[The following is a special feature by freelance journalist Heather Mack. ]

In the far Southeast corner of San Francisco, tucked among ancient train tracks and imposing warehouses, a little piece of musical heaven is making a name for itself. It’s called the Accordion Apocalypse, and it’s a true place of revelation for the charming albeit cumbersome instrument. Open since 2006, the blossoming repair shop, showroom, lesson center and antique museum is the only of its kind in the SF Bay Area, and is here to accommodate the recent surge in the instrument’s popularity.

Long viewed as the ironic novelty sidekick of Weird Al Yankovic or Steve Urkle, the ever-growing underground circus punk music scene has propelled the accordion to a level of proliferation that proves there is nothing nerdy about it.

Even the city of the San Francisco knows it. On April 26 1990, the Board of Supervisor voted 6 to 4 in favor of designating the accordion the city’s Official Instrument. You read that right. It may be that after the rattling Loma Prieta earthquake the previous year, the city needed a spirit lift from the rousing squeezebox.

Heading the today’s bellows-driven, free-reed revolution is entrepreneur and accordion punk princess Skyler Fell. An avid accordion player since 2002, Fell is leading the new generation of enthusiasts by running her modest Bayview shop, promoting events like the Cotati and San Francisco Accordion Festivals, all while playing in an Oakland punk/bluegrass band The Hobo Gobbelins and assorted trios and circus troupes.

On Tuesday Feb 16, the Gobbelins capped off the East Bay’s Mardi Gras celebration with a show at 8PM at the Stork Club at 2330 Telegraph Ave in Oakland.

“This is a hyper-niche market I’m working in,” says the resplendently bohemian Fell, 27, who was born in England to Ukrainian parents. “In the past two years, this has really taken off. Now the challenge is to bridge the gap between the two groups: the older generation playing traditional folk tunes, and the younger generation that’s going to Burning Man and playing at pirate punk parties.”

“The accordion is a folk instrument,” she says. “A lot of people hear it and think of family and community, but also bohemian spirit and something playful.”

The most popular mainstream accordion is heard in Latin music, with polka and gypsy tunes following, but waltzes and jigs from the Czech Republic to France are also a big in the accordion’s catalogue, along with burgeoning punk. To hear and see the accordion is somewhat overwhelming, as it produces an in-your-face barrage of sound and is also awkward and heavy to handle. Not surprisingly, Fell notes the instrument seems to “call out” to very unique people.

“I don’t want to call these people weird,” she says with a grin. “But the accordion attracts a, uh, special group of people.”

JoMarie Pitino, 25, is a San Francisco chef and aspiring accordionist who can attest to that.

“It’s just such a nerdy and hilarious instrument,” she says, “But it sounds amazing, and I think it would be so cool to play.”

As it spans musical genres and demographics, the accordion also has an expansive range in quality. Models and varietals from multiple countries are all viable options to play.  Fell offers the full spectrum of accordions in her shop–most of which are on consignment–and sells about three instruments per week. The best come from Italy and Germany and can fetch upwards to $7,000. Generally, she sells the models that cost around $1,000 and on the lower end, there are always the cheap, Chinese-manufactured concertina sqeezeboxes for around $300.

This isn’t San Francisco’s first flirtation with the polyphonic windbag. Originating in Germany and widely manufactured throughout Europe, the accordion was introduced to the west coast alongside surging immigration at the turn of the century. The first American piano accordion was built in 1907 in North Beach by the Guerrini Accordion Company, and the wide appeal of the instrument enabled it to transcend genres and gain popularity up until the late 1950s.

“The accordion is a very cross-cultural instrument,” Fell explains. “We had people looking for a meaningful way to connect, and that could be achieved with this very unique instrument.”

Aptly, Fell has come into her own by the help of some of the Bay’s oldest and most respected squeezebox pros. Trained by master craftsman and builders Vince Cirelli and Boaz Rudin, Fell became addicted to the accordion after seeing an-all girl circus punk show in Berkeley in her early 20s. Inspired and enthralled, she knew she entering a love affair.

