Strike up the accordion: Holy Toledo is back.
After a successful 12-year run, followed by a 15-year hiatus beginning in 2004, the three-day polka festival returns, Friday through Sunday, at the Renaissance Toledo Downtown Hotel, 444 N. Summit St., in the first of what will again become an annual attraction, said Joe Zalewski, a polka musician and Holy Toledo's founder and promoter.
His award-winning band, DynaBrass, is the host act and one of 11 polka bands from the Midwest and beyond to play this weekend's festival.
Others on the bill include Squeezebox, featuring Ted Lange and Mollie B from Ridgeville Corners, Ohio; Michael Costa and the Beat from Randolph, N.J.; FreezeDried from Chicago; and the Boys from Baltimore.
“Being a performer in the polka industry and being out on the road, I can honestly say that at just about every gig I’ve played since 2004 somebody has asked me, ‘When are you going to restart Holy Toledo?’ ” Zalewski said. “There’s a lot of excitement, nationally and locally, for the event.”
What: Holy Toledo, three-day polka festival
When: 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. Friday; 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. Saturday; noon to 6 p.m. Sunday
Where: Renaissance Toledo Downtown Hotel, 444 N. Summit St.
Cost: Tickets are priced at $20 for Friday and Saturday admission, and $18 for Sunday. Youths ages 13 through 18 are $10, and children 12 and younger are admitted free.
Details: For a complete list of bands, visit holytoledopolkadays.com or call 419-351-5031.
If Holy Toledo’s absence is in no way because of lackluster enthusiasm, then why did it disappear? Answer: beer and location.
Holy Toledo's first and only residence — until now — was in the ballroom of a hotel complex in South Toledo at 2429 Reynolds Rd., at Heatherdowns Boulevard, what is now the senior living community Genesis Village. When the hotel was purchased in 2004 by Toledo’s First Church of God and renamed the then-Genesis Dreamplex Hotel and Conference Center, the liquor license wasn’t renewed. And so Zalewski knew he had to find another home for Holy Toledo.
“We could still have the event, but we couldn’t have any alcohol,” he said. “A polka fest without beer isn’t going to work ... so I had to pull the plug on that year's event.”
Thus began Zalewski's lengthy search for other Holy Toledo accommodations in the area, specifically, “another ballroom large enough to hold that type of event,” meaning at least matching the 8,500 square feet of space in the previous venue. Plus, he wanted to keep the polka festival in April, when it originally took place, and not in January, as he was often offered.
“Not many people want to come to Toledo in January,” Zalewski said. “And if I couldn’t run it within the Toledo area, I just wouldn't run the event.”
With the convention center out of his price range and other hotels unwilling to work with him, Holy Toledo remained in a zombie state: neither alive nor dead.
When the Renaissance opened, however, he found everything he wanted, including a ballroom with 14,000 square feet of usable space that would be available to him this month, and again in April, 2020, 2021, and even 2022.
Zalewski had his new home for Holy Toledo,
“My whole thought process for this is that I didn't want to do a one-time shot,” with this year’s event, Zalewski said. “If I was going to put that much effort into it, I wanted to be assured that I could return this to annual-event status.”
The combined three-day attendance will be approximately 2,000 polka-goers, he said, in line with festival attendance from years ago. Already, the Renaissance is “booked to capacity” with out-on-town attendees, he said, with overflow hotel accommodations available at the Park Inn by Radisson, 101 N. Summit St.
But it’s not really about the numbers.
“It’s about the experience, being part of the polka community and doing my fair share to help promote the music into the future.”
Given the stereotype of polka as entertainment for grandparents, the notion of the genre even having a future would seem to be a contradiction. But the perception of the music and its fans is wrong.
“The majority of the crowd you will see” at Holy Toledo, “will be under 55,” he said. In fact, the median age at these kinds of events “is probably around 40.”
“There’s been a real resurgence of interest in the younger folks,” said Zalewski, who started playing in polka bands as a teen and whose band, Toledo Polkamotion, was nominated for a Grammy for best polka album in 1991. It lost to polka legend Jimmy Sturr and his orchestra.
“There are a lot of people in the business that are my age, in their 50s, that have kids who are in their late teens to early 30s” who either play polka music or regularly attend polka events.
That includes Zalewski's son, A.J., who attended polka festivals with the family, and now plays drums in DynaBrass. That makes dad proud.
“There are a lot of younger folks taking up the instruments,” Zalewski said. In fact, there are several bands nationally with members with an average age that allows them to vote, but barely.
“I haven’t seen that in 20 years,” he said. “It's exciting to see a little bit of resurgence.”
First Published April 5, 2019, 11:00 a.m.
