Mollie Busta and Ted Lange’s romance blossomed on the dance floor, and on the
bandstand, and their music of choice was polka.
Both started playing polkas when they were children, and they’re
passion for the music and their desire to spread the word about the joys
of polka has only increased
Their band Squeezebox will perform along with Randy Krajewski’s Swingin
Ditka’s will perform at Oktoberfest Wednesday from 6:30 p.m. to
midnight in the Bowen Thompson Student Union, on the Bowing Green State
University campus.
The event stemmed from a conversation Bowling Green resident and retired
professor Wally Pretzer had with Busta at a dance at the Bavarian Haus
in Deshler.
They discussed the need to keep the “polka industry” vital, she said in a
recent telephone interview. That means attracting younger listeners and
making sure bands have plenty of venues to play.
So Pretzer set about coordinating with Geoff Howes of the German-Russian
Department on campus to stage the event. Oktoberfest will begin with a
brief talk on the history of polka, some dance lessons and then there
will be dancing until midnight.
The emphasis as it always is at a polka dance is having a good time,
Lange said. “The music’s about getting together with friends, having a
good time, sharing beers, and dancing if you choose. Our goal as a band
is to go out an energize people.”
“You can’t listen to a polka and be down,” Busta said.
Lange, 34, started playing drums at 5 with his parents’ band the Buckeye
Polka Band out of Ridgeville. As he got older, he branched out learning
accordion and starting playing with other groups including Toledo Polka
Motion. Bands from Minnesota, western New York and Massachusetts called
on him as a substitute.
Busta, 33, has a similar background. She started singing and playing
keyboard with her father in the Jim Busta Band when she was 8, but she’d
been dancing long before that.
She said that in a way she was naive; she expected everyone to be as friendly as the
folks she danced with at polka parties.
By the time she was a teenager she was expanding her arsenal of
instruments. The first was trumpet which she played simultaneously with
keyboards. That practice got her deeper into the music. Then after she
suggested to her dad that he add a saxophone to the ensemble — “I was
always about bringing my dad’s band to another level” — a saxophone
showed up for her to play. She also plays trombone, clarinet and a
button-box accordion.
Her education though wasn’t restricted to the bandstand. She studied
classical voice and has been a soloist in Handel’s “Messiah” and
Mozart’s Requiem. She starred in musicals and loves jazz.
Still polka is her first and true love. “A lot of it is the people,” she
said, “a lot of it is the environment. I’m very comfortable with it.”
Busta’s and Lange’s paths first crossed at a polka festival in Wisconsin. She was
dancing; he was playing.
They dated for a period then, she said, but the distance made that
difficult. Still they stayed in contact. In late 2005 they were talking.
She was lamenting that for the first time in years, she did not have a
gig for New Year’s Eve. Lange suggested she come out to Northwest Ohio
to play with his band the Bratwurst Boys.
That proved a magical musical match. Beside being a well-rounded
musician who “sings like an angel,” Lange said of Busta, “she’s
attractive, bubbly… she’s the complete package. People just love to
see her play.”
Busta moved to Ohio, and after 18 months convinced the band drop the
Bratwurst Boys stuff, and they switched the name to Squeezebox.
It wasn’t just that Busta was tired of being one of the Boys, but that
the old moniker didn’t fit what the band did. It evoked a German party
band, but “we’re much more versatile than that.”
Lange said they have a playlist of more than 600 songs. Plenty of polka
to be sure and all styles, Polish, Czech and German, but also swing
tunes, fox trots, country and square and line dances.
“We really pride ourselves on being a crowd pleasing band,” Lange said.
“We show up prepared to do whatever people respond to. That’s the mark
of a good band.”
It’s a formula that’s worked, Lange said. “We’ve taken this from being a
part time thing to our making our living playing in a polka band.”
They both had their share of recognition, including international polka
vocalist of the year for Busta. As Mollie B she hosts her own show on
RFD-TV.
After years of playing music together, Busta and Lange’s romance
blossomed. Earlier this month, they celebrated their first anniversary.