Joe has a background in Jazz and Swing and his many years in the record business gave him easy access to an incredible amount of world music. When Dan met percussionist Joe Steinger, he was drumming in a blues band and working for a major eclectic record distributor. He is fluent in French and Greek, sings in four languages and leads a successful Cajun band called the New Riverside Ramblers. Eric has a strong background in American old-time and Cajun music, and had been exposed to the French Musette style. He met mandolinist/fiddler Eric Mohring playing contra dance music at a local folk club. A local newspaper reviewed the band's first recorded album as "world beat music of the Kennedy era".ĭan searched the rich jazz, bluegrass and folk scenes in the Twin Cities to find the most versatile musicians available. The idea was to create the ambiance of a French or European Cafe or to leave the listener feeling like they were in a silent film or a Fellini flick. A year later Dan grew anxious to play some of these tunes with other musicians and formed a loose combo he called the Cafe Accordion Orchestra, and their first public performance was on January 1, 1995. That became the name of the tune and Dan's first solo album. A friend commented that one of the tunes in particular sounded like "cafe accordion" music. He began writing his own tunes based on the style, which he referred to as "faux Parisian elevator music". Dan had been introduced to "Musette" or "Valse Swing", the Parisian sidewalk cafe accordion sound, while teaching at a music camp in northern California in the 1980s. It all started with a tune composed in 1992 by the band's accordionist Dan "Daddy Squeeze" Newton. It's certainly been an interesting journey for Dan Newton's Cafe Accordion Orchestra, (CAO) a band whose repertoire cannot be described neatly with one word like "Blues" or "Swing". One might wonder how a group of musicians in Minnesota end up forming a band that plays French Musette, Gypsy Jazz, Tin Pan Alley, Latin music and cinematic themes. They have appeared in New York at the Lincoln Center's Midsummer Night Swing series, the International Akkordeon Festival in Vienna, Austria, the Minnesota State Fair, as well as festivals, theaters and dance halls across the United States. CAO has been delighting audiences and dancers alike since 1995. Their high level of musicianship and passion for performance makes them an entertaining concert act as well as a great dance band.ĬAO is led by DAN NEWTON on accordion and vocals, with ERIC MOHRING on mandolin, violin and vocals, BRIAN BARNES on guitar and vocals, ERIK LILLESTOL on bass and vocals and JOE STEINGER on percussion. They inject their music with good humor and expressive abandon. The group complements the musettes with swing, ballads, tangos, cha chas, rumbas, and cumbias to create a wonderfully varied show. The heart of the CAO repertoire is the romantic, gypsy-influenced valse-musette.
#UTUBE FRENCH CAFE MUSIC FULL#
Dan Newton's Café Accordion Orchestra (CAO) performs an eclectic mix full of French flare, Latin heat and Bohemian attitude.
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