This Band Of `Gals' Just Loves Playin' Around -- Unique Foursome Puts Polka Music On Local Map

Their name may be the Seattle Polka Gals, but they aren't from Seattle.

Leader Gale Evans and the three other Gals are all from the Eastside.

But they are women, they play polkas, and they may in fact be the only all-woman polka band in the state. Indeed, they think they're one of only four all-female polka bands in the country because, for some reason, women just don't seem to form polka bands.

Evans, who's from Issaquah, came up with the idea of forming the group after she tired of the same polka bands.

Evans found the other polka-band members through word of mouth and mutual friends. Tammy Calvert of Bothell, for example, was playing guitar with a Western band that was breaking up when Evans asked her whether she was interested in playing with a polka band.

"What's a polka?" was Calvert's response. "I've been in music all my life," she said, "but I didn't know anything about polka except `Roll Out the Barrel.' "

But Culvert was game, and so were Gloria Fellows and Judy Sandstrom, who both were a few steps ahead of Calvert in polka experience. They hail from polka hotbeds: Michigan and Minnesota.

Evans, originally from the East Coast, said the Gals try to gear themselves toward their Northwest audience, which more conservative.

The Seattle Gals have two accordions, a bass guitar and drums. Fellows, the drummer, grew up in Northern Michigan using spoons and sticks to drum on things until she got her first drum set. Calvert, bass guitar, says besides not knowing the polka, she also didn't play bass until she joined the band.

"I played six- and 12-string guitar," she said, "but polkas have a set pattern and once you get that down, you can play."

Evans and Sandstrom play the accordions, a must in any polka band.

Roxie Whyte of Tacoma, editor of Sausage, Beer and Polka Newsbeat, a national polka newsletter, said, "People are surprised to hear there are any polka bands in the Northwest."

The Renton post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars hosts a polka dance every Sunday, and a polka festival is planned at Bonney Lake in Pierce County June 17-18, she said. The Seattle Polka Gals will appear at "The Day of the Accordion" June 26 at the Seattle Center.

What makes a polka festival different from any other music festival?

It's the people, Whyte said. "You can go to a festival with 800 to 900 people, and you will never see a fight or a drunk," she said.

The other thing different is that none of the Polka Gals could think of a sad polka song. Said Calvert, "You can't be down when you play it."