first button box camp and was HOOKED!!! Being retired, I was able to devote an inordinate amount of time practicing. Another plus was that my wife didn’t mind it and in fact enjoyed listening to my first attempts. She also accompanied me to Button Box Camp as a supporter, and enjoyed all of the fine music one hears at Camp from more advanced and accomplished players from all over the country. I attended camps again in July and Sept. of 1997, and Sept. 1998.

In the summer of 1998 1 had the opportunity of joining the Golden State Accordion Club Band under the direction of Anne Uher (an accomplished button box player and talented in playing other instruments as well). The Co-director of the Band, Carole Enneking, is an accomplished piano accordion player also. Since that time I’ve been having a BALL!!! Our band, composed of piano accordions, one chromatic accordion and six diatonic button box accordions and a guitarist, numbers fourteen when we are all present. We’ve played at the Annual Button Box Festival in Fontana for the past three years on Memorial Day weekend. We’ve played at the Cotati Accordion Festival as the warm up for Steve Balich’s Polka Band and various other venues such as the Sacramento Polka Boosters, The Sheriff’s Volunteers Swiss Alpine Dinner Dance in Palermo, CA and The Cafe Vienna in West Sacramento to mention a few.

Little did I know how attending the Accordion Festival in Cotati nine years ago would leave such an indelible mark upon my daily life!!!