Brave Combo on World Cafe
Brave Combo
Miguel Perez/WXPN
World Cafe
Sense of Place: Denton, Texas’ Brave Combo does things their own way
The fierce independence behind their polka music has taken Brave Combo from Japan to an episode of The Simpsons to playing at David Byrne’s wedding.
Setlist
Apr
07
Brave Combo
World Cafe
- Brave Combo, "Do Something Different"
- Lawrence Welk, "Beer Barrel Polka"
- André Popp, "Java"
- Brave Combo, "Vuela La Paloma"
- Brave Combo, "The Chicken Dance"
- Brave Combo, "No, No, No, Cha, Cha, Cha"
- Brave Combo, "In Heaven, There Is No Beer"
- Brave Combo, "Do Something Different"
Polka music has taken Brave Combo from Denton, Texas — the latest stop in our Sense of Place series — to some wild places: from Japan to being featured in an episode of The Simpsons to playing at David Byrne‘s wedding.
But the band doesn’t play traditional polka — founder Carl Finch decided early on he wanted to play polka hard and fast… and different.
“I thought, ‘Screw everybody. Let’s play this like a rock band and see what happens’ — because the music was worth it.”
Brave Combo is a band that does things their own way, which is something Carl partly credits to that fierce independent streak Texas is known for: “It’s just this renegade spirit that I know we’ve drawn from. By nature and by design, we want to not be like anything else. There’s a strong drive to always be different.”