“I decided to dedicate my life to it,” she says. “I went to Boaz Accordions in Berkeley and worked out an apprenticeship so I could learn how to repair, tune and rebuild while I was learning how to play. Now, several years later, I’ve built this shop from the ground up, and I feel like this is my dream playhouse.”

A performer since a young age, Fell found her place in the growing circus punk movement when she spent time living in Amsterdam, shortly after taking up the accordion. There, she honed her playing skills while also learning juggling, unicycling and jump roping. Back in the Bay Area, she found a broken accordion in San Francisco which she promptly took to Boaz and negotiated a work-study program until the shop closed in 2005. Soon, she had the skills and the demand to negate opening the Accordion Apocalypse, first located in an Oakland farmhouse.

Now, in between repairs, rebuilds and performances, Fell works with mentor, 87-year-old Cirelli, several days a week.

“Vince and I truly represent the connection between the two groups of accordion players,” says Fell of their 60-year age difference. The two were featured onstage the world famous Cotati Accordion Festival last year, symbolizing the passing of the torch between the two generations.

During the Golden Age of the Accordion, the city boasted a high of eight accordion factories. Much like the Treasure Island Music Festival and Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival today,  events put on by the Accordion Players Association once garnered tens of thousands of attendees. Polka and Balkan waltzes became a livingroom fixture via the Lawrence Welk and Horace Heidt shows.

Although the Rock-and-Roll phenomena of the late 1950s once pushed the accordion to the edge of kitschy obscurity, its fixture in today’s music is a bellowing contradiction. Mainstream bands such as The Pogues and The Decemberists have showcased the inherently offbeat instrument for years, and the rise of underground projects like Those Darn Accordions! and Fell’s own group, The Hobo Gobbelins warrants a devoted accordioness such as herself.

“We’ve come a long way since the Lawrence Welk show,” says Fell  “Those shows from the ‘50s and ‘60s may have made Balkan waltzes and Polka living room staples for awhile, but this is different. I believe we are on the edge of an accordion revolution.”

And along with the need for an ever-expanding esoteric vocabulary and energy to keep up with the artistic movement, the accordion requires a lot of work.

The shop is a one-stop-shop for the instrument. Located in a cavernous Bayview District warehouse, the space is well worth the long bus commute just to see it. A wrought-iron door opens to a dimly lit but eclectically decorated hallway that feels like backstage at a vaudeville show. A metal artist since her teens, Fell has utilized every opportunity in the room for art and expression. Accordingly, Fell herself is equally adorned. Petite and pretty with alternately shorn and dreadlocked brown hair, she favors dramatic earrings and layered necklaces along with theatrical, gypsy-like garb.

Cutting to the cheerful yellow and red-walled show room and lesson spot, the professionalism sets in. Full but not cluttered, the place is stocked with books of sheet music from all over the world and replete with accordions for sale alongside a beautiful collection of antique instruments.

A high-backed wooden chair dubbed the “Accordion Throne” sits in the middle of it all. This is where Fell sits her pupils.

“I want all of my students to feel special, like the are the king of the accordion, even if they are just starting,” says Fell, who typically takes on three to five students at a time. “The accordion brings people from all walks of life. I’ve taught guys from Brazil, old Serbian ladies, circus punks and hipsters. Right now, I’m seeing a lot of kids in their 20s and 30s.”

And although the instruments sports up to 120 bass keys that must be mastered while also controlling the flow of the bellows and manipulating the dozen or so buttons on the opposite end, Fell insists it’s not that difficult.

“Yeah, it’s like juggling three things at once,” she says, “But I don’t believe that it’s ever too late to learn the accordion.”

Asked to play a relatively basic song, Fell blasts into a pirate’s shanty jig that sounds mind-bendingly complex.

“Really, it’s not that hard,” she insists. “It has such a full sound. There’s a lot to be done with simplicity when you’re working with such a complicated instrument.”

Accordions are known as free reed instruments, along with harmonicas, harmoniums and reed organs. Unlike a clarinet or saxophone, air is blown through a freely vibrating rather than fixed reed. Fell’s most common work is repairing or re-waxing broken reeds, which don’t take more than a few hours or days, but her true passion is custom antique rebuilds, which can take up to 40 hours and cost up to $3,000.

In workroom adjacent to the showroom, Fell explains the more labor intensive part of her job. Just by looking at an accordion from the outside, the complexity of the instrument is clear. Take it apart, and a labyrinthine selection of reeds, buttons and keys warrants the need for highly skilled Fell. An arsenal of surgical-looking iron hand tools (most of which she made herself) aids her through most of her projects, which are usually detail-oriented and time-consuming. She uses power tools for some of her larger tasks, but working on the instruments generally requires deft handwork with her self-constructed tools.

“A lot of people bring in the accordion from Grandma’s closet, which is going to be big, old and in need of serious repair,” says Fell, who plays on an ornate 1927 Italian model with inlaid wood and mother-of-pearl embellishments. “But it’s not impossible. It may be costly, but it’s worth it.”

Fell does almost all of the work herself but also gets help from fellow accordion players and her partner of six years, Melody, who is also a member of the Hobo Gobbelins.

“I had to do something besides sit around and make a mess,” says dreadlocked Melody, busy winding a piece of sinewy catgut around a wooden pole in order to fashion her gutbucket, a homemade bass instrument that utilizes an aluminum washtub. (If that sounds confusing, seeing it in person was only marginally more explanatory)

Fell, Melody and their two dogs Garlic Ginger Fox and Lulu Ukelele enjoy relative piece and quiet most of the time, but they aren’t afraid to get rowdy and house giant punk parties in the garage of the warehouse.

“We have big gatherings about once a month, right here, with all kinds of musicians and performers,” says Fell. “People want to get together and do this. All we have to do is pull out the tour bus.”

The tour bus is a 40-foot, fire-engine red Bluebird school bus, which runs on biodiesel and hosts a bathroom, bedroom and fully functional kitchen. Jam packed and a little grungy, snippets of Fell’s interests have staked their claim amongst the homemade shelves: a deck of tarot cards peeks out from boxes of tea and oatmeal, a miscellaneous dreadlock is woven through some plastic netting. The tattered Mac G4 and GPS device on the dash is the only sign of the times in the vehicle that escorts Fell and the rest of the Gobblins around as they branch out and build their off-the-cuff web of artists.

And the pool for exuberant and underground performers is full. Garry Williams, owner of the SF Drum Center in the Castro District which specializes in custom rebuilds, sales and lessons, says he’s seen a upswing in people performing and playing.

“These people are alive,” says Williams outside a recent warehouse party that featured over-the-top musical acts and firedancing. “This circus slash zombie punk movement is on, people want to be creative right now.”

When she’s not repairing or teaching, Fell is performing at various venues such as Slim’s, DNA Lounge, High Sierra Music Festival, Burning Man and other organized events as well as street fairs and farmer’s markets. Networking and generally “spreading the gospel of accordion” is also a big part of her work, and she’s currently gearing up for the world-famous Cotati Festival, the largest assemblage of accordion enthusiasts in the country, and putting together San Francisco’s 1st Annual “Accordion Carnival” in 2010. She’s also gathering resources for the SF Accordion Festival and playing a few shows per month, all while preparing for her Northwest Tour.

Show and tell stops at the bus, where Fell retreats to change for a gig in Oakland. Emerging in full zombie makeup, white and black striped tights and platform boots, she exudes counter-culture charm and palpable nonconformity.

“This instrument really embodies what I am trying to accomplish,” she says. “The playfulness, the range, the connectedness.. and it’s come so far.”

 

Skyler Fell and The Hobo Gobbelins played  Feb 16 at 8 PM at the Stork Club at 2330 Telegraph Ave in Oakland. To future shows, go to http://www.myspace.com/hobogobbelins

Visit the The Accordion Apocalypse Repair Shop at 2626 Jennings Street in the Bayview district of San Francisco. Website: www.accordionapocalypse.com

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